Wagons standing in coal merchants' sidings

[spikey]

It's sometime between the last war and the early 1960s, and three full coal wagons are shunted into a siding alongside the coal merchant's yard.  Is the merchant then under any pressure from BR to get those wagons unloaded sharpish?  And how is the removal of the emptied wagons arranged i.e. does the merchant notify BR that he's done with them, or does BR just disappear them on an apppinted day?

[The Stationmaster]

15 minutes ago, spikey said:

It's sometime between the last war and the early 1960s, and three full coal wagons are shunted into a siding alongside the coal merchant's yard.  Is the merchant then under any pressure from BR to get those wagons unloaded sharpish?  And how is the removal of the emptied wagons arranged i.e. does the merchant notify BR that he's done with them, or does BR just disappear them on an apppinted day?

The only pressure - depending on the status of the siding - would be demurrage or siding renbt charges.  And at a couple of bob (10p) a day in the early-mid 1960s it was hardly surprise that it was an economic proposition for coal merchants to keep wagons on hand and use them for cheap storage.  the only pressure would likely come from local management and they (we) often had far better and more important things to do with our time than arguing with recalitrant and down right awkward (and occasionally disposed to making physical threats) coal merchants.

 

Once they were (eventually ) empty the coal merchant would tell 'somebody' (latterly officially the relevant TOPS office) and the wagons would be shunted out and taken away.  Inevitably the first one emptied would be the one on the blocks  and therefore 'inside' wagons which were still underload - usually with the doors open or open and resting on a road vehicle.

 

When Merthyr was cut over to TOPs in mid 1973 it still had a local yard dealing with coal and it contained something between about a dozen and 15 wagons.  The maximum period TOPS could show for a wagon in one place was 99 days, and every single wagon at Merthyr went onto TOPS as having been there for 99 days although most had been there much longer than that according to local records. 

[iands]

A follow-on question if I may (probably for Mike, but if anyone else knows please chip in). When TOPS came on line (progressively throughout each Region), did the "Goods Agents" get absorbed into the TOPS offices (as a person, not as a 'post'), or did the Goods Agent posts disappear before TOPS came along? Presumably, before TOPS came along, said coal merchants would have dealt with the Goods Agents to arrange delivery/collection of coal wagons?

[spikey]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

... Inevitably the first one emptied would be the one on the blocks  and therefore 'inside' wagons which were still underload - usually with the doors open or open and resting on a road vehicle.

 

Thinking back to the cantankerous old beggar* who ran the local coalyard in my trainspotting days, I could see that coming! 

 

Thanks Mike.  So if I end up having to have my seed merchant's store building on the same siding as the coal merchant, it's the latter that wants to be towards the stops?

 

(* He was, but he had one redeeming feature of hallowed memory.  He still did the deliveries nearest to the yard with the horse and cart, and we kids used to eagerly look forward to the nosebag going on while the driver was delivering to a house in our street.  If it did, you could guarantee the old horse would fart before the bag came off, and if you've ever heard a Clydesdale fart, you'll understand why we invariably got the giggles ...)

[The Stationmaster]

16 hours ago, spikey said:

 

Thinking back to the cantankerous old beggar* who ran the local coalyard in my trainspotting days, I could see that coming! 

 

Thanks Mike.  So if I end up having to have my seed merchant's store building on the same siding as the coal merchant, it's the latter that wants to be towards the stops?

 

(* He was, but he had one redeeming feature of hallowed memory.  He still did the deliveries nearest to the yard with the horse and cart, and we kids used to eagerly look forward to the nosebag going on while the driver was delivering to a house in our street.  If it did, you could guarantee the old horse would fart before the bag came off, and if you've ever heard a Clydesdale fart, you'll understand why we invariably got the giggles ...)

Amusingly at our local station there was one long siding used for all full loads traffic, including coal, and it tended to get a bit mixed up about what went where depending on traffic levels.  But ideally the coal merchants are the ones you want to block in.

16 hours ago, iands said:

A follow-on question if I may (probably for Mike, but if anyone else knows please chip in). When TOPS came on line (progressively throughout each Region), did the "Goods Agents" get absorbed into the TOPS offices (as a person, not as a 'post'), or did the Goods Agent posts disappear before TOPS came along? Presumably, before TOPS came along, said coal merchants would have dealt with the Goods Agents to arrange delivery/collection of coal wagons?

Goods Agents had vanished from BR some time before TOPS was even thought of for UK use.  At the larger depots there were Depot Managers and agents only seem to have existed at medium size places although it varied between Companies/BR Regions but by the mid 1960s they had all become Goods/Freight Depot Managers.

 

Locally our goods depot was always a very busy place right up to its closure and 'concentration' on Reading c.1964/65.  There were at least a couple of Goods Clerks (possibly three?) but there was no Goods Agent and the clerks and goods staff reported to the Station Master.  The two intermediate stations on the branch were at one time covered by a separate Stationmaster but in later years handled very little freight traffic although both oddly developed some new coal traffic, in very limited numbers of wagons, in the early 1960s - but again no Goods Agent.  Oh and the SM locally was a very busy chap having also to do the paybill work - in the early 1960s there were over 60 staff on the paybill but that included Drivers (two) and the local PerWay gang as well as, by then, the staff at the two intermediate station;  and that was on a branch line 5 miles long.

 

Before TOPS days, and to some extent subsequently the local coal merchants were more likely to be chased (to discharge wagons) as much by folk doing the shunting and getting fed up with part loaded wagons and it would usually be to those staff, or the relevant clerk wherever he/she happened to be based to declare wagons empty.  The reason for going to a clerk was simple - they calculated the demurrage etc charges

[The Johnster]

The pits were always clamouring for empties, especially in South Wales where the restricted valley bottom sites meant that there was little space for storing them.  As there was no room to stockpile coal that had been raised but not yet graded and washed, it was essential to have a steady and regular supply of empties to feed the washery or it would not be long before work underground came to a halt, and an idle pit is an expensive pit, and before long a flooded pit...

 

Wagons in circuit traffic to docks, steelworks, and power stations were fairly predictable as far as being returned empty was concerned, but domestic coal for merchants and supply for small industries accounted for a huge amount of the traffic up until about the mid 60s when households began to convert to central heating and social housing was no longer built with fireplaces and chimneys, and this is where wagons might go 'off grid' for long periods being used for static storage in yards and factory sidings.  This is the main reason why BR had no idea how many mineral wagons it possessed in 1948!  Demurrage was charged, but was expensive to collect and it was a bargain for the merchants; one of the better things Beeching did was to point this out.  It wasn't just coal traffic, of course, and general merchandise mileage traffic suffered from it as well.

[D9020 Nimbus]

At smaller stations it seems the senior porter would be responsible for much of this. There's an account of goods workings at Challow in Adrian Vaughan's Signalman's Morning (he started as a junior porter and doesn't become a signalman until later in the book).

[F-UnitMad]

In one book ("Behind the Lines" by C. Burton) he tells about demurrage & coal merchants (or 'coal jaggers' as they were known in the Black Country), & also mentions the Lad Numbertaker - a GWR/BR(W) junior position, who's job was to record the wagons in the goods yard each day & if they were loaded or empty. Mr Burton says how his "biggest defeat" when trying to charge demurrage was during the bad winter of 1947; his Lad Numbertaker had recorded a wagon as still full of coal, when it was in fact, as the coal jagger pointed out, actually full of snow...

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The pits were always clamouring for empties, especially in South Wales where the restricted valley bottom sites meant that there was little space for storing them.  As there was no room to stockpile coal that had been raised but not yet graded and washed, it was essential to have a steady and regular supply of empties to feed the washery or it would not be long before work underground came to a halt, and an idle pit is an expensive pit, and before long a flooded pit...

 

Wagons in circuit traffic to docks, steelworks, and power stations were fairly predictable as far as being returned empty was concerned, but domestic coal for merchants and supply for small industries accounted for a huge amount of the traffic up until about the mid 60s when households began to convert to central heating and social housing was no longer built with fireplaces and chimneys, and this is where wagons might go 'off grid' for long periods being used for static storage in yards and factory sidings.  This is the main reason why BR had no idea how many mineral wagons it possessed in 1948!  Demurrage was charged, but was expensive to collect and it was a bargain for the merchants; one of the better things Beeching did was to point this out.  It wasn't just coal traffic, of course, and general merchandise mileage traffic suffered from it as well.

Alas very different from that in Cardiff where coal wagons had long been known to get 'lost' inn a certain steelworks and that went back to 1948 (and no doubt earlier with PO wagons).   The demurrage bill in the early 1970s - after the auditors had spent months going back through records over many years - was in tens of thousands of £s

 

The question of coal merchants hanging on to wagons underload with coal goes right back to PO wagon days when of course the Railways' interest was in Siding Rent and not demurrage and hanging on to wagons was nothing new in 1948 or the 1960s although the the effect of 'Summer Prices' for coal inevitably tended to make it worse.  And collecting demurrage cost peanuts - the staff were there in one form or another to collect wagon details and to shunt them in or out and in general terms the railway accountancy system to raise the charges was simple and cost relatively little to run as part of general clerical expenses.

 

And circuit wagons also had a known tendency to 'get lost' either by finishing up out of their regular circuit or by being detained somewhere or other with collieries often not bothering to take any notice of any circuit branding on label clips.  that was why the weekly General Instructions Circulars frequently had circuit working wagons listed in them as 'missing' along with various other 'missing' wagons.

[Fat Controller]

15 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Alas very different from that in Cardiff where coal wagons had long been known to get 'lost' inn a certain steelworks and that went back to 1948 (and no doubt earlier with PO wagons).   The demurrage bill in the early 1970s - after the auditors had spent months going back through records over many years - was in tens of thousands of £s

 

The question of coal merchants hanging on to wagons underload with coal goes right back to PO wagon days when of course the Railways' interest was in Siding Rent and not demurrage and hanging on to wagons was nothing new in 1948 or the 1960s although the the effect of 'Summer Prices' for coal inevitably tended to make it worse.  And collecting demurrage cost peanuts - the staff were there in one form or another to collect wagon details and to shunt them in or out and in general terms the railway accountancy system to raise the charges was simple and cost relatively little to run as part of general clerical expenses.

 

And circuit wagons also had a known tendency to 'get lost' either by finishing up out of their regular circuit or by being detained somewhere or other with collieries often not bothering to take any notice of any circuit branding on label clips.  that was why the weekly General Instructions Circulars frequently had circuit working wagons listed in them as 'missing' along with various other 'missing' wagons.

Makes the Demurrage for BSC Landore look miniscule. How many of the wagons in your example had gone into the melting pot, Mike?

[spikey]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

... of course the Railways' interest was in Siding Rent and not demurrage ...

 

Look gents, I really am sorry but this thread is throwing up all sorts of fascinating stuff that I'm trying to understand.  So once again, I have to ask - how did Siding Rent work, and did it stop in Jan 1948?

 

And ... "circuit wagons"? 

[The Johnster]

Except on the former NER network, the majority of mineral wagons were not owned by the railways until nationalisation, though they were pooled earlier than that.  Hence demurrage was not charged for them by the railways, but rent was charged to their owners for the siding space they occupied.  As part of the nationalisation, all these wagons passed to BR ownership, their former owners being paid compensation by BR; Treasury funding was made available for this as part of the Nationalisation legislation.

 

'Circuit' wagons were those, mostly in block trains, that once formed into a train were regularly used on a particular service or route; colliery to steelworks or power station traffic was typical of this.  Much of it was informal and it was simply that once a wagon found itself on a regular out and back service it tended to stay there for a while, but there were formal circuits as well, denoted by a yellow spot on the wagon with 'CIRCUIT' branding in BR days or by various 'return empty to...' brandings.

[spikey]

Thank you, sir. 

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 ... demurrage was not charged for them by the railways, but rent was charged to their owners for the siding space they occupied.

 

Demurrage and siding rent seem like the same dog with different spots to me, so I guess the change was of more consequence to the railway's book-keepers than to the customers - unless of course the cost per week went up significantly!

[JimC]

Interesting to know if the wagon owners charged demurrage though. After all if 75% of your fleet is idle being used as temporary coal storage you need a much bigger wagon fleet. On the other hand I suppose it could have just been absorbed in the base price of the coal.

[Rivercider]

On 24/08/2019 at 17:40, iands said:

A follow-on question if I may (probably for Mike, but if anyone else knows please chip in). When TOPS came on line (progressively throughout each Region), did the "Goods Agents" get absorbed into the TOPS offices (as a person, not as a 'post'), or did the Goods Agent posts disappear before TOPS came along? Presumably, before TOPS came along, said coal merchants would have dealt with the Goods Agents to arrange delivery/collection of coal wagons?

I can only speak of a couple of TOPS offices and their staff.

A friend and former BR colleague of mine was a goods clerk at Taunton, when he became one of the TOPS clerks he still also undertook the remaining goods clerk work.

In Bristol TOPS several of the TOPS clerks had been former ATI (Advanced Train Information [?]) clerks, some others were recruited off the street. There was still a roving goods/commercial man at Avonmouth after TOPS was introduced.

At other smaller single -manned offices I got the impression that it was often a natural progression for a goods clerks to become a combined goods clerk/TOPS clerk.

 

cheers  

[Wickham Green]

2 hours ago, JimC said:

Interesting to know if the wagon owners charged demurrage though. After all if 75% of your fleet is idle being used as temporary coal storage you need a much bigger wagon fleet. On the other hand I suppose it could have just been absorbed in the base price of the coal.

Before pooling a lot of the guys using a wagon or two for storage on the local good yard siding WERE the owners of said wagons !

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

Before pooling a lot of the guys using a wagon or two for storage on the local good yard siding WERE the owners of said wagons !

But they had to pay Siding Rent so they didn't get away scotfree :)

Edited August 27, 2019 by The Stationmaster

[The Stationmaster]

5 hours ago, Rivercider said:

I can only speak of a couple of TOPS offices and their staff.

A friend and former BR colleague of mine was a goods clerk at Taunton, when he became one of the TOPS clerks he still also undertook the remaining goods clerk work.

In Bristol TOPS several of the TOPS clerks had been former ATI (Advanced Train Information [?]) clerks, some others were recruited off the street. There was still a roving goods/commercial man at Avonmouth after TOPS was introduced.

At other smaller single -manned offices I got the impression that it was often a natural progression for a goods clerks to become a combined goods clerk/TOPS clerk.

 

cheers  

ATI stood for 'Advanced Traffic Information', but it did, hopefully. let  you know what was on particular freight trains coming into your yard; TOPS overtook it..  By the time TOPS came in Goods Clerks were an extinct breed in most places.

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, spikey said:

 

Look gents, I really am sorry but this thread is throwing up all sorts of fascinating stuff that I'm trying to understand.  So once again, I have to ask - how did Siding Rent work, and did it stop in Jan 1948?

 

And ... "circuit wagons"? 

Right we'll head to an original source document, the GWR's Station Accountancy booklet published in 1923 but all of thios was no different in the 1960s and later.

 

Demurrage is charged for the detention of the company's wagons and sheets (ropes were added later).  Free (of demurrage charges) periods were as follows - and were little different in the mid 1960s -

At a sending station - 1 day exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading,

At a sending private siding dock etc - 2 days exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading.

By the 1960s as far as I can remember (and I chucked my notes a long while back) these charges were no longer normally raised.

 

At a receiving station - 2 days exclusive of the day of receipt by the trader of notice of the wagon's arrival.

At a private siding or dock etc -3 days (or if reloaded 5 days) exclusive of the day of berthing.

By the 1960s I'm fairly sure it was 2 days for everything, exclusive of the day the trader was advised the wagon was available for unloading or the day it was berthed in a private siding etc.

 

Demurrage was definitely still being charged on inwards loaded wagons well into the 1970s.  it probably went with major revision of rates (except for coal class traffic where it seems to have remained for other than concentration depots) and possibly lasted until Speedlink days although I know we weren't raising it on some wagons by the mid 1970s.

 

Siding Rent was rather different, and charged at a lower rate than demurrage.  As far as the GWR was concerned 4 free days were allowed in London and 3 days elsewhere.  In both cases exclusive of the day on which notice of arrival of the wagon is given.  Siding Rent was not much used by the 1960s as most private wagons had vanished and generally the rate for their movement made allowance for discharge time or extended discharge as then it was the wagon owner who suffered, not BR.

 

The reason for demurrage charges was to encourage the earliest return to traffic of wagons and sheets etc (sheet charges were quite high as they tended to be 'useful' to anybody who got their hands on them, rope charges were also quite high because they too had a tendency to vanish).  Siding rent was of course exactly what it said - it was a charge for the siding space occupied by a wagon.

 

Circuit working is basically the process of using a resource in a restrictive manner - normally a wagon but it also applied to some containers and BRUTE trolleys.  It worked in several ways - the first was simple and merely restricted the resource to working between, usually, two places by allocating a sufficient number of that resource to ensure there would always be enough available to convey the traffic on offer, this was particularly important with wagons.  In some cases there would be a particular branding, and a yellow circle symbol, on the wagon and in others there would be a plastic label (know as a Darvic label - they made excellent ice scrapers for car windscreens long before you could buy such things) permanently fixed in the label clip specifying where the wagon should be sent when unloaded.

 

The second form of circuit simply protected the resource to a particular use/traffic route with no return empty instruction - this was commonly used for BRUTES and in seom respects was similar to a POOL as it was very much intended as a control process and was subject to separate daily census.  The third form, also known latterly as a POOL branded wagons with a circuit or pool number for fleet control purposes - as with wagons used to convey stone from the Mendip quarries. 

[spikey]

Very much obliged to you Mike for that clear and comprehensive explanation.

[iands]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Right we'll head to an original source document, the GWR's Station Accountancy booklet published in 1923 but all of thios was no different in the 1960s and later.

 

Demurrage is charged for the detention of the company's wagons and sheets (ropes were added later).  Free (of demurrage charges) periods were as follows - and were little different in the mid 1960s -

At a sending station - 1 day exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading,

At a sending private siding dock etc - 2 days exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading.

By the 1960s as far as I can remember (and I chucked my notes a long while back) these charges were no longer normally raised.

 

At a receiving station - 2 days exclusive of the day of receipt by the trader of notice of the wagon's arrival.

At a private siding or dock etc -3 days (or if reloaded 5 days) exclusive of the day of berthing.

By the 1960s I'm fairly sure it was 2 days for everything, exclusive of the day the trader was advised the wagon was available for unloading or the day it was berthed in a private siding etc.

 

Demurrage was definitely still being charged on inwards loaded wagons well into the 1970s.  it probably went with major revision of rates (except for coal class traffic where it seems to have remained for other than concentration depots) and possibly lasted until Speedlink days although I know we weren't raising it on some wagons by the mid 1970s.

 

Siding Rent was rather different, and charged at a lower rate than demurrage.  As far as the GWR was concerned 4 free days were allowed in London and 3 days elsewhere.  In both cases exclusive of the day on which notice of arrival of the wagon is given.  Siding Rent was not much used by the 1960s as most private wagons had vanished and generally the rate for their movement made allowance for discharge time or extended discharge as then it was the wagon owner who suffered, not BR.

 

The reason for demurrage charges was to encourage the earliest return to traffic of wagons and sheets etc (sheet charges were quite high as they tended to be 'useful' to anybody who got their hands on them, rope charges were also quite high because they too had a tendency to vanish).  Siding rent was of course exactly what it said - it was a charge for the siding space occupied by a wagon.

 

Circuit working is basically the process of using a resource in a restrictive manner - normally a wagon but it also applied to some containers and BRUTE trolleys.  It worked in several ways - the first was simple and merely restricted the resource to working between, usually, two places by allocating a sufficient number of that resource to ensure there would always be enough available to convey the traffic on offer, this was particularly important with wagons.  In some cases there would be a particular branding, and a yellow circle symbol, on the wagon and in others there would be a plastic label (know as a Darvic label - they made excellent ice scrapers for car windscreens long before you could buy such things) permanently fixed in the label clip specifying where the wagon should be sent when unloaded.

 

The second form of circuit simply protected the resource to a particular use/traffic route with no return empty instruction - this was commonly used for BRUTES and in seom respects was similar to a POOL as it was very much intended as a control process and was subject to separate daily census.  The third form, also known latterly as a POOL branded wagons with a circuit or pool number for fleet control purposes - as with wagons used to convey stone from the Mendip quarries. 

As ever Mike, a mine of operating information and practices. Many thanks for sharing. 

[Wickham Green]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

...... a plastic label (know as a Darvic label - they made excellent ice scrapers for car windscreens long before you could buy such things) permanently fixed in the label clip ..........

Er .... how permanent was permanent ? ............. presumably you didn't have to scrape your windscreen with the whole wagon ?

[Rivercider]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

ATI stood for 'Advanced Traffic Information', but it did, hopefully. let  you know what was on particular freight trains coming into your yard; TOPS overtook it..  By the time TOPS came in Goods Clerks were an extinct breed in most places.

Regarding goods clerks turned TOPS clerk. On training courses in 1978/81 I met TOPS clerks from both Llandudno Junction, and Kings Lynn, where I got the impression that they did all the remaining paper work regarding freight traffic for the area, as well as TOPS inputs.

 

cheers  

[The Stationmaster]

19 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

Er .... how permanent was permanent ? ............. presumably you didn't have to scrape your windscreen with the whole wagon ?

Ah, the labels did of course exist before they were fixed to the label space and some places kept small stocks of them.  Odd tho' it may seem one of them found its way into my car and now resides as part of my 'archive'.  And here, photographed a few minutes ago on our landing carpet, is the living proof  

 

 

 

[57xx]

On 27/08/2019 at 14:33, The Stationmaster said:

Right we'll head to an original source document, the GWR's Station Accountancy booklet published in 1923 but all of thios was no different in the 1960s and later.

 

Demurrage is charged for the detention of the company's wagons and sheets (ropes were added later).  Free (of demurrage charges) periods were as follows - and were little different in the mid 1960s -

At a sending station - 1 day exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading,

At a sending private siding dock etc - 2 days exclusive of the day the wagon arrived for loading.

By the 1960s as far as I can remember (and I chucked my notes a long while back) these charges were no longer normally raised.

 

At a receiving station - 2 days exclusive of the day of receipt by the trader of notice of the wagon's arrival.

At a private siding or dock etc -3 days (or if reloaded 5 days) exclusive of the day of berthing.

By the 1960s I'm fairly sure it was 2 days for everything, exclusive of the day the trader was advised the wagon was available for unloading or the day it was berthed in a private siding etc.

 

Demurrage was definitely still being charged on inwards loaded wagons well into the 1970s.  it probably went with major revision of rates (except for coal class traffic where it seems to have remained for other than concentration depots) and possibly lasted until Speedlink days although I know we weren't raising it on some wagons by the mid 1970s.

 

Siding Rent was rather different, and charged at a lower rate than demurrage.  As far as the GWR was concerned 4 free days were allowed in London and 3 days elsewhere.  In both cases exclusive of the day on which notice of arrival of the wagon is given.  Siding Rent was not much used by the 1960s as most private wagons had vanished and generally the rate for their movement made allowance for discharge time or extended discharge as then it was the wagon owner who suffered, not BR.

 

The reason for demurrage charges was to encourage the earliest return to traffic of wagons and sheets etc (sheet charges were quite high as they tended to be 'useful' to anybody who got their hands on them, rope charges were also quite high because they too had a tendency to vanish).  Siding rent was of course exactly what it said - it was a charge for the siding space occupied by a wagon.

 

Circuit working is basically the process of using a resource in a restrictive manner - normally a wagon but it also applied to some containers and BRUTE trolleys.  It worked in several ways - the first was simple and merely restricted the resource to working between, usually, two places by allocating a sufficient number of that resource to ensure there would always be enough available to convey the traffic on offer, this was particularly important with wagons.  In some cases there would be a particular branding, and a yellow circle symbol, on the wagon and in others there would be a plastic label (know as a Darvic label - they made excellent ice scrapers for car windscreens long before you could buy such things) permanently fixed in the label clip specifying where the wagon should be sent when unloaded.

 

The second form of circuit simply protected the resource to a particular use/traffic route with no return empty instruction - this was commonly used for BRUTES and in seom respects was similar to a POOL as it was very much intended as a control process and was subject to separate daily census.  The third form, also known latterly as a POOL branded wagons with a circuit or pool number for fleet control purposes - as with wagons used to convey stone from the Mendip quarries.