"Foreign" wagons - How many would you see?

[Dungrange]

19 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

With all this bandying around of statistics, I was reminded of this piece on The LMS Society website Goods Vehicles and Freight Marshalling (a .PDF link). Some of the statistical modelling seems a bit simplistic to me compared to previous workings upthread.

 

10 hours ago, kevinlms said:

An excellent post. I have seen that information presented in a different way, by those same authors.

It confirms my view about proportions of wagons belonging to different railway companies.

 

That piece of analysis by the LMS Society may be simplistic, but it's probably perfectly adequate for the time period that the document discusses: 1939.  For anyone modelling from the 1930s onwards, the majority of wagons probably were foreign at all but the most rural backwaters - certainly by the late grouping period.  That's also therefore relevant to those who model the British Railway period.

 

However, the world changed a lot over the 40 years between 1899 and 1939, so what holds at one point in time isn't really a useful guide to a different point in time.

 

At the start of the 20th century, the country appears to have been very much a collection of local economies with little national distribution of general merchandise (although there clearly was some national distribution beginning to develop in the Victorian era). Each pre-grouping company was largely competing with its neighbours and they kept their stock to themselves.  As such, the number of foreign wagons may be relatively low in this period (as the Sheffield Park data shows), but would have varied a bit by location.

 

Wagon pooling, was an innovation of the Great War.  In essence it was a major step change from each company having their own stock, to the creation of a national fleet of wagons that all companies could use.  That therefore allowed wagons to wander from their home territory and be replaced by foreign wagons.  From this point in time, foreign wagons would begin to increase from what the data shows was an overwhelming majority of local company wagons at Sheffield Park in 1899 to what the LMS Society paper is highlighting as a plausible breakdown on a secondary mainline at the outbreak of WW2.  Between these dates was a period of change.

 

Whilst we don't know how quickly the company fleets mixed post-1917, the continued development of national distribution infrastructure during the inter-war period would have resulted in steadily increasing trip lengths as the rail network changed from primarily local towards predominantly national distribution.  This probably had the impact of mixing the pre-grouping fleets quicker as time went on.   I think the longest rail journey you could have made would be from Lybster (HR) to Penzance (GWR) - a distance of circa 800 miles.  If a typical journey in 1899 was just 33 miles, then it would have taken about 24 separate journeys for a wagon to have wandered that far (if a pooling agreement had been in place at that date).  If however by the outbreak of WW2, the average trip length had grown to say 100 miles, then a wagon could travel that far in as little as eight trips.  Consequently, the rate at which the fleets mixed would have increased over time as the economy transitioned from predominantly local to regional and then national distribution.

 

The final important point is Grouping itself.  It's easier to mix the stock owned by four large companies than it is to mix the stock of 20+ smaller companies.  To give an example, Upwell is approximately 500 miles from the territory of the Highland Railway but it is only 30 miles from the territory of the LMS (of which the Highland was a constituent).  By the 1930s, there was presumably a lot of LMS wagons on the Wisbech and Upwell tramway, but that doesn't mean that there were any Highland Railway vehicles.

 

On 10/01/2024 at 12:43, kevinlms said:

I guess it comes down to YOU might choose to have nearly all home wagons, I wouldn't, I would prefer to have maybe 45% home and the other 55% of other railway owned vehicles, be a selection.

 

But that's based on the fact that you presumably model different periods in history.  Since your user name contains the initials LMS, I presume your interests are in the post-Grouping period, for which that split would be appropriate.  However, since @Compound2632 is modelling 1902, that sort of split is likely to have been highly un-prototypical in the Edwardian period.

 

On 10/01/2024 at 11:55, kevinlms said:

Depends on what type of 'foreign wagons'? If it's hearse wagons, a rake of banana vans or special high capacity wagons, used for transporting heavy chunks of steel plate, on a light branch, then you do in fact have 'far too many foreign wagons'. But if standard single plank, low sided or 5 planked wagons, with a modest range of foreign owners, then you probably don't have a problem at all.

On 10/01/2024 at 12:03, Compound2632 said:

I'm not so sure. One can justify the occasional special wagon delivering some unusual load - perhaps not steel plate or bananas in bulk but maybe plate glass for that new-fangled department store in town or perhaps a steel girders for the local board's road improvement works, but the special wagon is most likely from a company serving the industrial area where the items are made rather than from the home company.

 

It's the ordinary opens from 'foreign' lines that are harder to justify pre-Great War, at least for a rural branch.

 

Both of these comments make sense, but they are very time period specific.  If modelling the Grouping period, then a mix of different company wagons is acceptable and these should outnumber specialist vehicles for the conveyance of say out of gauge loads.

 

However, if modelling the Edwardian period, then it's difficult to justify a foreign wagon from the opposite end of the country.  Therefore, if modelling Penzance in 1900 you'd probably see many more specialised wagons from the GWR than you would have seen a wagon from  Scotland.

 

Edited January 11 by Dungrange

[billbedford]

21 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

What I'm banging on at is, however logical it appears to us, wagon pooling was an innovation of the Great War and consequently, there is a very significant difference between the goods stock one would expect to see on a layout set before the Great War, compared to one set after.

 

Wagon pooling came about because the pre-war system had failed during the first years of the war. Not only was there an increase in traffic due to the rates for sea-bourn carriage increasing, but there was massive misuse of wagons by the military. For instance, RCH returns for January 1916 showed that Government departments held 5000 wagons for an aggregate of 50000 days. It was also common for wagons to be sent on unnecessary journeys, sometimes of only a few miles, and using a whole wagon for minimal loads.

 

Much of this information came from "Britains Railways in World War 1" by J.A.B. Hamilton, published 1967.  

Edited January 11 by billbedford

[Dungrange]

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

I'm not so sure. The data below is still incomplete due to my laziness, but shows that minerals, general merchandise, and passenger (which includes mails, parcels, horses, dogs, & carriages) were all comparable*.

Was coal always included within 'Minerals' in that time period?  The GER accounts for year ending 1913 lists 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' separately from 'Other Minerals'.  Since the GER wasn't a mineral railway I'm assuming that was a national reporting change circa 1911?

 

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

Where there's data for individual companies (mostly pre-1868 - when the contents of the accounts became more standardised) the 'average' passenger & goods journey is quite short. 

 

How is this information conveyed?  Is this just the division of the total train miles (in Abstract G) by the number of trains run (in Abstract H) as referenced above.  Was it common to include details of the total number of trains run in the earlier accounts (they don't seem to be in the post 1913 accounts that I have for the GER and it would be an interesting comparison to make).

[Dungrange]

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

What were the rates per ton (ton/mile), or whatever the measure was? I would have expected coal and it's derivatives to be a much lower rate, than say a load of say manufactured goods in a 5 plank wagon.

 

Looking at the GER accounts for 1913, the average receipt per ton was 5s 5.6d for General Merchandise, 3s 0.5d for Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel and 2s 3.2d for Other Minerals.  I would assume the rates for other companies would show a similar pattern.

[kevinlms]

3 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

 

Looking at the GER accounts for 1913, the average receipt per ton was 5s 5.6d for General Merchandise, 3s 0.5d for Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel and 2s 3.2d for Other Minerals.  I would assume the rates for other companies would show a similar pattern.

OK, pretty much as I suspected. Is that net or gross?

[DenysW]

55 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

That's a very complicated question.

Complete agreement. For non-minerals the BoT published some schedules of maximum rates (National Archives reference RAIL 1053/192) under the headings shown below.  Note the numbers of pages required for each class of merchandise. Minerals do not seem to have been regulated, and the spat between the MS&L, the GN, and the Midland in 1870 is informative on this. It also implies that the collieries may have had a stronger position than the producers of general merchandise.

 

I also add an early LYR account that gives some average numbers.

 

 

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

Was coal always included within 'Minerals' in that time period?  The GER accounts for year ending 1913 lists 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' separately from 'Other Minerals'.  Since the GER wasn't a mineral railway I'm assuming that was a national reporting change circa 1911?

 

Railway Companies (Accounts and Returns) Act, 1911, the provisions of which first affected reporting for the calendar year 1913. Changes included a move from half-yearly to yearly publication of accounts and reporting to shareholder's meetings and a more detailed statistical section in the report - for the bit I'm interested in, quantities of rolling stock, this included enumerating the total seating capacity of carriages, by class, as well as the number of vehicles, and for goods stock, listing service wagons separately. For traffic, the bit that sticks in my mind is the change from just listing total revenue from livestock traffic to enumerating the number of journeys made by type - cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, and the intriguing "miscellaneous". 

 

Generally 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' was the dominant category, 'Other Minerals' generating less revenue - that category will have included all non-fuel minerals, e.g. stone traffic. Prior to 1913, all this was just reported as 'minerals'.

 

The GER was a mineral railway in quite a big way, thanks to the connection with the LNWR and Midland at Peterborough and later, the GN&GE Joint Line.

[Dungrange]

9 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

OK, pretty much as I suspected. Is that net or gross?

 

These figures were taken from Table XIV in the Statistical Returns, which doesn't specifically state whether they are net or gross figures, but the figures in the same table for total Receipts for the year match the figures in Table 10 of the Accounts, which are titled 'Receipts and Expenditure in Resect of Railway Working.'  The column in this table explicitly states Gross Receipts.   However, it is worth pointing out that in this table, whilst there is only one figure for each of 'Livestock', 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' and 'Other Minerals' the figure for Merchandise is stated before and after Collection and Delivery Expenses and it's the after figure that falls into the Statistical Returns.  As such, I'd say that the Coal and Mineral figures are Gross, but the Merchandise figure is net of collection and delivery expenses.  The net figures after allowing for Maintenance, Locomotive running expenses etc would be much lower across the board.

[DenysW]

25 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

I would assume the rates for other companies would show a similar pattern.

I've not looked at the GER, but overall each company was different, and also changed in different ways across the pre-Grouping period. You wouldn't have predicted from the early MS&L that it was going to be a coal-moving company as its largest business. As a generality the Northern companies had more freight and less passenger traffic, and the GER could be put in either.

 

The dominant mineral was coal. Other than that it varies from company to company as to what they reported (prior to 1868). The MS&L reported only coal and stone, for instance, but the Midland was just 'Minerals'.

[Dungrange]

11 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I also add an early LYR account that gives some average numbers.

 

 

Thanks - that's really interesting to see.  In 1852, Merchandise was being moved an average of 32 miles and Minerals just 14 1/2 miles.  That really highlights how 'local' traffic movement was at that time.  However, even just comparing 1851 to 1852, there has been an increase in the average trip length.  It would be interesting to see how this changed over a longer time period.  Even if the average trip length increased by just 1/4 mile each year (as above), that would be equivalent to 2.5 miles per decade and therefore about 15 extra miles by the start of the Great War.  Of course it's not robust to draw long term conclusions from just two data points.

 

20 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The GER was a mineral railway in quite a big way, thanks to the connection with the LNWR and Midland at Peterborough and later, the GN&GE Joint Line.

 

Well, there was quite a significant tonnage conveyed, but it didn't account for a significant proportion of the GER's Gross Receipts, which for 1913 were given as:

 

Passengers                                  - £2,805,502 17s 10d

Passenger rated Merchandise - £   433,532 14s   8d

Goods rated Merchandise        - £1,563,069   3s   0d

Livestock                                      - £     92,081   0s   0d

Coal etc                                        - £   772,266   6s   1d

Other Minerals                           - £   275,756 11s   2d

Total                                             - £5,942,208 13s   9d

 

That means that coal and other minerals accounted for just 17.6% of receipts, which is at the lower end of the sample of companies that @DenysW posted graphs for.

[DenysW]

1 hour ago, Dungrange said:

Looking at the GER accounts for 1913, the average receipt per ton was 5s 5.6d for General Merchandise, 3s 0.5d for Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel and 2s 3.2d for Other Minerals

You've got to be paranoid when looking at revenue/ton (and, for that matter, revenue/passenger-journey). Several companies changed their definition in 1902/3 for their reports to the BoT of tonnage, but not of revenue. So the revenue/ton dramatically changes. The GCR changed in 1901/2, and the LYR, GWR, and LNWR (only the last shown) didn't over the short period I've so far looked at.  Revenue/passenger-journey risks being dominated by the growth and collapse of (especially London) commuter services. You can see a blip in LNWR's overall numbers per passenger when it absorbed the Hampstead Junction Railway, but not in its overall revenue.

 

 

[DenysW]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Railway Companies (Accounts and Returns) Act, 1911, the provisions of which first affected reporting for the calendar year 1913.

Another requirement was to include a system map. I apologise for going a bit off-topic, but it was the GCR's map that gave me the clearest idea of just how risky their London Extension was. There just doesn't look to be enough of the GCR to support a mainline to London. I've included the equivalent LYR map for comparison as another regional railway (viewed in say, 1880).

[Dungrange]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

You've got to be paranoid when looking at revenue/ton (and, for that matter, revenue/passenger-journey). Several companies changed their definition in 1902/3 for their reports to the BoT of tonnage, but not of revenue. So the revenue/ton dramatically changes. The GCR changed in 1901/2, and the LYR, GWR, and LNWR (only the last shown) didn't over the short period I've so far looked at.  Revenue/passenger-journey risks being dominated by the growth and collapse of (especially London) commuter services. You can see a blip in LNWR's overall numbers per passenger when it absorbed the Hampstead Junction Railway, but not in its overall revenue.

 

 

 

In the case of the Midland, Great Northern and Great Eastern, that change that you refer to seems to have resulted in drop in Merchandise and an increase in Mineral traffic of a similar order of magnitude, which would imply that one or more commodities that were once categorised as Merchandise were subsequently considered to be Mineral traffic.  Given that all the companies were making this change at the same time, I'd have assumed that this an instruction passed down from above by the Board of Trade.  I don't suppose you now what that traffic was?  It was obviously something that the Midland conveyed lots of, the GNR and GER less so and wasn't a significant flow in some parts of the country.

[DenysW]

14 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

once categorised as Merchandise were subsequently considered to be Mineral traffic.

That's what I conclude. The only thing I can think of is that coal to retail coal merchants was 'merchandise' and that coal to industrial users was 'minerals' until a change in categorisation. This would explain the lack of change in revenue if all coal movements were accounted together, both before and after, industry-wide.

 

16 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

Given that all the companies were making this change at the same time,

I draw the opposite conclusion this time, that some were changing and some either weren't or didn't need to. I'm scarred on this by the miles quoted as 'part-owned' in the same accounts. The Great Northern was explicit that the reason for an apparent halving in part-owned trackmiles in 1880 was due to its changing the basis by factoring-in the degree of ownership. The Midland showed an even more dramatic reduction, but without comment and  in 1905/1906. The Midland also quoted some Guaranteed Share payments as line rentals until it messed around generally with its shares following its 1897 Act. Burying Hudson's bad decisions in the small-print: deceptive but not dishonest or fraudulent.

 

There was also discussion in the BoT reports on what was meant by a season ticket, for which only numbers and revenue were ever reported. I believe from this there was a change in the 1870s to normalise all of the data to annual-equivalent, so that the numbers would not simply reflect how many workmans weekly seasons were issued. There's also discussion in Bradshaw's Shareholders Guides warning the readers not to infer too much from the national numbers for travellers per class, stating that the definitions could arbitrarily change on some of the low-fare/high-volume commuter railways, and that this was enough to distort the numbers presented. In support of this I give you the North London Railway, which in 1855-1900 carried as many passengers as the Midland, but much less distance. Here Premium is first or second (plus seasons) compared to total revenue.

 

Modern standards of consistency were not achieved across the companies accounts, I fear.

 

[DenysW]

2 hours ago, Dungrange said:

Of course it's not robust to draw long term conclusions from just two data points.

 

Mostly I believe things were fairly static from 1850-1900, then efficiency pressures as the railways got less profitable improved things in terms of goods marshalling, and - probably in some companies only - the introduction of more powerful goods locomotives. With apologies about changing companies for the graphs, the one in train-miles, the other in passengers and tons,  it's just what I have pre-cooked. Other companies (especially the North Eastern and the L&Y) were much better than the Midland at improving their revenue per goods-trainmile and started earlier. Several other companies showed a similar passenger-revenue profile to the Midland's in the 1870s, so it was not down to the 1875 abolition of 2nd class.

 

 

 

[Dungrange]

On 31/10/2020 at 22:09, Compound2632 said:

Item Number: 14263

Category: Goods Department Document

A complete bundle of 56 goods invoices covering the inwards traffic at Edwalton for the month of November 1912. It is possible to glean from this archive a very good picture of the type of goods traffic dealt with at a typical country wayside station before the first world war.

 

 

Item Number: 14264

Category: Goods Department Document

A complete bundle of 67 goods invoices covering both inwards and outwards traffic at Edwalton for the month of February 1921. It is possible to glean from this archive a very good picture of the type of goods traffic dealt with at a typical country wayside station towards the end of the pre-grouping era.

 

You highlighted these during one of the lockdown periods.  Did you ever visit the Midland Railway Study Centre to look at these items?  Obviously these are pre- and post-pooling but they may be a useful comparison of change over a nine year period.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, Dungrange said:

You highlighted these during one of the lockdown periods.  Did you ever visit the Midland Railway Study Centre to look at these items?  Obviously these are pre- and post-pooling but they may be a useful comparison of change over a nine year period.

 

Not for these items. But thank you for reminding me of them. As the Silk Mill is shortly to re-open after the Storm Babet flooding, I should plan to get some visits in.