Pre-nationalisation PO wagons seen on the Scarborough & Whitby line - information gratefully received

[russ p]

13 hours ago, MarkC said:

Indeed so - and when I put my Scalby layout back together, hopefully soon, the very first train to run is planned to be a model of this working 

 

Mark

 

I'm looking to model this loco, green with yellow buffer beams and rods, quite rare. It also used to belong to a friend and I've actually driven it but is in poor condition and likely to be broken up unfortunately.  Its actually less than half a mile from my house

[MarkC]

11 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

From the Whitby Gazette of 16 February 1912 (couldn't find any adverts like this post-WW1)

Tom, you're a star! Thank you very much indeed. @andyjoneszz - it's time to look these up, particularly the Yorkshire ones  

 

Some wonderful names there 

 

Mark

[MarkC]

35 minutes ago, russ p said:

 

I'm looking to model this loco, green with yellow buffer beams and rods, quite rare. It also used to belong to a friend and I've actually driven it but is in poor condition and likely to be broken up unfortunately.  Its actually less than half a mile from my house

Such a shame, particularly as it was a runner 

[Mol_PMB]

11 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

From the Whitby Gazette of 16 February 1912 (couldn't find any adverts like this post-WW1)

 

Both Fryston and New Silkstone were merged into Airedale Collieries Ltd in 1919. In my (incomplete) collection of Private Owner wagons books I have several photos of both Fryston and Airedale wagons with a variety of painting styles. They were based around Castleford so not too distant.

Waterloo was also in the Leeds area and again I have some photos of their wagons in my library.

The Durham coal would more likely have come in NER wagons.

Possibly worth a closer look through this for the other collieries:

https://lightmoor.co.uk/BDLpdf_files/Private_Owner_Wagons_Index.pdf

 

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

 

Both Fryston and New Silkstone were merged into Airedale Collieries Ltd in 1919. In my (incomplete) collection of Private Owner wagons books I have several photos of both Fryston and Airedale wagons with a variety of painting styles. They were based around Castleford so not too distant.

Waterloo was also in the Leeds area and again I have some photos of their wagons in my library.

The Durham coal would more likely have come in NER wagons.

Possibly worth a closer look through this for the other collieries:

https://lightmoor.co.uk/BDLpdf_files/Private_Owner_Wagons_Index.pdf

 

Thanks again. Yes, agreed, the Durham traffic would almost certainly carried in NER wagons.

 

Whitby traffic from the Leeds area would probably have come via Pickering; coast line traffic I would suspect that it would go to Gallows Close, then be tripped up the S&W.

 

Cheers

Mark

Edited February 12, 2022 by MarkC
'orrible grammar...

[doilum]

That is a good selection from what would become area 8.

Waterloo was on the eastern edge of Leeds on the Temple Newdam estate. It connected back into the city. Newmarket was the southern most  of the Charlesworth pits with connections to the Methley Joint and the E&W Y U Rly. Peckfield was about three miles north of Castleford on the Leeds Selby line and had its own distinctive grey livery with several versions covered by POWSIDES. It would be interesting to discover how this merchant sourced his coal . The options being: own wagons, colliery wagons or NE rly wagons.

[doilum]

Whilst several of the area 8 collieries wneht into the Silkstone seam, the New Silkstone mentioned in the advert is more likely to be the Hoyland NS just north of Barnsley. Not sure if this is H&B territory. POWSIDES do an Old Silkstone from Dodworth

As an aside I found a candid ( as opposed to a carefully posed publicity shot,) photo of the screens at Glasshoughton. In pretty much equal numbers were wagons from GH, Pontefract Cols, private owners and the NE.

Edited February 12, 2022 by doilum
Additional information

[russ p]

10 hours ago, MarkC said:

Such a shame, particularly as it was a runner 

 

It has scrap tyres and a very worn power unit. I have bought an 03 today to convert to 2051 

[andyjoneszz]

7 hours ago, doilum said:

...own wagons, colliery wagons or NE rly wagons.

At a rough guess, the Durham coal would all come to Whitby in NER hoppers, and the Yorkshire stuff mostly in PO wagons, with perhaps some in railway-owned minerals depending on the colliery.

 

As for the S&W coast line and its coal deliveries, the old 1:2500 maps don't seem to show coal drops as such -- Robin Hoods Bay has a Coal Depôt, sure enough, but the 1910 & 1926 maps show a couple of plain sidings, at a slightly lower level than the running line, with no indication of a structure that might be drops.  This is perplexing, as steel hoppers keep showing up in photos of pick-up goods from the 1950s & 60s!  So clearly I'm missing something somewhere.  :-D  Anyone know of any evidence of coal drops anywhere on the line?  I know someone mentioned some at RHB further up the thread, so I'd be delighted to be put straight.

[Mol_PMB]

My impression of that map extract is that the area around the coal depot is anything but flat - there are a lot of levels going on. I thought it looked like the longer siding might be elevated and end in drops, but looking again I’m not so sure. 

The photos of RHB on britainfromabove do not include the station, sadly. 

[andyjoneszz]

Definitely not flat, as you say, Mol.  Google street view shows a slight slope up on the driveway from the road, and a maybe 4' high retaining wall to what's now a car park where the Coal Depôt lettering is.  On the far side of that there's a similar height of grassy embankment up to the trackbed.  But where the sidings end there's just a steepish grassy slope down to the road under the bridge, and no sign of any access for carts ever having been there.  There'd have been space to put the more southerly siding up on a ramp, with drops with cart access from below and to the side as the NER did in Co. Durham here and there, but no sign of anything like that on the map, and no apparent evidence on the ground nowadays of such a thing ever having been there.  :-(

 

Am thoroughly mystified!  :-D

Edited February 12, 2022 by andyjoneszz
Spleling.

[MarkC]

OK, the issue about the sidings relative to the running line is actually straightforward - they're actually level; it's the running line that's on a gradient. There was quite a climb from here up towards Hawsker.

 

It was the same at Ravenscar - the running line was climbing up from the tunnel, almost to the platform end, but the sidings were, again, level.

[MarkC]

10 hours ago, russ p said:

 

It has scrap tyres and a very worn power unit. I have bought an 03 today to convert to 2051 

Neither reason would be a show stopper, apart from money, of course, but in the grand scheme of things, other than hauling the "Scrappie special" she's not a celebrity loco. C'est la vie.

 

Enjoy your fettling of the model 

 

Mark

[MarcD]

PO wagons on NER metals were not as uncommon as people might think. Yes the NER northern and central divisions did discourage PO wagon and this was helped by making, in most cases, the station master the sole coal agent for the station. But on the southern division due to the competition this wasn't the case.

Also companies got round the NER's policy by registering their wagons with other railway companies. So wagons built in Scotland ended up being registered with a Scottish company and for example those built by Burnett's in Doncaster to the GNR. Thus even though these wagons were painted East Wallbottle Newcastle they done appear in the NER register. 

Marc

[RichardT]

6 hours ago, MarkC said:

OK, the issue about the sidings relative to the running line is actually straightforward - they're actually level;

As far as the coal depot is concerned the issue isn’t so much the level of the sidings relative to the running line, but the level of the sidings relative to the surrounding access roads.  As Andyjoneszz above says, the slope of the ground down from the sidings labelled “coal depot” looks sufficient for the NER to have inserted drops to take advantage of the lie of the land so the coal siding could be level - as they did elsewhere (e.g. Goathland). The OS were inconsistent in showing all railway structures: sometimes they cross-hatched coal drops but sometimes not. I have seen two consecutive 1:2500 maps of Brampton, the first showing the coal drops cross-hatched, the second just a plain rectangle. Certainly the eye of faith indicates that the end of the longer siding could be on a set of narrow coal cells, and there otherwise doesn’t seem to be much unloading room on those sidings for coal, but Andy says there’s no evidence on the ground! 
 

We’re overdue a visit to friends at RHB…

Richard T

[RichardT]

Aha! More information found in good old-fashioned books. Detailed post to follow when I’ve had my Sunday dinner!  Spoiler - there weren’t coal drops at RHB…

 

RichardT

[RichardT]

Sorry, follow-up later than planned. Sunday dinner + couple of glasses of red = need to rest my eyes…

 

I’m as bad as everyone, assuming that the first port of call for railway history questions *must* be “somewhere on the web”, when in fact the web contains only a fraction of human knowledge. But after my last post I remembered that I do also have a room full of railway history books…

 

I’ve listed my four main sources below - all out of print I suspect, but Bookfinder.com will be your friend there.

 

Photographers really didn’t seem to want to take photos of the S&WR goods yards! I got excited by this image on p.49 of Bairstow volume one, where I wondered if I could see a faint NER coal/lime cell housing (like Goathland) in the distance beyond the DMU?

 

But no, it’s the weighbridge hut, as is revealed by a track plan on p.52 of the same book (noted as “sketch from plan dated 6 April 1960):

 

Detail:

 

The long siding ends in a loading dock, and the shorter siding seems to be simply a ground-level coal siding - no drops.  There’s a similar sketched track plan in Lidster’s first book, this one labelling the dock as a “cattle” dock. Both are right: the NER favoured using portable hurdles on multi-purpose docks for livestock loading, rather than building single-purpose cattle docks. 

 

Checking the track plans in both of Lidster’s books reveals that none of the S&WR wayside stations thus described had coal drops - just ground-level sidings. So, I suspect the domestic coal traffic was handled in the same way as at Sleights on the Esk Valley line, as in this photo from Bairstow volume two, p.14

Which implies traditional side door mineral wagons - NE & therefore possibly PO also if the coal came from the West Riding via Scarborough . Hoppers?  No idea, but in extremis they *could*, I suppose, be emptied direct onto the track and shovelled out. But unlikely I think.

 

So, nothing definitive on the PO wagons but definitely no coal drops, so probably no big ex-NER hoppers. Hope this is of some interest.

 

Incidentally, the Lidster books have several well drawn track plans and scale drawings of station buildings - well worth acquiring.  The first also has this interesting shot of the Ravenscar brickworks in the old alum workings, complete with private siding:

 

Richard

 

Bibliography:

“Railways Around Whitby” (2 vols) by Martin Bairstow. Volume one ISBN 1 871944 17 1; volume two ISBN 1 871944 13 9

“The Scarborough and Whitby Railway” by J Robin Lidster. ISBN 0 86067 016 3

“The Scarborough and Whitby Railway - A Centenary Volume” by J Robin Lidster. ISBN 0 86067 097 X

Edited February 13, 2022 by RichardT
Lots of typos…

[MarkC]

3 minutes ago, RichardT said:

Sorry, follow-up later than planned. Sunday dinner + couple of glasses of red = need to rest my eyes…

 

I’m as bad as everyone, assuming that the first port of call for railway history questions *must* be “somewhere on the web”, when in fact the web contains only a fraction of human knowledge. But after my last post I remembered that I do also have a room full of railway history books…

 

I’ve listed my four main sources below - all out of print I suspect, but Bookfinder.com will be your friend there.

 

Photographers really didn’t seem to  want to take photos of and of the S&WR goods yards! I got excited by this image on p.49 of Bairstow volume one, where I wondered if I could see a faint NER coal/lime cell housing (like Goathland) in the distance beyond the DMU?

 

But no, it’s the weighbridge hut, as all is revealed by a track plan on p.52 (noted as “sketch from plan dated 6 April 1960):

 

Detail:

 

The long siding ends in a loading dock, and the shorter siding seems to is simply a ground-level coal siding - no drops.  There’s a similar sketched track plan in Lidster’s first book, this one labelling the dock as a “cattle” dock. Both are right: the. NER favoured using portable hurdles on multi-purpose docks for livestock loading, rather than building single-purpose cattle docks. 

 

Checking the track plans in both of Lidster’s books reveals that none of the S&WR wayside stations thus described had coal drops - just ground-level sidings. So, I suspect the domestic coal traffic was handled in the same was as at Sleights on the Esk Valley line, as in this photo from Bairstow volume two, p.14

Which implies traditional side door mineral wagons - NE & therefore possibly PO also if the coal came from the West Riding via Scarborough . Hoppers?  No idea, but in extremis they *could*, I suppose, be emptied direct onto the track and shovelled out. But unlikely I think.

 

So, nothing definitive on the PO wagons but definitely no coal drops, so probably no big ex-NER hoppers. Hope this is of some interest.

 

Incidentally, the Lidster books have several well drawn track plans and scale drawings of station buildings - well worth acquiring.  The first also has this interesting shot of the Ravenscar brickworks in the old alum workings, complete with private siding:

 

Richard

 

Bibliography:

“Railways Around Whitby” (2 vols) by Martin Bairstow. Volume one ISBN 1 871944 17 1; volume two ISBN 1 871944 13 9

“The Scarborough and Whitby Railway” by J Robin Lidster. ISBN 0 86067 016 3

“The Scarborough and Whitby Railway - A Centenary Volume” by J Robin Lidster. ISBN 0 86067 097 X

Great post, Richard. Thank you. Some good gen there.

 

I've got those books - but they're at home, not with me on board my ship!

 

The more we dig into what went on back then, the more interesting little snippets of info seem to turn up.

 

I do hope that others find these threads interesting.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[RichardT]

Sorry Mark - telling you stuff you already know!

 

But yes, hopefully of wider interest.

 

Richard

[MarkC]

58 minutes ago, RichardT said:

Sorry Mark - telling you stuff you already know!

 

But yes, hopefully of wider interest.

 

Richard

I certainly don't profess to know everything, Richard  - but thanks again for putting some meat on the bones of discussions there. It was all certainly a different way of life back then, yet it still holds a certain fascination for many.

 

Cheers

Mark

 

 

[Compound2632]

A good source of basic information on collieries is the Durham Mining Museum website.

[russ p]

The last train has made a detour to rural North Norfolk,  those scrap men are obviously looking for quite a lot of scrap

I bought an 03 at Doncaster on Saturday so got busy last  night 

 

 

[Lord Flashheart]

8 hours ago, russ p said:

The last train has made a detour to rural North Norfolk,  those scrap men are obviously looking for quite a lot of scrap

I bought an 03 at Doncaster on Saturday so got busy last  night 

 

 

Very nice Russ,I'm about to start doing  D2151 in green,our club, Hessle MRG ,is starting on doing RHB in o gauge ,some very useful photos in this thread.

 

Rob 

[MarkC]

10 hours ago, Lord Flashheart said:

Very nice Russ,I'm about to start doing  D2151 in green,our club, Hessle MRG ,is starting on doing RHB in o gauge ,some very useful photos in this thread.

 

Rob 

Sounds good, Rob. RHB is a nice station to model. There's a FB Group for the S&W too - lots more photos & info there.

[russ p]

Were those scenic specials not long before closure hauled by 40s the only mainline diesels to work over the line? I've seen pictures of the pick up hauled by 03s was wondering if this ever got a mainline loco 

Edited February 15, 2022 by russ p
spelling