Heating in coaches at 1860's?

[Petri Sallinen]

In our UK made coaches at 1860´'s was the heating system that based on metalboxes full of hot sand or hot water (only in the first class). In walls were small hatches and openings so you were able to change new hot boxes when the train was at station, please look at the picture. We do not know if this system was UK made or maybe Finns build this after coaches were arrived from Birmingham to Helsinki in the year 1862. Did you have this kind of heating system in UK in any coaches?

 

Petri Salllinen

Helsinki, Finland

 

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by Petri Sallinen

[Kris]

Foot warmers or hot water bottles could be provided.

[Paul H Vigor]

6 minutes ago, Petri Sallinen said:

In our UK made coaches at 1860´'s was the heating system that based on metalboxes full of hot sand or hot water (only in the first class). In walls were small hatches and openings so you were able to change new hot boxes when the train was at station, please look at the picture. We do not know if this system was UK made or maybe Finns build this after coaches were arrived from Birmingham to Helsinki in the year 1862. Did you have this kind of heating system in UK in any coaches?

 

Petri Salllinen

Helsinki, Finland

 

 

In the UK I believe early railway passengers had to make do with ceramic hot water bottles and blankets that were available to hire at stations?

 

"Tubular metal 'foot warmers' were a feature of railway travel from the later nineteenth century up to the 1920's. These used a chemical reaction to generate heat and were activated by a railway porter shaking them vigorously (reputedly the origin of the term 'breaking the ice' as it disrupted the compartment enough for the reserved British passengers to start talking to each other). They remained in use on the Isle of Man into the 1940's. The first properly heated coached in Britain were the Pullman coaches bought by the Midland Railway in the 1870's but the idea did not catch on for some years. Steam heating of passenger rolling stock supplied by the locomotive was patented in the 1850's but only appeared on British built coaches in the 1880's (after some unsuccessful experiments using hot water supplied from the engine). Steam heat was not used for goods stock until the advent of the specialised Banana Van and some Fruit vans in the early twentieth century."

[Nearholmer]

Yes, very similar systems in Britain, although I’m not sure I’ve heard of hatches especially for exchanging them.

[Bucoops]

I'm only aware of individual ones that were placed beneath the user's seat/feet rather than compartment width ones like you have pictured.  However, as you suspect, it may be that due to the colder weather, coaches destined for Finland may have had something more effective fitted either when built or retrofitted on site.

[TheSignalEngineer]

I remember on old plans of New Street there was a room marked 'Footwarmers'.

Edited April 10, 2022 by TheSignalEngineer

[Paul H Vigor]

1 hour ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

I remember on old plans of New Street there was a room marked 'Footwarmers'.

London passengers, on winter northbound trains, probably required a fresh footwarmer at New Street?

[LMS2968]

13 hours ago, Paul H Vigor said:

London passengers, on winter northbound trains, probably required a fresh footwarmer at New Street?

Or Rugby?

[C126]

May I just alert readers to the Victorian institution of the 'railway rug' (entry from Oxford English Dictionary on-line):

 

railway rug
n. now chiefly historical a rug or blanket designed for use by a railway passenger.

1850   Times 21 Dec. (Suppl. section) 11/5 (advt.)    A great comfort is now provided in Nicoll's toga wrapper. It is a novel adaptation of the old railway rug.
...

 

I believe they were provided by the railway companies, although there is a scene in an episode of the Jeremy Brett 'Sherlock Holmes' television series where he has one draped rakishly over a shoulder on the station platform.  I recommend them over the knees for winter travelling, even in modern trains.

Edited February 14, 2022 by C126
Grammar and clarity.

[woodenhead]

I was did an overnight service from Manchester to London in the early 1980s, it wasn't a sleeper, used Mk2a stock with central doors and went all the around the houses taking 4 hours to arrive at Euston.  It was freezing though it wasn't winter and with no heating or lighting for that matter I got a taste of perhaps how it felt to travel a long distance on those early trains.

 

[Michael Hodgson]

 

In the 1860s the railways' competition was still the stage coach, and heating would have been viewed very much as a luxury that only applied to the upper classes - even I remember cars being sold with heaters being an optional extra.

So even for the nobs, keeping warm would mean a greatcoat (or furs for the ladies), reinforced by copious quantities of ardent spitirts consumed by an open fire at every inn where they had to stop to change horses and refuel the coachman.

Sanitation would also be rather basic.

 

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I was did an overnight service from Manchester to London in the early 1980s, it wasn't a sleeper, used Mk2a stock with central doors and went all the around the houses taking 4 hours to arrive at Euston.  It was freezing though it wasn't winter and with no heating or lighting for that matter I got a taste of perhaps how it felt to travel a long distance on those early trains.

 

 

I remember travelling back from Edinburgh Waverley to Newcastle in Mark I stock one February in the late 60s.  As daylight started to go I asked the Guard to switch on the lights but the battery & dynamo needed attention, and he said there's a few seats in the next coach and the lights are working but its heating isn't.  I stayed where I was.

[The Analyst]

On 13/02/2022 at 20:59, Bucoops said:

I'm only aware of individual ones that were placed beneath the user's seat/feet rather than compartment width ones like you have pictured. 

The heating boxes of the first Finnish coaches were not compartment wide. They were inserted thru hatches on both sides of the coach. The actual measures of the boxes were 105.70 *  21.00 * 10.30 cm. 
The boxes were inserted under the seats.

[Forward!]

Interesting arrangement. Do you know which company manufactured the carriages? I don't want to introduce something potentially misleading, but when I saw the photograph the style of the carriage panelling immediately made me think it looked very similar to Scottish practice of the time. But that's only supposition on my part. I had a quick look in my references for Caledonian Railway carriage design, but couldn't see anything similar. 

 

Will

Edited February 16, 2022 by Forward!

[Petri Sallinen]

2 hours ago, Forward! said:

Interesting arrangement. Do you know which company manufactured the carriages?  

 

Will

 

Yes, I know. It was Brown, Marshals & Co Ltd — later Metropolitan Cammel.

 

Petri

[Forward!]

45 minutes ago, Petri Sallinen said:

 

Yes, I know. It was Brown, Marshals & Co Ltd — later Metropolitan Cammel.

 

Petri

 

I guess the answer might be in here somewhere then!

 

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50139/explore_and_discover/1628/metro-cammell_collection

 

Will

[Flying Pig]

On 14/02/2022 at 09:58, woodenhead said:

I was did an overnight service from Manchester to London in the early 1980s, it wasn't a sleeper, used Mk2a stock with central doors and went all the around the houses taking 4 hours to arrive at Euston.  It was freezing though it wasn't winter and with no heating or lighting for that matter I got a taste of perhaps how it felt to travel a long distance on those early trains.

 

 

I had a journey from Leicester to St Pancras on a winter Sunday evening in about 1986, with an unheated scratch set running via Manton replacing the expected HST.  It was astonishingly cold and despite being dressed for normal winter travel I was soon frozen through (probably numerous open windows adding to the chill).  I believe the loco was a Peak but was too cold to really care at the time.

 

What it was like in an early unenclosed third class wagon or ouside on a stagecoach doesn't bear thinking about and of course people were known to freeze to death on such journeys.

[The Analyst]

5 hours ago, Forward! said:

Interesting arrangement. Do you know which company manufactured the carriages? I

The coach in the photo is not in its original form. The body is here moved on a longer, iron frame, and lengthened with the 2 rightmost windows. Originally it was a regular side door arrangement with 4 compartments. - A typical Brown, Marshalls & Co coach.
The 1st class compartments were in the middle of the coach, with heatingbox hatches opening to under the seats.

[The Analyst]

To clarify the original question, I made this picture. The base drawing represents a composite 2nd & 3rd class Brown, Marshalls & Co coach, which was pretty similar to a composite 1st & 2nd class coach, but without heating. The red squares repreprent the locations where the heatingbox hatches were in a composite 1st & 2nd class coach.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by The Analyst

[billbedford]

On 13/02/2022 at 17:40, Petri Sallinen said:

We do not know if this system was UK made or maybe Finns build this after coaches were arrived from Birmingham to Helsinki in the year 1862. Did you have this kind of heating system in UK in any coaches?

 

 

I've only ever heard on one coach with a similar system, and that was a saloon bought by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway from an exhibition in Austria in the 1860s. This coach was built of iron and had 'pots' bolted to the solebars, which may have been charcoal burners rather than sand boxes. 

[The Analyst]

The hot-water-box heating was used already in 1858 in the Royal Train of the Kaiserin Elisabeth-Bahn, KEB (Empress Elisabeth Railway) in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The heating boxes were located under the seats. They had to be changed every 4 hours. The system was used till 1871.
This information is found in the booklet 'Der Hofsalonwagen der Kaiserin Elisabeth', 2002.

 

As the Finnish railway pioneers were activly searching for solutions for the future rolling stock, they most probably were aware of the heating box systen, and included it in the specifications for the composite 1st & 2nd class coaches.  - For now this is speculation, as I have not found the specifications. But other known specifications show very detailed instructions for rolling stock; determining even what type of screws had to be used.  

[KingEdwardII]

There is some more detail provided in the paper from 1985 found here:

 

http://www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/comfort/comfort1.pdf

 

To me, it is amazing at just how long it all took, when the need was understood from the early days. The real surprise is that they didn't even solve the problem effectively for First Class passengers - you'd have thought that attracting more of those high-fare-paying folk would have spurred things on (I can well understand the neglect of Third Class). 

 

Yours,  Mike.

[The Analyst]

Also charcoal bricks have been used as heating material for heating boxes under the seats.
Hammer G. (1908) Heizung und Lüftung der Wagen. In: von Stockert L.R. (eds) Fahrbetriebsmittel. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-34001-1_14:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-34001-1_14?noAccess=true

With compressed coal heating, individual compartments were heated with heater boxes, located under the seats and operated from the outside through small doors in the long sides. As fuel pressed charcoal bricks were used, made of powdered charcoal, nitrate of potash  and starch as binder. The bricks were burned in boxes of perforated sheet metal or wire mesh. 

 

The heater boxes were usually under the seats. In compartment cars they usually ran the full length of the compartment and could be served from either side; in through cars they were about the length of the longest bench seat.

Edited February 19, 2022 by The Analyst

[The Analyst]

20 hours ago, The Analyst said:

Also charcoal bricks have been used as heating material for heating boxes under the seats.

I wonder if this charcoal burning under-the-seats heater system was the one developed by Alwin Nieske of Dresden.
He developed a chracoal brick burning stove, which didn't produce smoke, but only carbon dioxide, as he stated. Actually the stove produced also carbon monoxide, which lead even to fatalities.
Nieske's firm produced i.a. heaters for railway coaches.

[The Analyst]

Sandbox heating was used also in Sweden, but later than in Finland. Instead of boxes they used cyliders.

 

The history of Swedish State Railways:
http://runeberg.org/sj50/3/0217.html

 

"Already in 1864, attempts were made to heat up some passenger cars in the express trains, and the following year, heating of all 1st class compartments was introduced in these trains. Passengers in the other carriage classes as well as in trains other than express trains still got for quite a long time time to renounce this advantage. The restriction to only the most expensive wagon class was based on the cumbersome and costly manner in which the heating was effected at that time.

The first system for train heating used by the state railways consisted of loose heating cylinders made of sheet metal, which were filled with heated sand and which were inserted through a hatch in the carriage wall under the sofas in the compartments. It is clear that this system would suffer from a lot of shortcomings. So, of course, it was impossible to maintain a reasonably even temperature in the compartments, for from being high, as long as the sand cylinders were still hot, it sank as far as they cooled. Admittedly, a control device consisting of a pair of openings and sliding dampers is used sheet metal sheaths, in which the hot sand cylinders were inserted, but the possibility of regulation was in any case very incomplete. The heating also depended on whether hot sand cylinders could be obtained, which was impossible in many cases when heat had been more desirable than usual, such as when the trains were delayed or even stuck in snow drifts. Furnaces were required to heat the sand, and as early as 1865 there were such built at the stations in Stockholm, Katrineholm, Örebro, Falköping, Gothenburg, Jönköping, Alfvesta and Malmö."

 

Later on the heating system was introduced even in lower classes. At least on the Nora-Karlskoga railway:

 

A 3rd class coach of the Nora-Karlskoga railway in 1872, with heating cylinder hatches.

https://www.jarnvag.net/vagnguide/historia-vagnar

Edited February 20, 2022 by The Analyst