Private Owner wagons

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, divibandit said:

Am I right in thinking that while milk tanks could be attached to passenger trains, box vans would have to run in goods trains? 

 

By learned friend has passed on the box van. The answer to that part of the question is: it depends on the box van. Those meeting certain conditions could. From roughly speaking the 1890s, vans could run in passenger trains if they were equipped with automatic brakes (vacuum or Westinghouse according to the owning company's preference) or at least a through brake pipe. Later on there were additional constraints - at least 10 ft wheelbase, for instance. (As this is after my period of interest I'm hazy on dates and details, I'm afraid.) 

 

Private owner vans were a rarity at any period - there were a handful belonging to breweries in the South East, possibly for yeast - this seems to be unclear. Your van looks to me to be inspired by a few examples of railway-company owned vans painted up fror a particular customer - the best known (and possibly only real examples) being those painted up for Express Dairy Co. egg traffic:

 

 

[Embedded link.]

 

This is a Southern Railway 12 ton van, like yours. There was also an LMS (ex-L&Y) one branded "from Westmorland Farms". Note that it has vacuum brakes and is marked XP WB 10' 0" - so it is fit for running in passenger trains. Although such markings have been omitted from your model, and I don't think the underframe molding has a vacuum cylinder, i think one can conclude that the general intention is that it's supposed to be a fitted van.

 

As @Nearholmer says, it's a work of fiction, done as a fundraiser for the Bluebell Railway, I presume. No harm in that.

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

Well, let's HOPE the Bluebell gets some benefit from them.

[doilum]

I can't remember the exact numbers, but a while ago I answered a similar question about PO vans. Having spent an enjoyable afternoon trawling through all four of the Bill Hudson volumes and the Powsides catalogue was still in very small single figures if the specialist salt wagons were excluded.

[41516]

3 minutes ago, doilum said:

I can't remember the exact numbers, but a while ago I answered a similar question about PO vans.

 

 

[Aire Head]

17 hours ago, divibandit said:

Gents,

Thank you for your many and informed responses!

In theory, I could run PO wagons alongside both colliery and Railway company wagons in the same train to the same destination whether or not they started from the same place. 

Am I right in thinking that while milk tanks could be attached to passenger trains, box vans would have to run in goods trains? I'm asking because I bought these today...

Steve

 

The answer is it depends on when you are modelling. It was permissible for a single Unfitted wagon to be attached to the rear of a "local passenger" providing it was marshalled next to the guards vehicle and a screw coupling was used.  This was allowable for a long time and I believe only came to an end in the 1950s.

 

9ft wheelbase piped and fitted vans were allowed in passenger trains during this period also. I am unsure when the requirement for a minimum 10' wheelbase came into effect however it has certain never appeared in any of the pre-nationalisation Rulebooks and Appendices that I personally have studied.

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

The answer is it depends on when you are modelling. It was permissible for a single Unfitted wagon to be attached to the rear of a "local passenger" providing it was marshalled next to the guards vehicle and a screw coupling was used.  This was allowable for a long time and I believe only came to an end in the 1950s.

 

9ft wheelbase piped and fitted vans were allowed in passenger trains during this period also. I am unsure when the requirement for a minimum 10' wheelbase came into effect however it has certain never appeared in any of the pre-nationalisation Rulebooks and Appendices that I personally have studied.

It is quite a complicated story much of which I related here -

 

As far as I could trace - and mentioned there - the ban on freight vehicles NOT marked 'XP'  (which required a minimum wheelbase of 10ft, among other things) being attached to Class B/Class 2 passenger trains could only be reliably dated to 1968.  However individual train restrictions could well have been applied in the WTT and would have banned such vehicles from being attached to individual Class B/Class. 2 trains.

[Morello Cherry]

I know it has been mentioned in passing but for the OP I do think that this would be a good place to start.

 

https://www.bluebell-railway.com/product/private-owner-wagons-of-the-south-east/

 

 

On 02/07/2022 at 23:29, Compound2632 said:

 

The chance survival of these sorts of documents is so rare that one has to make the best one can of them. The point about the effect of the Holroyd family at Sheffield Park house was discussed on the "foreign wagons" thread. One would like to discover a contemporary order book from a local coal merchant to see how it matched up! 

 

The less material you have the more in depth you have to interrogate the material you do have. Something that you might discard as obscure or not worth bothering with if you had lots of material can become a hugely important find.

 

A friend of mine is a medievalist so he is an expert at getting huge mileage out of very little.

 

21 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Funny you should mention old books and butchers in this context, because yesterday I was looking at Victorian and Edwardian photos from the Ashdown Forest area in one of my late father’s books, and one showed ‘The Butchers of Nutley’, a small village not far from Sheffield Park, all six or seven of them lined up outside the slaughterhouse and shop, brandishing the most terrifying collection of long knives I’ve ever seen. They looked like pirates with aprons on!

 

Not people I'd want to get in an argument with.

 

Another example is that I was reading the accident report from Morpeth (I think) and randomly mentioned in it is that the leading vehicle (BG) had a live pig in a crate among the cargo being carried and it makes you think i) where was the pig going? ii) where had the pig come from? iii) why? iv) were live pigs a common or rare freight?

 

But to go back to the comment about the lack of specific material, you can fill in the gaps by simultaneously having a good understanding of the broader processes of goods traffic, and at the same time, a good knowledge of the local area, its industries, geography, geology, social and economic structures can enable you to fill the gaps or to make a reasonable argument for something existing. ie we don't know because we don't have sources whether this happened in place X, but we know it did in place Y and place Y is similar in many other respects, it is likely (but not certain) that it might be reproduced in place X. Of course, there is always the chance that evidence will appear that will prove you wrong.

[Nearholmer]

19 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

A friend of mine is a medievalist so he is an expert at getting huge mileage out of very little.

I’ve always suspected that in that line of work reasoned deduction gradually tails off into wild supposition, and eventually arrives at simply making stuff up, but please don’t tell your friend that.

[doilum]

One thought from a previous discussion: did manufacturing companies buy advertising space on the sides of vans or coal wagons? The one in the above photo seems to have carried genuine brewery raw materials but I recall people suggesting examples of open wagons in the livery of firms that would have used little if any, coal directly.

[corneliuslundie]

I seem to remember some examples of wagons in the livery of an important customer of the wagon owner (a colliery I think), but not actual paid advertising as such.

Jonathan

[bécasse]

The attachment of vans, even marked XP and westinghouse-brake fitted, to Southern electric trains was banned from some date in 1935 - after a 6PAN-6PUL rake from Hastings(Ore) and Eastbourne arrived at Victoria with a horse box attached in the rear, apparently added to the train at Lewes. It had been normal practice until the electrics started running in May 1935, of course, and apparently no one had thought it necessary to actually issue an instruction banning it until it happened.

[Nearholmer]

How was the horse?

 

Practise pre-EMU (did they have their own vans, with a Rod Hull compartment?) would have been to couple such a van directly behind the tender, to minimise rough riding (Ye-haw!).

 

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

How was the horse?

 

Practise pre-EMU (did they have their own vans, with a Rod Hull compartment?) would have been to couple such a van directly behind the tender, to minimise rough riding (Ye-haw!).

 

So how did the Southern fulfill its common carrier obligations in respect of passenger-rated non-passenger traffic - not just horses but also carriage truck traffic, and indeed pigs in crates?

[wagonman]

9 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

The answer is it depends on when you are modelling. It was permissible for a single Unfitted wagon to be attached to the rear of a "local passenger" providing it was marshalled next to the guards vehicle and a screw coupling was used.  This was allowable for a long time and I believe only came to an end in the 1950s.

 

 

Is this what they called a 'swinger'?

 

Other definitions are available...

[wagonman]

20 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

So how did the Southern fulfill its common carrier obligations in respect of passenger-rated non-passenger traffic - not just horses but also carriage truck traffic, and indeed pigs in crates?

 

I don't know how the Southern managed but live animals were still being transported in passenger trains in the early '60s on the WR. I have personal memory of seeing a young calf in a sack with just its head poking out, tethered to the platform railings at Lavington waiting for the down train to Westbury. It would have been carried in the guard's compartment.

[wagonman]

3 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

I seem to remember some examples of wagons in the livery of an important customer of the wagon owner (a colliery I think), but not actual paid advertising as such.

Jonathan

 

From memory Kodak was one, and Crystalate billiard balls was another I think. The wagons were owned and operated by Wallace Spiers & Co.

[hmrspaul]

1 hour ago, wagonman said:

 

I don't know how the Southern managed but live animals were still being transported in passenger trains in the early '60s on the WR. I have personal memory of seeing a young calf in a sack with just its head poking out, tethered to the platform railings at Lavington waiting for the down train to Westbury. It would have been carried in the guard's compartment.

So do I, at Derby station c1966. In its sack on a standard 4 wheel parcels trolley. I was on a through train or I'd have photographed it. This was just as the Livestock rule book says for such traffic. 

 

Paul

[Compound2632]

Indeed, the Ian Allan reprint of the Midland summer 1903 timetable book has a page devoted to rates for the transport of live animals by passenger train, from pigs in crates and calves in sacks to elephants in specially strengthened vehicles. But getting a bit of the topic of private owner wagons.

 

The only privately-owned livestock vehicles i'm aware of are those belonging to certain racing stud owners - there is an example illustrated in Richard Kelham's Wiltshire book and I think there were also some Newmarket-based ones - but these were passenger rated vehicles so hardly qualify as private owner wagons! 

[Aire Head]

10 hours ago, wagonman said:

 

Is this what they called a 'swinger'?

 

Other definitions are available...

 

I'd never even thought about it, but now you have said it!

 

I imagine a 9ft wheelbase van would be quite entertaining to watch even travelling at the speed of a stopping passenger train.

[Mike_Walker]

Didn't need a sack, just chuck it in the van to keep the guard company!

 

 

Bailey Gate on the S&D in August 1965, a classic from Colour Rail.

[Morello Cherry]

15 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve always suspected that in that line of work reasoned deduction gradually tails off into wild supposition, and eventually arrives at simply making stuff up, but please don’t tell your friend that.

 

He is quite open about that 'the further back you go the more people make up'.

 

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

Didn't need a sack, just chuck it in the van to keep the guard company!

 

 

Bailey Gate on the S&D in August 1965, a classic from Colour Rail.

 

I don't want to be the person who has to clean the van at the end of the day. That looks like a recipe for a 'dirty protest'.

 

But to go back to the OP - it is probably just as realistic for there to be a single animal in a crate waiting on the platform to be sent by a guards van to wherever as there is to have a full set of cattle pens waiting for cattle trucks.

 

Probably the sort thing that was so common as to barely get a mention in memoirs unless it is the tale of the time the sheep/pig/calf escaped.

[Nearholmer]

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

So how did the Southern fulfill its common carrier obligations in respect of passenger-rated non-passenger traffic - not just horses but also carriage truck traffic, and indeed pigs in crates?

From Lewes to London specifically, dead easy, because it was served by two routes to London, one of which was never electrified. Somebody didn’t choose the right train to hang the horse box onto!

 

At stations served only by electric passenger trains, I’d hazard a guess that NPCS was conveyed by goods train. Livestock that could go in a guard’s van wasn’t a problem, because the electric trains had good-sized vans, and carried a lot of parcels and mail.

 

I’ve got a 1935 sectional appendix somewhere, so will see if that covers the NPCS question.

 

EDIT: it’s actually a 1934 SA, and it contains a two page table saying how ‘tail traffic’ is to be dealt with at each station, but it says nothing about “The EMU problem”. At that date, there may not quite have been any station outside the suburbs that had absolutely no loco worked passenger trains, because of the way that steam branch services overlapped the electric routes, but within a year or two there were, and it’s suggestive that the incident that started all this discussion was in 1935, which was when the problem must have really begun to bite, with places like Plumpton, Cooksbridge, Glynde, and Berwick I think being “all electric”.
 

Some of the suburban stations are “by special arrangement only”, and some stations are dealt with by “detach at XYZ and forward by shunting engine”, so ad-hoc trips. That may have later been extended to the Lewes area as part of the goods turns, in that there was a ‘two or three stations either side’” trip circuit to bring goods to the marshalling yard. There’s an excellent photo of it captioned as “The Hornby Goods train”, because it was a tank engine and a handful of wagons, just like a toy train set.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Nearholmer

[phil_sutters]

11 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

So do I, at Derby station c1966. In its sack on a standard 4 wheel parcels trolley. I was on a through train or I'd have photographed it. This was just as the Livestock rule book says for such traffic. 

 

Paul

There is a nice calf truck at the IoW Steam Railway, used to carry the little beasts on the ferry between Ryde and Portsmouth Harbour stations. I wonder how they were carried further inland.

[wagonman]

This should be available by the middle of the month so start saving your pennies...

 

[divibandit]

Thanks again chaps,

Lots to think about!

I'd better get saving to get that new book Richard has just highlighted...

 

Steve