Agricultural produce by rail - what did farmers import (particularly on the W&U Tramway)?

[Compound2632]

53 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

A mile in three hours? But that was well before The Wrong Trousers. I hadn't quite realised the extent to which Hornby tinplate track was true to prototype practice.

[Nearholmer]

52 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

was not sure that early Coprolite workings would generate sufficient material

Half a dozen wagons in a train doesn’t seem “out of range” to me.

 

Here is the best picture of Galley Lane, Great Brickhill, which created a decent-sized pit in a few years. Their tramway route was downhill all the way to the river, so two loaded wagons would have been no great strain for a horse, and they probably had two horse train in circuit to keep the job moving steadily.

 

From what I remember exploring over there, Meldreth is pancake flat, so they probably needed the loco to overcome the load and the friction in the somewhat primitive bearings of the wagons, rather than employ lots of horses.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Dunalastair]

Nice image, thankyou for sharing. I had not some across that operation before - further west than most coprolite workings I had seen referenced. Is there a map of where the line ran?

 

Commiserations on the car damage visiting the Cambridge Museum of Technology, as it is now. An interesting site - I liked their rope-worked 'ash disposal railway'. I don't think that is entirely original (I might be wrong), but it nicely illustrates that style of working.

 

https://www.museumoftechnology.com/highlights

 

There are of course also pumping engine museums in the County at Stretham and Prickwillow, though catching them open can be a challenge. 

[Nearholmer]

9 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

referenced. Is there a map of where the line ran?

Not on published maps, although IIRC a vestige of the pit is on some maps, but I established the route by cycling across fields* in deep mid-winter, before things in the area were changed by major road construction, and now house-building, and wrote it up, with a sketch map, in the NGRS journal.

 

Without ferreting out all the old information, it was roughly this:

 

 

The washing area was on the river between Eaton Leys Farm and the Mill/Mill Farm, and the output was carted (I don’t think tramway) up the lane to the canal for shipment to a factory in Birmingham.

 

* Another mechanical disaster, because I managed to rip both tyres beyond repair by riding along the corner of a sharp piece of rusty old iron hidden in the dead grass and eventually had to call out my OH to fetch me in the car!

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I hadn't quite realised the extent to which Hornby tinplate track was true to prototype practice.

You really must invest in a copy of a C19th Decauville catalogue. They were the leaders of the field in portable railways, and their catalogues are just like a really, really good tinplate trains catalogue: track and points, locomotives carriages and wagons; turntables, cranes and tipplers etc. all could be ordered by telegram and shipped anywhere in the world, and the catalogues include (somewhat imaginative) engravings of railways being transported across the Himalayas by elephant, laid in the seabed to aid divers recovering wrecks, stretching into the infinite distance across fields and plantations, and more besides. Arthur Koppel was their German rival, and Fowler, then Hudson (good catalogues, but a bit dull by comparison) in England. There were many smaller firms, like Howard, in the business too.

 

As a PS: the great East Anglian field railway was Smiths Potato Crisps, built (like the Leighton Buzzard) on the back of Surplus WDLR material after WW1 (if you count Lincolnshire as East Anglia ….. which maybe it isn’t!

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[ianathompson]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As a PS: the great East Anglian field railway was Smiths Potato Crisps, built (like the Leighton Buzzard) on the back of Surplus WDLR material after WW1 (if you count Lincolnshire as East Anglia ….. which maybe it isn’t!

 Presumably that is the one at Nocton?

I used to drive past the site regularly without realising the light railway history.

 

In answer to the other question I don't think that many Norfolk people would regard Linolnshire as being in East Anglia!

 

Ian T

[Dunalastair]

31 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

 Presumably that is the one at Nocton?

I used to drive past the site regularly without realising the light railway history.

 

In answer to the other question I don't think that many Norfolk people would regard Linolnshire as being in East Anglia!

 

 

On the other hand, more of the fens are in Lincolnshire than in Norfolk, for all of what Noel Coward might have said. And if you try some NLS OS map geeking across the Cambridgeshire fens, then you will find a surprising number of post-WW1 agricultural tramways marked, probably also using exWDLR equipment (though likely horses not locos). So farmers faced with pludgy winter conditions might well have imported NG track and even wagons on the likes of the W&UT.

 

 

Commiserations again to @Nearholmer for the damaged tyres story - though probably better that than a potentially infected flesh wound if you had fallen onto the rusty old iron. 

[Nearholmer]

So, in answer to the OP’s question, the recommendation must be that he should have a wagon containing track panels and a couple of flat wagons - dead easy to source secondhand ones of these: https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/minitrains-3005-flat-wagon-set-without-brake.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi6Ku9-yvggMVVfHtCh0XbQATEAQYBCABEgIyhPD_BwE

[Dungrange]

35 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

So, in answer to the OP’s question, the recommendation must be that he should have a wagon containing track panels and a couple of flat wagons - dead easy to source secondhand ones of these: https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/minitrains-3005-flat-wagon-set-without-brake.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi6Ku9-yvggMVVfHtCh0XbQATEAQYBCABEgIyhPD_BwE

 

They models seem far more 'chunky' than the rather delicate deck on the frame in the picture above.

[Dungrange]

In relation to the transportation of livestock, the GER accounts for the year ending 1913 indicates that 1,790,329 animals were conveyed for the sum of £92,081.  1,411,053 of these animals originated on the company's system and it gives a breakdown of these as follows: Horses (6,252), Cattle (238,863), Calves (29,767),  Sheep (692,520), Pigs (443,088), Miscellaneous (563).  These were all carried by Goods Trains, so would I be correct to assume that these animals would all have been conveyed in cattle wagons and that the cost of carrying sheep and pigs would be lower than cattle and horses as more animals would fit in a cattle wagon.

 

Is there any source of information that equates these in the form of 1 cow = 3 sheep = 4 pigs to form a cattle equivalent figure that could be compared to the revenue earned?  I'm not aware of sheep and pigs being conveyed on the W&U, so I'm really looking for an average revenue per cow.

[Nearholmer]

41 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

They models seem far more 'chunky' than the rather delicate deck on the frame in the picture above.

You’d need to go back to the catalogue it was bought from to know what the deck looked like originally - these things get replaced over time.

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

In relation to the transportation of livestock, the GER accounts for the year ending 1913 indicates that 1,790,329 animals were conveyed for the sum of £92,081.  1,411,053 of these animals originated on the company's system and it gives a breakdown of these as follows: Horses (6,252), Cattle (238,863), Calves (29,767),  Sheep (692,520), Pigs (443,088), Miscellaneous (563).  These were all carried by Goods Trains, so would I be correct to assume that these animals would all have been conveyed in cattle wagons and that the cost of carrying sheep and pigs would be lower than cattle and horses as more animals would fit in a cattle wagon.

 

Is there any source of information that equates these in the form of 1 cow = 3 sheep = 4 pigs to form a cattle equivalent figure that could be compared to the revenue earned?  I'm not aware of sheep and pigs being conveyed on the W&U, so I'm really looking for an average revenue per cow.

 

I've been mulling over the exact same data, for the Midland. The thing one doesn't know is how far each consignment travelled.

 

I'm not entirely sure about this but I don't think cattle was charged per animal per mile, but per truck per mile. Hence the different sizes of cattle truck, small, medium, and large - and later, the partitions fitted to reduce the usable size from large to small, etc. - and later still the various patent catches to stop unscrupulous traders from moving the partition to get more space than they'd paid for.

[Dungrange]

On 06/11/2023 at 19:05, Compound2632 said:

I'm not entirely sure about this but I don't think cattle was charged per animal per mile, but per truck per mile.

 

I assume that you are correct, but I don't have suitable data.  My current thinking is as follows.

 

In his book on the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, Peter Paye provides a breakdown of revenue on the Tramway for the year ended 31 December 1914 as follows:

Passengers:                                     £1,337   7s 10d

Mail:                                                  £     16    0s  0d

Parcels:                                             £     37 10s   6d

Merchandise by passenger train: £     55   8s   3d

Merchandise by goods train:        £3,923   4s   4d

Livestock:                                         £      51   8s   0d

Coal and Coke:                                £   343   4s   6d

Other Minerals:                              £    329 18s 10d

Rents:                                               £      31 12s   1d

Total:                                                £6,125 14s   4d

 

I don't know the primary source of these numbers.

 

If I assume that the revenue per head or revenue per truck and total livestock numbers was similar in 1913 and 1914, then I can say that the W&U represented 51.4 / 92,081 or 0.055% of the revenue of all livestock traffic on the Great Eastern Railway.  If the proportions of the different animals on the Tramway matched the GER area in total then I could assume that the annual traffic on the Tramway would be something like 4 horses, 131 cows, 16 calves, 381 sheep and 244 pigs.  If I could 'convert' sheep and pigs into cows and calves, then I'd have a reasonable estimate of demand, as I think it was only horses and cattle that were transported on the W&U.

 

Perhaps what I'm looking for is how many horses can be conveyed in a single cattle truck?  How many cows?  How many calves?  How many sheep?  How many pigs?  That then gives me the estimate of the number of cattle wagons conveyed each year.  I assume that probably equates to an average of two or three GER cattle wagons per week, although the traffic presumably varied throughout the year.

 

Notice of Correction:

The 0.055% of revenue attributed to the W&U Tramway will only account for the proportion of the revenue that can be attributed to the first / last six miles of the trip (ie to/from Upwell).  To create robust demand estimates, it's necessary to multiply the derived demand by the ratio of the demand weighted average trip distance / length of the W&U Tramway. 

 

It's therefore not quite as straightforward as I first thought.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Dungrange
Notice of Correction added

[Dungrange]

I'm still not sure whether Manure was a traffic on the W&U, but it appears that the transportation of Manure was definitely big business in East Anglia after WW1.

 

The GER Directors report for 1923 has statistical returns for the year ending 31 December 1922 (the final year of the GER's existence).  In this is a table listing the tonnage of the principal classes of minerals and merchandise carried by goods trains.  Manure is listed as 323,374 tons (up from a 1921 figure of 291,416 tons).  I don't think Manure is that heavy, so if we assume that an open wagon conveys 4 tons, then that means around 80,000 wagonloads per annum starting and ending at a GER station.  The GER has something like 400 stations, so if we assume that half were originating and half were receiving stations, then we could say that on average each station either dispatched or received around 400 wagonloads of Manure each year.  Obviously there would be variation across the network, but it appears that one or two wagons conveying Manure each day to each depot on the line, wouldn't be an unreasonable estimate of demand.  If an open wagon can't convey 4 tons, then obviously more wagons would be needed.

 

Notice of Correction:

@billbedford has indicated below that this assumption about even distribution of trade is incorrect.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Dungrange
Notice of Correction added

[Dungrange]

1 hour ago, Dungrange said:

I don't think Manure is that heavy, so if we assume that an open wagon conveys 4 tons, then that means around 80,000 wagonloads per annum starting and ending at a GER station. 

 

I don't know what GER wagons were used for this traffic, but if I assume an older GER Diagram 16 5-plank wagon, I estimate that it could carry around 381 cubic feet (ie internal dimensions of around 14.5 ft x 7.5 ft x 3.5 ft).

 

This website (https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight) indicates that a cubic foot of Manure weighs around 25lb, so one wagonload would be about 4.25 tons.  Slightly less than 80,000 wagons would therefore be required for the traffic conveyed in 1922, but still an average or one or two wagons per day per station across the network.  I think I therefore need to try and find out a bit more about this traffic, as it looks like I can't ignore it.

[Metropolitan H]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I've been mulling over the exact same data, for the Midland. The thing one doesn't know is how far each consignment travelled.

 

I'm not entirely sure about this but I don't think cattle was charged per animal per mile, but per truck per mile. Hence the different sizes of cattle truck, small, medium, and large - and later, the partitions fitted to reduce the usable size from large to small, etc. - and later still the various patent catches to stop unscrupulous traders from moving the partition to get more space than they'd paid for.

I was always led to understand that the use of the partitions in Cattle Wagons is to enable the beasts to be packed sugly together standing-up - so as to avoid any falling down and being trampled by the others in transit. So I don't think the use of partitions has anything to do with fraud prevention, more to do with welfare of the beasts and avoiding claims for injured or deceased beasts.

 

Long journeys involved regular stops for watering / feeding / exercising animals and mucking out the wagons.

 

Regards

Chris H

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, Metropolitan H said:

I was always led to understand that the use of the partitions in Cattle Wagons is to enable the beasts to be packed sugly together standing-up - so as to avoid any falling down and being trampled by the others in transit. So I don't think the use of partitions has anything to do with fraud prevention, more to do with welfare of the beasts and avoiding claims for injured or deceased beasts.

 

That was not the original purpose, which had everything to do with charging for cattle wagons by size. Midland Traffic Committee minute 27941 of 2 December 1892:

 

Movable partitions in Cattle Wagons.

                              Resolved that the Company’s stock of 750 large and 441 medium cattle trucks be fitted with a movable partition, in order that they may be used, when required, as smaller wagons, the estimated cost being £2,016:6:0, and the matter was referred to the Carriage and Wagon Committee.

[billbedford]

3 hours ago, Dungrange said:

I don't think Manure is that heavy, so if we assume that an open wagon conveys 4 tons, then that means around 80,000 wagonloads per annum starting and ending at a GER station.  The GER has something like 400 stations, so if we assume that half were originating and half were receiving stations, then we could say that on average each station either dispatched or received around 400 wagonloads of Manure each year. 

 

This is almost certainly wrong. Most of the manure would have come from London, though some might have come from the larger towns such as Norwich. The usual recipients of all this goodness were a tract of market gardens around London which produced year-round vegetables in hot-beds. In these, crops were grown in layered beds where the bottom layers where more or less fresh manure gave off enough heat to speed up the growth of plants in the upper layers. 

 

Of course there was also fish offal from Lowestoft, but most of that was landed during the herring season. 

 

[Dungrange]

Well, that's good to know.  From the data available I can obviously calculate the number of wagonloads quite accurately, but where within the GER territory these were moved were just a guess (obviously a wrong one).

 

On 06/11/2023 at 20:11, Dungrange said:

If I could 'convert' sheep and pigs into cows and calves, then I'd have a reasonable estimate of demand, as I think it was only horses and cattle that were transported on the W&U.

 

Perhaps what I'm looking for is how many horses can be conveyed in a single cattle truck?  How many cows?  How many calves?  How many sheep?  How many pigs?  That then gives me the estimate of the number of cattle wagons conveyed each year. 

 

I don't think I'm going to have much luck with this, as not only were cattle wagons built as small, medium and large with partitions to allow 'part loads' to be carried, but there is also the issue that cows, sheep and pigs all vary by breed (and I don't have that sort of detail).

 

However, it appears that a female cow typically weights around 720 kg.  The average slaughter weight of a calf is apparently around 330kg, so around half the weight of a female cow.  Pigs can weight anything between 50 kg and 350 kg, so if I take a reasonably central figure of 180 kg, that would mean four pigs = one cow.  Similarly sheep seem to weight anything between 45 kg and 100kg (females) / 160 kg (males), so if I take a fairly central figure of 72kg, then that would mean ten sheep = one cow.  Assuming one horse = one cow, then summing all of that up gives me the equivalent of 242 cows / horses per annum on the Tramway.

 

The Science museum (https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co205936/british-railways-cattle-wagon-railway-wagon) give a figure of seven heads of cattle per 8 ton wagon, so that equates to 35 wagons per annum (ie less than one per week).

 

Of course the other way of looking at it, is that on 31 December 1920, the GER had 1,749 cattle wagons.  If 0.055% of livestock revenue came from the W&U Tramway, then it would seem reasonable to assume that 0.055% of the wagon fleet was 'allocated' to this traffic, which equates to just shy of one wagon.

 

Looks like I don't need too many cattle wagons.

 

Notice of Correction:

The 0.055% of revenue attributed to the W&U Tramway will only account for the proportion of the revenue that can be attributed to the first / last six miles of the trip (ie to/from Upwell).  To create robust demand estimates, it's necessary to multiply the demand indicated above by the ratio of the demand weighted average trip distance / length of the W&U Tramway. 

 

It's therefore not quite as straightforward as I first thought and there is therefore a need for more than one cattle wagon.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Dungrange
Notice of Correction added

[Tom Burnham]

I recall reading a complaint in a Gravesend local paper circa 1912 about wagons of manure being left on the through road between platforms at Gravesend Central during the morning peak ..

I'm not familiar with the RCH rates classification, but as I understand it the term "manure" was often used to cover also what would now be referred to as fertiliser, so could include imported guano, superphosphate and the like as well as horse manure.  So some of the traffic listed under "manure" might actually have been fertiliser in sacks 

[ChrisN]

I think a lot of this has been discussed previously in other threads, probably one belonging to @Edwardian's, and to some extent mine, although it was not aimed at agricultural produce.

 

I seem to remember that 'Night Soil' from London was sent to Bedford, although I am not sure what the good citizens of Bedford had done to deserve that.

 

I also remember a list of what it cost to carry different types of animals, although it was probably put up as a picture so may well be lost.

 

Finally, the partitions in cattle wagons were to keep partial loads from falling over, but the GWR introduced a system, as outlined in @Mikkel's blog to ensure that the owners did not put them in a different place and so claim they had been overcharged.

[Dungrange]

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

I'm not familiar with the RCH rates classification, but as I understand it the term "manure" was often used to cover also what would now be referred to as fertiliser, so could include imported guano, superphosphate and the like as well as horse manure.  So some of the traffic listed under "manure" might actually have been fertiliser in sacks 

 

Understanding how items were classified in accounts is a mystery to me.  There are two tables of goods tonnages in the GER accounts for 1922.  The first of these uses the broad categories of 'Merchandise', 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' and 'Other Minerals'.  Tonnages are given as a total and also as a tonnage originating on the company's system.  The figures for 1922 were as follows:

 

Merchandise                               5,083,534    2,939,996

Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel       5,055,166       130,266

Other Minerals                            2,095,922    1,098,104

Total                                            12,234,672    4,168,366

 

This would imply that 42% of general merchandise traffic originated off the GER network and therefore in pre-pooling days, this could give a reasonable estimate of the importance of foreign company wagons.  A higher proportion of coal was imported, as is probably obvious due to the lack of coal fields in East Anglia.

 

The other is a list of what is termed 'the principal classes of minerals and merchandise carried by goods trains'.  The figures for 1922 are as follows:

 

Bricks, Common and Fireclay                                     194,249

Cement                                                                             70,377

Flour, Bran, Sharps and other Flour Mill Offal         231,829

Grain                                                                               655,307

Hay, Clover and Straw                                                    90,870

Iron and Steel Bars, Joists, Girder Work and Plates     9,702

Iron and Steel Blooms Billets and Ingots                          251

Iron and Steel Scrap                                                        79,918

Iron and Steel, other descriptions                                15,707

Iron, Pig                                                                               2,360

Ironstone and Iron Ore                                                   15,892

Limestone (other than Roadmaking or Agricultural)         34

Manure                                                                             323,375

Potatoes                                                                           299,892

Sand                                                                                    83,248

Stone, for Roadmaking                                                  156,424

Timber, Pitwood and Mining                                             2,831

Timber, other descriptions                                           104,010

Vegetables, other than potatoes                                 149,329

Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel                                           130,266

Total                                                                               2,615,871

 

'Fertiliser' doesn't appear on that list, so it could indeed be included within the term 'manure', but of course there is also around 1.5 million tons of goods traffic that originated on GER metals that isn't accounted for in that list (ie 4.1 million - 2.6 million).  Why was limestone given a category, but fruit wasn't?  Overall it appears that the majority of that 1.5 million is probably mineral traffic, which I am less interested in.

 

[Dunalastair]

17 hours ago, Dungrange said:

Perhaps what I'm looking for is how many horses can be conveyed in a single cattle truck?  How many cows?  How many calves?  How many sheep?  How many pigs?  That then gives me the estimate of the number of cattle wagons conveyed each year.  I assume that probably equates to an average of two or three GER cattle wagons per week, although the traffic presumably varied throughout the year.

 

Depending on the quality of the horse, then they might well have enjoyed a comfy horsebox rather than a cattle wagon. And at the other end of the scale, some railways operated bespoke double-deck sheep wagons, which might also have bene used for pigs. Given that livestock movements were often over considerable distances (e.g. Scottish cattle were (and are) fattened in the fens before heading for Smithfield) then 'foreign' rolling stock might be as likely as local, though local market sales might change that.

 

This is a Peter Drummond (HR) sheep wagon.

 

https://www.ambaile.org.uk/asset/28684/1/EN28684-highland-railway-sheep-van/

 

Antipodean railways rather specialised in mesh-sided sheep wagons - perhaps understandably.

[Dungrange]

5 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

Depending on the quality of the horse, then they might well have enjoyed a comfy horsebox rather than a cattle wagon.

 

That's true, although the livestock figures in the statistical returns state that they are carried by goods trains, whereas horseboxes were, I think, normally conveyed in passenger trains.  That said, I'm not sure where else revenue from horsebox movements would have been accounted for.   Either way, it appears that there wasn't substantial livestock traffic on the W&U Tramway.

 

8 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

Given that livestock movements were often over considerable distances (e.g. Scottish cattle were (and are) fattened in the fens before heading for Smithfield) then 'foreign' rolling stock might be as likely as local, though local market sales might change that.

 

Again, that's true.  The livestock figures I quoted earlier were only the animals conveyed at station-to-station rates on the GER system.  The total figures for the year ending 31 December 1913 was given as 1,790,329 animals of which 1,411,053 animals originated on the GER network (which is what the stated breakdown refers to).  This implies that 79% of livestock traffic was local, with the other 21% being conveyed in foreign company wagons.  Clearly a foreign cattle wagon could be justified, but in my case, they'd make up a very small proportion of overall traffic.

[Michael Hodgson]

7 hours ago, Dungrange said:

However, it appears that a female cow typically weights around 720 kg.  The average slaughter weight of a calf is apparently around 330kg, so around half the weight of a female cow.

I take it you couldn't find any data on male cows?