Traeth Mawr -Building Mr Price's house , (mostly)

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

On Saturday I picked up a copy of Great Western Railway Journal No. 69, Winter 2009. It has two articles, the longer one being a detailed description of Newtown station and the train workings in the 1950s and 1960s. Lots of information from staff who worked there or drove locos which worked through. Far too modern for you, of course, but fascinating.

One thing it did confirm is that the Down platform shelter at that time had glazing in the openings in the front which are now just openings. Does this mean that you have to alter your shelter or had you already picked that up?

Jonathan

 

Thank you Jonathan,

I had to go and check, but yes, I did put glazing in my Down platform shelter windows.  

 

Maybe I should think of buying that journal.

[Nick Gough]

21 hours ago, ChrisN said:

Life has been a trifle busy recently, (yes making lots of deserts 🙂), and I have been tangled up in point wire so actual modelling has been a little scarce.  I did however manage to get to Kew National Archive last Wednesday, by taking my wife to work at lunch time, and picking her up on the way back as she might not have been able to park where she works.  I finally, finally got to view Rail 938/1, 'Great Western Railway: through coach programmes bank holidays and summer division notices, 1892- 1898'  At the start of Covid I emailed them and asked how many pages from this were titled, 'Northern Expresses', and got the reply, 'None'.  When I finally managed to get there, I found that they were right, the relevant pages were titled, 'Northern Trains'.  (Sigh).  I thought as they were summer notes I would photograph any relevant pages from 1894 and 1895 summers.  Having done July and August 1894 I turned the page and found, 'Through Coaches from October 1894 until further notice'.  (Hooray!) 

 

Bradshaws for that period has the train to catch for Barmouth Traeth Mawr as the 9: 50 am, but I could never understand that as any through coach would have been waiting at Ruabon for about an hour, whereas if it was attached to the 10:02 am it would be about five minutes.  The through coach pages were of course highly informative, as the 9:50 am had a through coach, a brake Tri Composite, for Aberystwyth, and written in red ink, on the list for the 10:02 Brk Tri Comp Barmouth.  Success!  There are two coaches crossed out on that train for Trowbridge, and dated 18/2/95, so it was in use on 21/3/95, Mr Price's Groundhog day.  (I assume that prior to this coach you had to get the Aberystwyth coach and change at Dovey Junction.)

 

I have had through data from a document sent me by @Donw which is for a later year, and has through coaches to Pwllheli.  These do not appear on these sheets, so I have removed them from my timetable, and it means less coaches to build.  (It also casts doubts on the other through coaches, but they shall remain unless I get evidence to the opposite, and why not?)

 

I did love looking at this document as it was obviously a working document as it was covered in red ink.

 

Next, update, horse drawn vehicles, probably.

 

If you have been, thanks for looking.

 

Pleased to hear that you had a successful trip to Kew, Chris. There's nothing quite like being able to view these original documents is there?

 

I've been quite lucky to acquire a number of facsimiles of relevant GWR through and local coach working books together with a couple of goods documents and station working books. They are fascinating to look through and very helpful.

 

I can't help but think how basic (boring) and simple the modern railway is in comparison.

[ChrisN]

This is not a horsey update.

 

A few weeks ago when I was doing extra 'slates' for the station roof, I decided to cut some more coaches.

 

 

Can you see what it is yet?

 

I thought as I knew this worked I would cut another one, well you need two.

 

Now, the ladies of the Dolgelley Temperance Society, (kindly supplied by @corneliuslundie), have been on at me that they have hired a Third Class Saloon to get to TRaeth Mawr Market, and 'Where is it?'  So I cut that as well.

 

 

Not a pretty sight.  I looked at the drawing as previous cuts have worked.  I realised that I used the 'draw rectangle' function and the draw 'rounded corner rectangle' function, and it appears not to work.  The squares at the bottom are actually, four separate lines.  It means I shall have to edit my drawing.  I am working on a way to do this without having to redraw it all again.

 

This is even more annoying as when I was ill recently I finished the drawing of an E25, (well I need something to go on the bogies).  That will need redrawing as well.

 

Finally. after my visit to Kew I realised that my Slater's E37 will never reach Traeth Mawr as it is not a brake tri-composite, but it will be in the 10:02 train to Birkenhead, if it ever gets modelled.

 

If you have been, thanks for looking.

[Mikkel]

Hi Chris, that's annoying. Also odd. Normally I get better results with four separate lines, whereas the rectangle/rounded corners option makes for poorer results, not unlike those in your photo. But as we have come to know, every cutting situation is different with the Silhouette!

 

[Nick Gough]

Since starting to use my Silhouette I have also drawn up the rectangles with four lines because I had previously heard that this was a problem. I understand that the problem is that the cutter does one continuous cut for the whole shape, changing direction at the corners, so doesn't do this neatly.

 

I had thought that the rounded rectangle shape would avoid this and have just started trying to draw up toplight coach sides using them. I will have to rethink this in view of your unfortunate experience.

[MikeOxon]

3 hours ago, ChrisN said:

I realised that I used the 'draw rectangle' function and the draw 'rounded corner rectangle' function, and it appears not to work. 

Your problem rang a faint bell with me.  It may be something completely different but I recall that back in 2014 I had a problem with rounded corners when using Silhouette Studio v.3.  When I reverted to Studio v.2, the problem disappeared.  If you still have a copy of the older version, you might like to try it.

 

 

[ChrisN]

 

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Hi Chris, that's annoying. Also odd. Normally I get better results with four separate lines, whereas the rectangle/rounded corners option makes for poorer results, not unlike those in your photo. But as we have come to know, every cutting situation is different with the Silhouette!

 

 

42 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:

Since starting to use my Silhouette I have also drawn up the rectangles with four lines because I had previously heard that this was a problem. I understand that the problem is that the cutter does one continuous cut for the whole shape, changing direction at the corners, so doesn't do this neatly.

 

I had thought that the rounded rectangle shape would avoid this and have just started trying to draw up toplight coach sides using them. I will have to rethink this in view of your unfortunate experience.

 

 

Mikkel and Nick,

Yes, I have a rounded corner rectangle at the top of the window, with a bottom half of a rectangle at the bottom.  I shall have to erase the line between the rounded corners and draw a new separate line, same for the sides and the bottom.  The rectangles at the bottom of the sheet are drawn with separate lines and are fine.

 

My thought is that I shall copy a window, I think the panels are alright, paste it elsewhere and do the surgery.  I shall then change the colour of all the windows that are the same as it to a previously unused colour and copy and paste the changed window onto them.  I can then chose the new colour and delete all the old window shapes.  Hopefully, this means I will not have to spend so much time aligning things.

 

It is annoying as I did not do my previous drawings this way, but this time I decided to use the automatic shapes, 'as it would save me time'!  I am not sure when I will get to do it though.

[ChrisN]

23 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Your problem rang a faint bell with me.  It may be something completely different but I recall that back in 2014 I had a problem with rounded corners when using Silhouette Studio v.3.  When I reverted to Studio v.2, the problem disappeared.  If you still have a copy of the older version, you might like to try it.

 

 

 

Thank you Mike,

I have just checked and I am using 4.4, I am not sure I have ever had version 2.  I should have expected trouble with the square corners, but I am surprised about the rounded ones.

[Nick Gough]

What thickness plastikard were you trying to cut Chris?

[ChrisN]

14 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:

What thickness plastikard were you trying to cut Chris?

 

10 Thou.  I checked that all the lines were at least 0.5 mm apart.

Edited June 11, 2023 by ChrisN

[ChrisN]

I think I have shown this picture before.

 

 

These however were not the first vehicle I built on our 'Fun and Friendship' mornings.  I had the Dart Castings milk cart for Christmas.

 

 

It went together quite well, apart from the fact that I thought the churn should go on the floor, but it did not fit.  That was easily sorted as I cut a bit of the floor underneath it off.  It was slightly more difficult to fix the extra bit back on again, it needed a supporting strip of card underneath it.  From the other side.

 

 

The shafts are a bit soft, as are the lamps so I had to be careful.  Finally with wheels, and a donkey.  As it is 4mm, a dinky donky.

 

 

I assumed that Traeth Mawr would have a dairy, but the 1901 Barmouth census did not show any.  It showed two 'Milk Dealers', one from London, and one from LLanaber, but I do not think these are the same thing though.  Kelly's Directory of 1895 showed an Isaac Jones of High Street Barmouth as a Dairyman.  Maybe what I wanted.

 

I have this picture of a milk round, but the gentleman on the cart comes from a Caravan Park north of Llanaber, which I assume was a farm at the time, and the lad comes from another farm.  It appears to be in Marine Road Barmouth outside the station so they have a round there.  It is further confused by the fact that when I was looking for papers to put on my Kiosk, (remember that, it is not gone just waiting for a coat of paint), I found an advert from an estate in Bala, asking for someone to deliver milk for them in Barmouth.

 

So several possible milk suppliers, which is probably right for a town of about 2000, and including a large number of hotels and lodging houses.  I have not seen a picture of a dairy in Barmouth, although I could trawl my through all the pictures on the site again to see if I can see one.  There is no dairy in Barmouth today.

 

So where did they get their cheese from, or butter?  Should there be a dairy in Traeth Mawr?  Should I get another milk cart from an opposition supplier.  (Remember it is market day, just off the board, Colonel Viscount Deudraeth is leading a parade through the square and is now going down station road, a sheep farmer from Harlech is just about the shepherd his sheep in the opposite direction, it is already pandemonium.)

 

If you have been, thanks for looking.

[brumtb]

14 hours ago, ChrisN said:

I think I have shown this picture before.

 

 

These however were not the first vehicle I built on our 'Fun and Friendship' mornings.  I had the Dart Castings milk cart for Christmas.

 

 

It went together quite well, apart from the fact that I thought the churn should go on the floor, but it did not fit.  That was easily sorted as I cut a bit of the floor underneath it off.  It was slightly more difficult to fix the extra bit back on again, it needed a supporting strip of card underneath it.  From the other side.

 

 

The shafts are a bit soft, as are the lamps so I had to be careful.  Finally with wheels, and a donkey.  As it is 4mm, a dinky donky.

 

 

I assumed that Traeth Mawr would have a dairy, but the 1901 Barmouth census did not show any.  It showed two 'Milk Dealers', one from London, and one from LLanaber, but I do not think these are the same thing though.  Kelly's Directory of 1895 showed an Isaac Jones of High Street Barmouth as a Dairyman.  Maybe what I wanted.

 

I have this picture of a milk round, but the gentleman on the cart comes from a Caravan Park north of Llanaber, which I assume was a farm at the time, and the lad comes from another farm.  It appears to be in Marine Road Barmouth outside the station so they have a round there.  It is further confused by the fact that when I was looking for papers to put on my Kiosk, (remember that, it is not gone just waiting for a coat of paint), I found an advert from an estate in Bala, asking for someone to deliver milk for them in Barmouth.

 

So several possible milk suppliers, which is probably right for a town of about 2000, and including a large number of hotels and lodging houses.  I have not seen a picture of a dairy in Barmouth, although I could trawl my through all the pictures on the site again to see if I can see one.  There is no dairy in Barmouth today.

 

So where did they get their cheese from, or butter?  Should there be a dairy in Traeth Mawr?  Should I get another milk cart from an opposition supplier.  (Remember it is market day, just off the board, Colonel Viscount Deudraeth is leading a parade through the square and is now going down station road, a sheep farmer from Harlech is just about the shepherd his sheep in the opposite direction, it is already pandemonium.)

 

If you have been, thanks for looking.

Great work on the milk cart Chris, I really must get one to include in my great grandfather's model fleet.

Before bottling was introduced in the mid 1920s I don't think much infrastrucure was needed. Milk was produced on nearby farms and the milkman delivered it to customers from the churn. Similarly cheese and butter was very much farm produced and probably sold by the farmers' wives at Traeth Mawr weekly market.

Herbert Birchley's Blossomfield Dairy in Birmingham, obviously milk had to travel a little further to get to city customers.  Herbert obtained his supplies from a farm near Bidford on Avon, south Warwickshire.

Tony

[ChrisN]

12 minutes ago, brumtb said:

Great work on the milk cart Chris, I really must get one to include in my great grandfather's model fleet.

Before bottling was introduced in the mid 1920s I don't think much infrastrucure was needed. Milk was produced on nearby farms and the milkman delivered it to customers from the churn. Similarly cheese and butter was very much farm produced and probably sold by the farmers' wives at Traeth Mawr weekly market.

Herbert Birchley's Blossomfield Dairy in Birmingham, obviously milk had to travel a little further to get to city customers.  Herbert obtained his supplies from a farm near Bidford on Avon, south Warwickshire.

Tony

 

Tony,

Thank you, what a brilliant picture.  Do you know when it was taken?  I love those carts that the boys have.  Are they twelve? 

 

Was the diary just a place to store milk?  When I did a milk round the milk floats came from a dairy but it was really only a distribution centre.

 

Looking further into it last night I found that 'BetFred' in Barmouth had an address of 'The Old Dairy'.  Looking at Google and at the National Library of Scotland map of Victorian Barmouth this dairy post dates that so was not there in 1895.

 

I wonder how the milk from the estate in Bala was managed?  Sent in churns by the first train so arrived about 7:30.  Where did they keep it?  Did they have a cart big enough to carry it all around.  A churn was 17 gallons so how many families/hotels would it supply.  Did hotels just get a churn?  So much history and so little time.

[brumtb]

Hi Chris

I've been looking through my family records for a date of the photo.  it isn't dated but the boy with the first cart is, I believe, my great uncle Fred who was born in 1910. So I would imagine early post WW1, he doesn't look more than 8 or 9 to me.

The early milk industry merits more research, as you indicate, so many questions. Pasteurisation and Tuberculin testing had been developed before the turn of the century, I think, but milk was still being ladled out of churns into housewives jugs in the early 20th century.  Somewhere I have a leaflet produced by my Great grandfather when he modernised Blossomfield dairy in the late 1920s when a bottling plant was installed which describes how the raw milk was treated. I must find it.

Social history is fascinating and so much is lost already, more to come, I hope!

All the best Tony

[ChrisN]

5 hours ago, brumtb said:

Hi Chris

I've been looking through my family records for a date of the photo.  it isn't dated but the boy with the first cart is, I believe, my great uncle Fred who was born in 1910. So I would imagine early post WW1, he doesn't look more than 8 or 9 to me.

The early milk industry merits more research, as you indicate, so many questions. Pasteurisation and Tuberculin testing had been developed before the turn of the century, I think, but milk was still being ladled out of churns into housewives jugs in the early 20th century.  Somewhere I have a leaflet produced by my Great grandfather when he modernised Blossomfield dairy in the late 1920s when a bottling plant was installed which describes how the raw milk was treated. I must find it.

Social history is fascinating and so much is lost already, more to come, I hope!

All the best Tony

 

Tony,

That is great, thank you.  If that is your Great Uncle, I hope it is a Saturday as he should have been in school until at least the age of 12, if not 14.  🙂

 

I think you would need a local dairy for processing the milk, but maybe it was only in the cities at that period.  I still remember being able to buy untreated milk when we went on holiday when I was first married.  I thought it had stopped, but I think you can still buy it from tested herds and it has to be sold locally.

 

I need a lady with a jug.  

 

Was it jugs for hotels and lodging houses?  More research needed.  (I always say that history is finding out today what everybody yesterday knew without thinking about it.)

Edited June 14, 2023 by ChrisN
spilling

[Northroader]

Out away from big towns in the 1940s,  I did a trip over to the nearby farm with a quart jug to get milk direct, the bulk of his production went into two or three churns, collected by lorry, to a diary who processed into milk bottles for the nearest city. I would expect around the 1900s era milk bottles were in the future, certainly rural Wales, and you had a person going round in a cart selling milk ladled out of a churn in a measure to various customers, including hotels and guest houses.

[Edwardian]

[MikeOxon]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

I can remember, on a campsite in rural France in the 1960s, collecting milk in a jug from a cart rather like that one.

[kitpw]

First glass milk bottle patented in 1874 in the US

Gradually transferred to UK but until WW1 milk mainly delivered on horse-drawn "milk pram" - ladled into tin cans from a churn

At that time, milk was delivered three times a day - "pudding round" later dropped due to WW1 constraints

By 1920s and 1930s glass-bottled milk is the norm, but bottles had cardboard slips at the top, which children used to play "pogs"

1935 - slender-neck bottle introduced, giving the illusion of more cream and supposedly favoured by housewives

Aluminium foil tops eventually replaces cardboard for hygiene concerns - but WW2 shortages mean experimentation with zinc, tin and lead-based alternatives

Estimated 30 million lost glass bottles a year during WW2 - some return to tin can delivery using ladles

1980 - modern version of bottle introduced. Shorter and wider, initially it was nicknamed "dumpy"

Source: Tom Phelps, author of The British Milkman...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29327881: includes a picture of a very jolly milkman and a bird helping itself to the cream.

In the early 1930s in Leatherhead, Surrey, the milk pram was horsedrawn and (I think I've told this story before on RMweb) my grandfather's parrot learned to tell the milkman's horse to "move on" leaving the milkman to run after the cart which was rapidly disappearing up the road. So no bottled delivery then. My only recollection of dairies and deliveries (early 1960s) was quart (not pint) bottles which were delivered from a near silent, slow moving EV.

Cartons are fine with me but just don't tell the blue tits - did they follow the milk pram like seagulls follow the fishing boats?

 

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

First glass milk bottle patented in 1874 in the US

Gradually transferred to UK but until WW1 milk mainly delivered on horse-drawn "milk pram" - ladled into tin cans from a churn

At that time, milk was delivered three times a day - "pudding round" later dropped due to WW1 constraints

By 1920s and 1930s glass-bottled milk is the norm, but bottles had cardboard slips at the top, which children used to play "pogs"

1935 - slender-neck bottle introduced, giving the illusion of more cream and supposedly favoured by housewives

Aluminium foil tops eventually replaces cardboard for hygiene concerns - but WW2 shortages mean experimentation with zinc, tin and lead-based alternatives

Estimated 30 million lost glass bottles a year during WW2 - some return to tin can delivery using ladles

1980 - modern version of bottle introduced. Shorter and wider, initially it was nicknamed "dumpy"

Source: Tom Phelps, author of The British Milkman...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29327881: includes a picture of a very jolly milkman and a bird helping itself to the cream.

In the early 1930s in Leatherhead, Surrey, the milk pram was horsedrawn and (I think I've told this story before on RMweb) my grandfather's parrot learned to tell the milkman's horse to "move on" leaving the milkman to run after the cart which was rapidly disappearing up the road. So no bottled delivery then. My only recollection of dairies and deliveries (early 1960s) was quart (not pint) bottles which were delivered from a near silent, slow moving EV.

Cartons are fine with me but just don't tell the blue tits - did they follow the milk pram like seagulls follow the fishing boats?

 

 

Thank you, that is very interesting. I love the story about the parrot.

 

I am used to milk being delivered in bottles and arriving before breakfast, like the post, so more than one delivery is interesting.  It would explain how hotels were looked after.  

 

Where was the milk kept before a delivery?  It it arrive once a day by train, ot were there several deliveries.  (I would go for one.)  There must have been somewhere that the milk was collected from.  The cart in my picture came from 2.5 miles away so that there could have been a cold store on the farm, but what about the milk from the estate at Bala.  

 

I will do some more investigating.

[corneliuslundie]

Re milk bottles, I remember when I was young that there were two shapes: the "dumpy" type, such as Peter delivers to us every day (except Sundays), and a type with a taller thinner stem which contained a different type of milk. Was it "sterilised" or something similar?

I have friends here who have lived in Newtown all their lives. I shall have to ask them about milk delivery.

Jonathan

[kitpw]

31 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

I will do some more investigating.

https://www.bahs.org.uk/ is the British Agricultural History Society.  I've had occasion to search their papers/minutes on agricultural history in the past but haven't looked at cold stores, milk production and distribution (yet!).

37 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

I am used to milk being delivered in bottles and arriving before breakfast

My daughter still has milk delivered to her door step each morning in east London, except yesterday morning when it was stolen.  As I was tasked with grandson school collection in the afternoon, I was also tasked with obtaining more milk: milkman elect for the day, no horse, no milk pram, just pack drill.

 

 

 

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Re milk bottles, I remember when I was young that there were two shapes: the "dumpy" type, such as Peter delivers to us every day (except Sundays), and a type with a taller thinner stem which contained a different type of milk. Was it "sterilised" or something similar?

I have friends here who have lived in Newtown all their lives. I shall have to ask them about milk delivery.

Jonathan

 

Jonathan,

Before the 'dumpy' bottles we had taller bottles with a taper to them, but with a wide mouth and a foil closing.  The other type with the thinner stem were 'sterialised' and had a metal cap like a beer bottle.  Revolting stuff, but my Nan, liked her 'drop a ster' in her tea.

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

https://www.bahs.org.uk/ is the British Agricultural History Society.  I've had occasion to search their papers/minutes on agricultural history in the past but haven't looked at cold stores, milk production and distribution (yet!).

My daughter still has milk delivered to her door step each morning in east London, except yesterday morning when it was stolen.  As I was tasked with grandson school collection in the afternoon, I was also tasked with obtaining more milk: milkman elect for the day, no horse, no milk pram, just pack drill.

 

 

 

 

Thank you.  I shall have a look through this at my leisure.  I have found out some information, including a learned paper, but the information either only deals with deliveries, not where milk was kept before the delivery, or relates to London, which is a bit different.

 

I think the last milk round on an electric float that I saw was in the mid 80s, when we lived in Dagenham.  When we moved to Brentwood we had milk delivered but it was from a van, but they delivered about 11.00 so when we got home, it was yogurt.  We soon stopped it.  Around here there are, on some steps, insulated containers for milk, although I do not remember ever seeing a delivery vehicle.

[tanatvalley]

I can remember having sterilized milk when visiting relatives in Wolverhampton in the 50s and 60s.

 

Alan