Midland Railway Company

[Grahams]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

The Midland Railway Society's stand at ExpoEM over the weekend was, I think, a great success...

Very pleased to welcome two new members to the Society. 

 

 

MRS Journal Editor Andrew Surry with the MRS stand on Saturday morning.

An excellent result, again confirming the value of the stands at specialist shows. 

[Grahams]

My 'new' acquisition, a Midland Railway milepost 156¼ miles from St Pancras. Dave Harris at the Study Centre has kindly provide four potential sites for the post as follows: 

The Manchester line at the north end of Headstone Viaduct before Monday Dale Station.
On the ‘Old Road’ between Beighton Junction and Woodhouse Mill (just south of where the GC crossed).
In the same area on the Staveley Curve just short of Beighton Colliery Branch Junction
And on the Chesterfield - Sheffield line midway between Millhouses and Healey.

I'm drawn to the Monsal Dale location because I stay regularly in the Dale and the thought of having a post in my garden which was present for every train ever to pass that point on the line is very appealing. 
According to 'Midland Style', the posts would have been white with black letters in Midland days. This one has white paint over yellow. The current top coat of white has probably been added over the yellow after the post was removed from its former trackside position. 

The posts still in situ by the main line are yellow and have been for as long as I can remember. They are now looking very tatty. I am informed that they are no longer of any value to the railway and are removed when they are in the way. This was my main motivation for buying this one, in order to save one before they are all gone.

I now have to decide whether to have it sandblasted and 'restore' it or to leave it with its painting history intact (my preferred option). I do want it white so it will be cleaned and made to look smarter in any case. 

I am tempted to accuse British Railways of the yellow travesty although it could have been the LMS. I have no evidence. 
Does anyone know when the mileposts were repainted yellow please?

[Compound2632]

20 minutes ago, Grahams said:

My 'new' acquisition, a Midland Railway milepost 156¼ miles from St Pancras.

 

I've long though one of these would be excellent for one's house number. The snag is that the mileposts are less impressive objects than the quarter-mile post like yours. Somehow No. 156¼ Kirtley Avenue sounds just a bit too much like a new-build house squeezed with several others onto a plot on which one house with bedrooms in which one could actually fit a bed previously stood!

[Grahams]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I've long though one of these would be excellent for one's house number. The snag is that the mileposts are less impressive objects than the quarter-mile post like yours. Somehow No. 156¼ Kirtley Avenue sounds just a bit too much like a new-build house squeezed with several others onto a plot on which one house with bedrooms in which one could actually fit a bed previously stood!

I'll probably make a full size 3D printed milepost with different numbers. It will be in three pieces. The largest face will fit on my biggest printer. 

Another one for the project list 🤣

[billbedford]

Does anyone know if the Study Group has a drawing of a D.400 horsebox? I have the drawing of the D.401, but the D.400 looks like more of a challenge. 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

Does anyone know if the Study Group has a drawing of a D.400 horsebox? I have the drawing of the D.401, but the D.400 looks like more of a challenge. 

 

A quick interrogation of the Carriage & Wagon Register and Study Centre C&W Drawing Catalogue at https://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/CW/ shows that Drg. 1214 for the D400 horseboxes of lots 413 and 458 is Study Centre item 88-D0070. It has been scanned, I'll send you a copy.

[Osaker]

Hi, I'm looking for info on this banking engine that ended up as Midland property, does anyone know if any more info or visual representations exist? This info is from Wikipedia btw so take it as you will.

[lezz01]

I have seen either a photo or engraving of it so there is visual confirmation that it existed. It has a very odd shaped tank and it was a monster.

Regards Lez.  

[Fair Oak Junction]

I found this a few years ago, but obviously no idea how accurate it is given the description.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, Osaker said:

Hi, I'm looking for info on this banking engine that ended up as Midland property, does anyone know if any more info or visual representations exist? This info is from Wikipedia btw so take it as you will.

 

E.L. Ahrons, The British Steam Locomotive 1825-1925 (The Locomotive Publishing Co., 1927) p. 59, 'Banking Engines':

 

'For the Lickey Incline, J.E. McConnell converted some of the Norris American tender engines into saddle tank engines, and in June, 1845, built at Bromsgrove a heavy six-wheels coupled saddle tank engine, the "Great Britain", for this special service. Unfortunately, no illustration of this locomotive, at that time the most powerful in the country, is known to exist, but the following particulars were given in the Gauge report:* - Cylinders, outside, 18 in by 26 in, placed at 6 ft 2 in centres; six coupled wheels, 3 ft 9 in diameter; wheel base, 6 ft 9¾in + 6 ft 11 in; boiler, 12 ft long, of oval section, 3 ft 10 in vertical, 3 ft 9 in horizontal diameter; 134 2 in tubes, 12 ft 6 in long; the weight was 30 tons, of which 12 tons was carried on the middle and 9 tons on each of the other axles. As the height of the lower edge of the cylinders was only 2 ft above rail level, these must have been attached to the frames below the smoke-box without the steep inclination which was the fault of so many engines at the time. As the firebox casing was 4 ft 4½ in wide, the inside frames cannot have extended to the back buffer beam, though what arrangement was made for the trailing bearings is not known. The water was carried in a saddle tank, 11 ft 9 in long. It was stated by Mr McConnell that this engine had taken a gross load of 135 tons up the incline of 1 in 37 at 8 to 10 miles per hour.'

 

*Report from the Royal Commission on Broad and Narrow Gauge Railways (Parliamentary Papers, 1845)

 

The evidence put before the Gauge commission was published; that volume is online:

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/GaugeCommission_Evidence1846.pdf

See p. 163 of the pdf (p. 82 of the book) for this engine - the details are rather briefer and not entirely in agreement with those given by Ahrons! Evidently the draughtsman of the 'conjectural reconstruction' posted by @Fair Oak Junction was working from Ahrons' account.

 

McConnell's evidence was particularly important as he had practical experience of the inconvenience of the break of gauge at Gloucester. He was also one of the first to really understand the dynamics of railway vehicles and to grasp that the supposed advantages of the broad gauge were spurious, both in terms of hunting and rolling of vehicles - the larger the ratio of wheelbase to gauge, the less hunting; the larger the ratio of centre of gravity to gauge, the greater the proportion of stress placed on the track vertically (the direction in which the track is strong) to horizontally (where it spreads the gauge). 

[Nick Lawson]

20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Norris American tender engines

Also from wikimedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:England_locomotive.jpg

 

Thanks to all for broadening my education with this topic.

[Compound2632]

36 minutes ago, Nick Lawson said:

Also from wikimedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:England_locomotive.jpg

 

There's a whole half a book on the Norris locomotives: D. Hunt, Midland Record Supplement No. 1 American Locomotives of the Midland Railway (Wild Swan, 1997).

 

[DenysW]

On 16/05/2024 at 09:20, Compound2632 said:

the supposed advantages of the broad gauge were spurious

I thought it was more that the claimed advantages (faster, safer, more powerful) boiled down to 'can accept larger inside cylinders provided that your track and civil structures can accept greater axle-loadings'. Brunel did not design for these, not realising that when he added 50% to the track gauge he probably needed to add 50% to the maximum axle-loading.

 

The locomotives do seem to have been less prone to falling over in derailments, so a smidge safer.

[Compound2632]

37 minutes ago, DenysW said:

The locomotives do seem to have been less prone to falling over in derailments, so a smidge safer.

 

Can you produce statistical evidence for this?

 

I think it's more that, with locomotives an rolling stock of roughly similar sizes, the lateral forces on the rails would be greater for the broad gauge. The most likely accident-causing consequence would, I think, be gauge spreading. The massive construction of the baulk road may have mitigated against this, though.

 

The obsession with low centre-of-gravity resulted in the standard gauge engineers of the 1840s producing some weird and wonderful engines, of which the Cramptons were perhaps the least unsuccessful, at a time when Gooch was producing engines that were in themselves sound in principle and in practice. David Joy's 'Jenny Lind' showed what a practical, reliable standard gauge engine should look like; the Midland wisely bought a good-sized batch.

[DenysW]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Can you produce statistical evidence for this?

It was an assertion from "Trains in Trouble" (but I can't trace the volume number) accompanying a photo of a broad-gauge locomotive that had not fallen over.

[WFPettigrew]

38 minutes ago, DenysW said:

It was an assertion from "Trains in Trouble"

 

Adrian Vaughan said similar regarding the bad crash at Aynho (that it would have been worse if it had been SG) in, IIRC, his GWR Signalling book.

 

Best wishes

 

Neil 

[Compound2632]

Just now, WFPettigrew said:

Adrian Vaughan said similar regarding the bad crash at Aynho (that it would have been worse if it had been SG) in, IIRC, his GWR Signalling book.

 

A biased author, perhaps. 

[WFPettigrew]

44 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

biased author

 

Possibly yes. 

 

Though he was from Earley!

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, WFPettigrew said:

Though he was from Earley!

 

Then his first loyalty should have been to the South Eastern Railway.

[Binky]

I have a question regarding Midland station colours and signage and how long it lasted post-grouping.

 

I've read that the LMS were slow at repainting stations and that some stations retained their pre-grouping colours into the 1930s. Would Midland station signs, running in boards, poster boards etc also have lasted that long or were they replaced more quickly? Could a station retaining Midland paint and signage be believable on a layout set in the mid to late 1920s?

 

Thanks

[DenysW]

13 hours ago, Binky said:

I've read that the LMS were slow at repainting stations and that some stations retained their pre-grouping colours into the 1930s.

I've read the same, followed by the comment that the 1920s/1930s LMS therefore gained a reputation for having run-down-looking stations, realised in the mid-1930s that this would be affecting business, so started fixing it.

[DenysW]

There have been questions on this thread about the Midland loading gauge(s). I note the 1901 "Railway Magazine" asserts that the 1901 "Railway Year Book" contains 5 pages of drawings of loading gauges. As it's ZPER 46/4 at Kew I'll have a look on my next trip. My skepticism about success is that the two publications come from the same company, so a sales-pitch cannot be ruled out.

[DenysW]

At the risk of contradicting @Compound2632's view of the case, I've now had a look at the Somerset & Dorset and the Bristol & Exeter numbers. Summary:

 

- The S&D was a lost cause even in 1862 on its foundation. It had no realistic prospect of making money. By 1872 its Capital was £2.2M, and its net income from traffic was around £7k/year, insufficient even to service its re-structured (in 1864) debt that had given the debt-owners a haircut

- Its non-Capital debt was increasing year-on-year and it's not obvious why it wasn't declared insolvent. Possibly its creditors thought that would just make it official that all their money was gone

- From 1866 it had cut costs to the bone by running mostly Mixed trains, which cannot have helped attract passengers

- The Midland and LSWR rented it for a very generous £28k/year, just enough to service its debt at the restructured rates and pay a miserable 1.7% on the Bath Extension Ordinary Shares, but nothing on the rest (of the Shares). 

 

- The B&E was a well-founded profitable railway with £5M of capital in 1874

- In 1848 when its directors did not let the GWR renew leasing its lines, it probably regarded the GWR as a debt-ridden company about to hit bad times, with large ambitions for growth that were poorly aligned with enriching the B&E by growing B&E traffic

- By 1875 its directors could view the GWR as having recovered from its early over-fast expansion, to have paid off its mortgages on its assets, and to be well-aligned with their interests

- As the Midland paid better dividends than the B&E from about 1860 onwards it could probably have bought it, if it wanted to divert the money away from its more directly relevant expansions to London and Manchester

 

I therefore conclude that the Midland/LSWR 'takeover' of the S&D would not have influenced the B&E directors and thus not forced them into the GWR camp.

 

B&E and GWR Dividends:

 

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, DenysW said:

At the risk of contradicting @Compound2632's view of the case, I've now had a look at the Somerset & Dorset and the Bristol & Exeter numbers. Summary:

 

I wouldn't argue with that from the financial angle. Having looked at SCR and SDR minutes purely from an interest in rolling stock, I came away with the impression that the SDR's collapse was precipitated by the death of Lord Rivers in April 1866 - i.e. that he had been propping the company up. I suspect this may be analogous to the case of the Earl of Yarborough, chairman of the Money Sunk & Lost in the 1850s. Why should that nobleman associate himself with a struggling railway company? Because he was the largest landowner in Lincolnshire: the gain in income from his estates as a result of them having access to the railway no doubt more than compensated for his losses on railway shares. (He it was who offered to pay £1,000 to anyone dealt a hand at whist with no card higher than a nine, if they paid him £1 for every hand they played. He'd worked out that the odds on such a hand are 1:1828.)

 

As to the B&E, I'm not surprised to learn that it was on a sounder footing than the GW in the 1860s. Daniel Gooch was at the head of the group of railway chairmen who went cap in hand to government in 1866, begging for nationalisation.

 

My view of the effect of the S&D lease on the B&E is derived from Robin Atthill, The Somerset & Dorset Railway (David & Charles, 1967). 

[DenysW]

As well as showing rolling stock purchased on the never-never, the entry for the S&D Capital for the first half of 1867 certainly mentions 'guaranteed by Directors' a couple of times, which I've not seen in other companies' accounts: