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Black Country Blues


Indomitable026
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A change of interest - was there still a carpet weaving industry in the modelled area and time frame ?

SWMBO's father came from a long line of carpet weavers, based in Oldbury.

If so, would there be any special wagons for finished carpets or the raw materials?

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A change of interest - was there still a carpet weaving industry in the modelled area and time frame ?

SWMBO's father came from a long line of carpet weavers, based in Oldbury.

If so, would there be any special wagons for finished carpets or the raw materials?

The carpet industry was centred around Kidderminster I think. Not sure about specific wagons or how active the industry was in our timeframe. Would hazard a guess at vanfits or containers for finished carpets; maybe highs for raw materials? Interested to find out more if anyone has any suggestions.

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Managed to find our way over to Bolsover, but still in need of a good navigator, so not stopping..

post-57-0-65317400-1343161185.jpg

 

Definitely got a bit lost now, ended up in this place called Glen Gillie:

post-57-0-48553700-1343161307.jpg

 

Managed to find the road back to England, and have stopped for a break in Widnes:

post-57-0-66699200-1343161341.jpg

 

Huh! Leave your car for just a few minutes and some wag has moved it!

post-57-0-08318100-1343161374.jpg

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Pity it doesn't show about 50 yards further to the left where the flat crossing was.

 

What, this flat crossing :whistle:

 

The original alignment

 

post-6861-0-94590400-1343161479.jpg

 

The new alignment post 1970 following significant alterations to the works layout and facilities

 

post-6861-0-11797900-1343161494.jpg

 

and one of the locos crossing with a train, no later than June 1963 when the fleets last steam loco went. After that a fleet of eleven Yorkshire DE2 0-4-0DE's handled the traffic.

 

post-6861-0-93954700-1343161502.jpg

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BSC steel processing Mark. You need one of Judith Edge's Yorkshire diesels finished in a Round Oakesque style

 

Carpet making - Jute was brought down in vans from Dundee to Kidderminster for the industry, latterly in supervans if my memory serves me.

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post-12739-0-29005800-1343255502.jpg

 

I'm thinking the end section with a full depth of the skirt, and butting against

the side skirts, with a nominal 2" x 2" block in each corner, screwed, would

add considerable strength and stop a lot of whip.

 

The arrangement you have does not appear to cash-in on using the strength

of plywood, edgewise. May be someone else can see the same weakness.

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Carpet making - Jute was brought down in vans from Dundee to Kidderminster for the industry, latterly in supervans if my memory serves me.

 

Cheers Phil. Use of supervans suggests the traffic flow lasted longer than I expected and could be another source of traffic passing by along our line.

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I really need Mikeh to help me here but in my dark recesses I have a speedlink flow from Dundee which died in the early 80s. May have been off 4V10 which I think was a Glasgow-Bristol speedlink - probably the reverse of 4S38.

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The carpet industry was centred around Kidderminster I think. Not sure about specific wagons or how active the industry was in our timeframe. Would hazard a guess at vanfits or containers for finished carpets; maybe highs for raw materials? Interested to find out more if anyone has any suggestions.

My reply seems to have vanished. Anyway traffic being despatched from Kidderminster in the late 1960s (and I think into the 1970s) was mainly - if not entirely - on mail order company account and a lot of it went as Passenger Rated although it wasn't unusual for a Vanfit to come up on the 19.53 Kiddie-Padd parcels (not infrequently containing only one roll of carpet or lino). I believe at least one of the mail order houses also sent traffic Goods Rated but don't know if any emanated from the Kidderminster area.

 

Woolworths definitely received Freight Rated traffic and that included lino for some of their larger shops but I don't know when NCL turned it all over to road haulage.

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What are these "supervans" of which you speak?

As I understand it, supervan refers to the air braked vans in the VAA - VDA family, but I've only recently heard them referred to as such so I could be wrong.

 

Was it BR-speak at the time to call them supervans?

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BSC steel processing Mark. You need one of Judith Edge's Yorkshire diesels finished in a Round Oakesque style

 

Cheers for that Phil. At this stage, we've gone for a Janus rather than the YE 0-4-0s that were at RO; although I'd like to think we have room in the fleet for one of these in the future.

5128237766_b989bd2ab9_z.jpg

Round Oak Steelworks by Lost-Albion, on Flickr

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In my job in the early 1980s I got to ride on the Saloon when the boss went out and about. We had a real Black Country Blue trip late in 1982, joining at Langley Green, running out to Hartlebury then back to Walsall via Dudley. Photography was difficult as it didn't really get light all day, but I have just retrieved some thin old negatives that were passed over at the time from the archive. They were taken as the gloom gathered at Round Oak South, so apologies for the quality but some of the content may be of interest, especially as it was just a few weeks before the works closed.

 

All photographs copyright C E Steele

 

post-9767-0-76664400-1343593599_thumb.jpg

Our transport for the day - Blue Rat and Walsall Saloon

 

post-9767-0-26044600-1343593573_thumb.jpg

Kingswinford Junction South Box

 

post-9767-0-58393100-1343593605_thumb.jpg

Signal No3 Up line by site of old station

 

post-9767-0-13909500-1343593581_thumb.jpg

The works with a YE shunter

 

post-9767-0-11916100-1343593594_thumb.jpg

The flat crossing

 

post-9767-0-52585500-1343593587_thumb.jpg

Looking towards Pensnett

 

Captions updated 30/7/2012

Edited by TheSignalEngineer
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