wagonman

I assume you're referring to the Diagram Book which had basic drawings and various technical details – dimensions and capacity etc. I think this was a relatively late (c1900) introduction. A similar volume was produced for coaching stock so fish wagons could have appeared in either. Copies of the originals are probably kept at the NRM though they have been pillaged by the likes of OPC over the years.

I can't lay my hands on actual source material at the moment but would suggest that someone at the BGS or the HMRS could help you.

I have found a piece I wrote a few years back for the S7 Newsletter, I think:

"A close reading of David Bick’s “The Old Metal Mines of Mid-Wales, Part 3”—I’m old fashioned enough to resort to books rather than the internet, especially when they are already sitting in my book-stack—shows that Balcombe had interests in several mines in the area, not just Blaencaelen, and that he ‘enjoyed’ typically mixed fortunes from his ventures. Between 1852 and 1885 Blaencaelen (Bick calls it Blaen Ceulen) produced a (not very) grand total of 438 tons of lead, 18 tons of copper and a little blende (zinc)—but no silver apparently; his interest in this mine dated only from 1870 and was marked by the usual hyperbolic nonsense about its prospects. Good ore was found in the Engine shaft lode and also in the 10 fathom* level—and indeed 250 tons of ore were sold that year—but it petered out very quickly and by July 1873 another company was running the mine.

If the wagons—I am reasonably certain there were at least two of them—had been used they would presumably have been kept in the yard at Aberystwyth until sufficient ore concentrate had been carted down from the mine to form a worthwhile load when it would have been taken to Llanelli or Neath, or wherever, for smelting. It would have acted as a secure store while in the yard; the only reference I can find to a fixed secure ore store at Aberystwyth station is to a Mr Harvey who was given a site for one in the yard for £5 a year rent. But that was in 1874. It is interesting to note that the intended purpose of the store was to enable the mineral to be dispatched by rail rather than by sea, not that there is any sign of such a store at the harbour either, at least not on the 1885 OS map, the earliest available.

I doubt there would have been much trouble unloading the wagons: with the hatch open wide and the front ‘door’ out, a man standing in the middle with a long shovel could have reached all parts of the wagon easily enough at least by C19 standards. What happened elsewhere is another matter. Correspondence exists between the mine managers at Van (the only lead mine in Wales actually to be rail connected) and the Cambrian’s goods agent at Caersws asking specifically for empty low sided wagons with sheets for loading with their ore concentrate. Such wagons are visible in the background of a couple of the (few) photographs of the Van railway that exist, so that would seem to be the accepted means of transportation.

The same no doubt applied at Nantymwyn where the ore was carted down to Llandovery station. Once in Llandovery it was placed in a special store house (just behind the LNWR engine shed and near the gas works) with its own bit of siding—PSA dated 2/10/1879, ceased 25/12/1901.

*Old miners used the fathom as their unit of measurement—for the benefit of those schooled in the last 40 years or so, a fathom is six feet, or 1.83 metres in new money, or just over four cubits in very old money."

A few additional bits of information, and corrections to what I wrote earlier.

Richard

The lead ore produced at Welsh mines was crushed on site to concentrate the ore content, and then carried to Swansea or wherever for smelting. The ore produced at Nantymwyn mine, north of Llandovery, was carted to Llandovery station – this traffic providing a useful income supplement for local farmers who were paid 5s 10d per ton. At Llandovery it was kept in a secure store in the goods yard before being loaded onto railway wagons for the trip to Swansea. The Van mine, which actually had rail access, shipped out its crushed ores in low-sided (2 plank mostly) wagons that were sheeted for the journey. Presumably the same happened to the traffic from Llandovery, though in this case in LNWR wagons (D2 or even D1).

Balcombe's wagons are a bit of a puzzle: there's no trace in my transcript of the Gloucester agendas but carrying a 'builders and owners' plate probably meant it was on redemption hire – and would probably have been repossessed before the hire period was up given the state of Balcombe's finances. Why he decided on a secure fixed roof rather than wagon sheets is unknown though may have been due to the wagon being used as mobile secure storage while awaiting onward transmission. 

Unfortunately I can't find my notes so can't give a more detailed response.

Alas I can't help with any actual details (have you tried the BGS?) but would offer the suggestion that if the GWR added another side door to the converted fish wagons it would likely be symmetrical – door openings the same distance from either end.

Trips to London from school c1960, which travelled via the B&H line, often seemed to arrive at platform 11 under the 'new' roof. I don't know about parcels, but there was usually an all-pervading smell of fish.

3 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

 

But I don't think that I have ever seen a railway sign in (Scottish) Gaelic before the current fashion. Did the Irish companies have (Irish) Gaelic signs before the Free State?

 I've not seen any Irish station name boards in Erse in pre Free State photos.

On 11/12/2023 at 21:03, The Johnster said:

 Never really wanted to be a grown-up and don't see why I should start behaving like one now. 

 Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

Richard 

On 12/12/2023 at 15:52, 45655 said:

Actually, it was stigmatised by policy.  This goes back to Thomas Cromwell's Laws in Wales Act of 1535, which imposed English as the administrative and legal language of Wales. 

 

Keith

Alton.

During the C19 and early C20 the use of Welsh in schools was actively discouraged by the use of the 'Welsh Not', a wooden board on strings that was hung around the neck of any pupil heard using the language during school hours. This was not so far as i know a legal requirement but was common practice in south an d west Wales.

Richard

On 24/11/2023 at 13:53, rka said:

Can anyone help on articles which are about models based on the central Wales line please? 

Railway Modelling 101 suggests you model the prototype rather than models of it! Alternatively make it up – my long term project* is to model a mineral railway that could have run north from Llandovery, but unaccountably never did.

* long term project means unlikely to be anywhere near complete before I snuff it.

22 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

On a phone-in program on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday a caller said that all 5 year olds should be taught the 4 'R's.  Reading, writing, arithmetic and realism.  They should also be taught what an oxymoron is and that the biggest oxymoron is an 'honest politician'.  There is no such thing in the entire world!

 

Jim

There are a few, very few, decent and honest politicians around – and they are generally roundly vilified by their opponents, their colleagues, and the media. Maybe we really do get the politicians we deserve...

On 26/09/2023 at 17:08, airnimal said:

  I asked if they had any sandwiches for vegetarians.  Take the meat out came the stony faced reply.  Thanks Easyjet.  

 

All too common response to vegetarians, still. One of the reasons I don't travel much any more.

23 hours ago, Simond said:

frankly I think the BoE calculator is not telling the whole truth...  If one assumed a constant 6% inflation, it would be more than £5440, and I imagine it would be possible to get a helicopter to Aylesbury for that.

Indeed you could – helicopter hire is around £800 per hour (flying time) but you'd have to go to Battersea to board it. Flying time includes time taken to get from its base to/from Battersea.

For a definitive answer, ask Mr Sunak. He seems to be an expert in these things!

On 11/09/2023 at 12:51, WFPettigrew said:

 

I guess the bottom line will be, err, the bottom line.  And as well as "simpler" it was also probably cheaper to go round the coast by ship, compared to the cost of carrying all the timber across the country by rail, which is really why they would have done it?!

It was definitely cheaper to send stuff by sea than by land – hence Tyne coal was still being shipped to ports in North Cornwall in the mid C20.

I have the Peter K version sitting in my pile of unmade kits. I suspect my executors will get to it before I do! It is supposed to be rather better than the usual run of his kits.

On 08/09/2023 at 15:44, Andy Hayter said:

 

As already pointed out, chicken farming was on a miniscule scale compared with today.  Rabbits might be more likely at this time but even here it would need a lot of cages - that could easily be conveyed in passenger traffic - to fill even one wagon.  Geese for Xmas (a la Sankt Martin for Germany) might just have demanded a few wagons, but (like the Polish geese) I have seen accounts of ducks and geese being herded long distances over the course of a week or more.  (Norfolk to London is one example I remember.)

 

Rabbits were much more likely to be deadstock than live. The was a steady traffic in (dead) rabbits from the warrens of Breckland to London via the GER.

Turkeys and geese, on the other hand, walked to market – often up to 100 miles. This tradition dated back to at least the C17 and lasted into the 1930s.

On 28/08/2023 at 10:48, drduncan said:

Actually I think some were branded ‘Fish traffic only’ rather than ‘milk and fish’ but I also remember seeing a 6w siphon so branded being loaded with milk churns, but I can’t remember where I saw it! 
D

 I know the photo. It was taken somewhere on the Salisbury branch – Wylye I think.

12 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

"we were careful to differentiate between what we knew as fact, what we had gleaned from secondary sources without being able to fact check, and what we surmised by analysis of the material we had"

That describes the dilemma pretty well. A problem is that there are some people who will say that one shouldn't publish anything unless it is certain fact. That would mean that very little was ever published.

Minutes: what those writing the minutes would like to have happened

Photos; could too easily be altered

Vehicle records: not always accurate

Memories: unreliable

So what is left?

Jonathan

Of course you often have to publish what you know in the sure and certain belief that fresh knowledge will become available soon after – probably as a result of your publication! Evidence, even from primary sources, has to be evaluated as we cannot always be certain of the context in which it was created: 'official' drawings of vehicles which never actually existed being a case in point. Clerical errors did happen.

The Lightmoor Press 'house style' eschews endnotes so we have to smuggle sources into the main text. Where something is conjectural, we say so, giving the evidence available. Their books are after all aimed at a general readership rather than an academic one.

30 Dorchester Road, round the back of Paddington station, was the GWR/Western Region's records store (though dump might be a more appropriate word) which they were in the process of closing down. It had shelves full of miscellaneous and totally unsorted correspondence, various documents like Private Siding Agreements and Cartage Agreements, personnel records, plus a few precious books like the Registers. There were also thousands of drawings which Mike Jolly and Colin Waite were cataloguing for the BGS. This little empire was presided over by Robin Lidster and his very able assistant Ian (damn, I've forgotten his surname) and a few superannuated employees who it's assumed were put out to grass there. In addition there were the 'volunteers' led by David Hyde who were ostensibly there to weed the records but mostly took the opportunity to do our own research. The only other person there who I knew personally was Adrian Vaughan. The only perks, apart from access to an A3 photocopier, were the free X passes for train travel to and from one's home – in this case my girlfriend's place in Norfolk rather than my flat in London! Is there a statute of limitations on this?

The Chippenham archive is the Wilts County Record Office, now incorporating the Swindon records as well.

Montague's book had a good selection of photos, but the captions were uninformative at best, downright wrong at worst. Why were there in effect two versions of the History? Why was the index so wastefully laid out? The main reason for resenting Montague's work – which looked like it had been thrown together over a weekend – is that it killed the market for a proper job.

BTW, I have a feeling it might have been Sandy Croall who cracked the enigma of the solebar code.

Wagon company records, where they survive at all, are scattered all over the place: Birmingham Wagon Co records are at Stafford, Lincoln Wagon & Engine records are in Edinburgh, for example. Thank goodness Gloucester Wagon Co records are in ... Gloucester!

A few points about Gloucester Owners' plates: these were applied to both simple hire wagons and deferred payment wagons – in the latter case they were presumably removed after the payments had been completed. I haven't managed to pin down exactly when the rectangular style gave way to the elongated 'G' but suspect it was about the time of the introduction of the 1887 RCH scheme. I did read an explanation of the painted solebar code many years ago but have alas forgotten it. I think it was, as you suggest, in the HMRS Journal about the time everyone was doing a, well-deserved, hatchet job on Montague's book.

There are three pre-1887 GWR Registers extant, one broad gauge and the other two narrow. They contain internal evidence pointing to the existence of further volumes, now lost. The BG volume was interesting as many of the earliest entries were retrospective, there being a column specifically for the age of the wagon at the time of registration. I haven't seen them since I worked on them at Porchester Road in the mid-'80s where they were discovered by David Hyde and set aside for preservation. They may have gone to Chippenham, possibly via Swindon.

Without further specific research any more comments by me are superfluous...

13 hours ago, drduncan said:

A very interesting wagon. I don’t suppose you have any key dimensions such as length, wheelbase etc?

Duncan

The dimension board is attached to the solebar and not that easy to read: it was 12' 6" long, 6' 9" wide, with 10" high sides rising to 28" under the peak – all dimensions internal of course. With flap open and the front "door" removed it should not have been too difficult to get at the cargo with a long handled shovel.

That said, there was some doubt about the actual use of the wagons. They are not to be found in the Gloucester Wagon Co Agendas (summary of orders) and yet they were photographed by the works cameraman. The photo is dated October 1871, and Balcombe's interest in Blaencaelan was over by 1873 at  the latest, so their working lives may have been short – or they may have been sold on for use elsewhere by Balcombe or A N Other. I am assuming that there were at least two of them.

On 21/08/2023 at 16:39, wagonman said:

The crushed lead ore produced at the Van mine in central Wales was transported in sheeted 1 or 2 plank wagons. In this case the sheet was presumably to provide protection from tea leaves rather than rain! AFAIK the ore travelled to south Wales for processing, some (from other mines) even being sent by ship from Aberystwyth. Was there any lead smelting in N Wales?

I've not had access to the Aberystwyth Port Books so I only assumed the ore went by sea as the store shed appeared to be on the quay. But there is a documentary reference to a fixed secure ore store at Aberystwyth station is to a Mr Harvey who was given a site for one in the yard for £5 a year rent. But that was in 1874. And it it was after Balcombe had ceased to have an interest in the Blaencaelan mine.

Another point: there exists correspondence between the Van mines and the Cambrian Railways Goods Agent specifically requesting 1 and 2 plank wagons with sheets for their ore traffic.

20 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

First thoughts:

 

Not sure why it was sheeted, but I don't buy the protection from theft idea.

 

Galena, lead ore, is very heavy - like the lead it produces - and you could hardly get away with a fortune in your pocket.

 

Second thoughts:

The ore was relatively rich in silver - not entirely unexpected* - but this still does not make it worthwhile to finger a few lumps.

* Many lead mines produced silver as a by-product.

 

Third thoughts:

The mine produced 4 parts lead ore to 1 part zinc ore (which I would guess would be zinc blende).  So could the covered wagons be the zinc ores? but I can think of no reason why you would need to protect zinc blende.  

 

https://www.nmrs.org.uk/publication/the-van-mines/

 

https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/metal/central-wales-mines/van-mines/

 

This is slightly undermined by the roofed lead ore wagons built by the Gloucester Wagon Co for J B Balcombe which came fitted with a chunky padlock. There were also secure lead ore stores at Llandovery station and Aberystwyth harbour – there may have others but these two I know about – presumably for the accumulation of enough ores for a cargo. I won't argue that it was probably the silver content that made the stuff nickable – except there was no silver in the Blaencaelan ore!

The crushed lead ore produced at the Van mine in central Wales was transported in sheeted 1 or 2 plank wagons. In this case the sheet was presumably to provide protection from tea leaves rather than rain! AFAIK the ore travelled to south Wales for processing, some (from other mines) even being sent by ship from Aberystwyth. Was there any lead smelting in N Wales?

On 03/08/2023 at 22:45, 57xx said:

With added film grain and taken the edge off the focus.

Given that most photographers were using large format plates I doubt 'grain' would have been an issue. Nor indeed would focus – a least for a static subject like this. By the turn of the century optical design had reached a high degree of sophistication with only coating and the use of aspherical elements yet to come, plus the use of computers for the number crunching (in the 1840s Petzval had to call on the Austrian army for that job).