What About The Bee

On Saturday, 9 August 1828, the Newcastle Courant describes a passenger carriage that it firmly states belongs to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This carriage offers a unique view in what was to come, as this was two YEARS before the LMR was to open! Moreover, although the carriage did run, it was not regular service, nor was it on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. But it was pulled by a defacto LMR locomotive. Confused? The Bolton and Leigh Railway (B&LR) The locomotive used on opening day was the Lancashire Witch. The Lancashire Witch was of Robert Stephenson construction, ordered by the LMR in Jan 1828. The LMR presented the order to the B&LR. This article is not about the Lancashire Witch, yet the oddity of an LMR locomotive pulling an LMR carriage years before the LMR opened was an oddity I could not resist! The consist had 7 waggons attached and at the very end "was a ponderous vehicle, a coach belonging to the Liverpool and Manchester Company, built on the French diligence system." What is a French Diligence? We have literally dozens of horse drawn stage coach images from advertisements, showing inside and outside seating. Yet the stage coach was a tiny affair. In general, the term outside seating seems to refer to seats exposed to the elements, not necessarily on the roof. Some coaches even were on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The French diligence system essentially ganged multiple stage coach bodies into one. Here is an image of a French Diligence, one so labeled in the period. This should look familiar to LMR enthusiasts, as it is similar to the LMR 1st class glass carriages. The Newcastle Courant goes on to say that it was designed for 16 inside passengers and 4 outside passengers; but that on opening day, there were at least a dozen [additional?] on the roof. This passage in the Newcastle Courant confused me. We know that carriage compartments were either 4 or 6 inside, each, so how did the Diligence design for 16? Further, where are the 4 outside seats? Francis Whishaw, Railways of Great Britain and Ireland, details the seating. Instead of divided bench seating, there were no dividers, it was 4 abreast. Two benches per compartment, two compartments. 16 inside seats. The front coupe or chaise was open, unlike the illustration above. Single bench facing forward, 4 abreast. 4 outside seats. Regular passenger service on the L&BR did not begin until 1831, so this LMR carriage only saw brief service. Yet it is one of the first LMR passenger carriages, designed from the start as a passenger carriage, not a waggon adapted to purpose. Bee

Hi Colin I remain unconvinced that LesXRN's photographs were intended for your benefit. Rather, I suspect he was trying to show @Firehawkone possible attachment method.... Bee

https://www.hornbyhobbies.com/products/playtrains-solo-controller-r7330 It is the Hornby US Outlet. Claims to have them in stock. Have them ship to you in the UK. Bee Edit: also a bunch of other playtrains stuff there, to expand the layout. May make the shipping more palatable

That would also be quite realistic, too! Henry Booth, Treasurer of the LMR, patented the screw link coupling in 1836

Well now, that makes perfect sense. If all the images are lumped together, and not in individual galleries, then the delete function would mean that another correspondent could delete my images. Thanks for noticing that Ellocoloco. But if everyone can delete anyone's images, chaos can occur. So the delete function is restricted. And that is sensible. Once the galleries are separated, the delete function should return Bee

Hi ThreeLink That Clayton image at the Bridgewater Canal is the most confounding image. Everything is strange, not the least of which are the carriages/waggons. I have struggled place it. The key feature, for me, are the very low walls of the carriages, consistent with the common railway waggon. Were the doorways on the ends instead of the sides? The drawing in the Olive Mount Cutting shows no doors on the sides. The perspective errors you present help to explain the diminutive nature of the wheels. Clayton did go on to draw other railways, perhaps the novelty of the scene in 1830 got beyond him Bee

Thank you for the deletion. Appreciated. I have gone back into my gallery and selected an arbitrary image. There is not a "tick box" in the upper right corner. For reference, Android phone. I did a long press on the image, and a drop down labeled "image tools" appeared. The only option was to set the image as my profile image. I think this may be along the lines of users not being able to delete posts either. Bee

I've erroneously uploaded a gallery image. It was incorrect. How do I delete it? Bee

It is no secret that I have been searching deeply in period British newspapers. I've looked at literally thousands of references. This search has been confounded by the early fascination with stock prices, as many early railway companies were funded by stock. Thus a significant amount of chaff, or worthless references, unless you care for the stock price of the LMR. I will begin with the earliest piece of rolling stock, what the LMR termed a ... "Common Railway Wagon". The phrase appears in a report about the opening of the Wapping Tunnel. Not the opening of the entire railway, just the opening of the tunnel. There is another sentence near that phrase: "the handsome machines [carriages] for passengers not being yet finished". So 3 Aug 1829 is a key date. There were no passenger carriages before then. We know the Mayor of Liverpool mounted the "common railway waggon" to joyride in the tunnel, in a waggon "fitted up with seats". What was a common railway waggon? On 30 December 1826, Henry Booth placed an advertisement for axles and waggon wheels. Now they could not have been for any passenger carriage. Nor cattle, pig or sheep waggon. All those were years in the future, from other reports. Not for any type of passenger carriage, the early LMR focus was freight. These wheels and axles were for the construction of the railway. The Lancaster Gazette 25 Nov 1826 presents us with information that work on the tunnel had commenced and that work in the Olive Mount Cutting was about to begin. That was only a month before the advertisement. We have two views of great interest. Both purport to be of construction in the Olive Mount Cutting Notice anything about those waggons? Small. Boxlike. They resemble ... R60164. These are our likely candidate for a "common railway waggon". We can tell they were used in the construction of the Wapping Tunnel. Here is a view of the construction of the tunnel. Note rail on cross ties leading into the tunnel mouth. The same waggons used at Olive Mount would also be in the tunnel, just meters away. About 60 days later, the Rainhill Trials occurred, 6 thru 14 October 1829. They used a certain waggon, detailed here. The newspaper says the common railway waggons were fitted up with seats, so as to joyride in the tunnel. And finally, we come to this. There is an obscure image of passengers on the LMR, by Clayton. Passengers in odd carriages without explanation. Passengers in the Olive Mount Cutting. Notice the same small boxlike appearance. The size of the waggons compared to the tender. I would propose that these are the common railway waggons fitted up with seats for the tunnel joyrides. Then used to transport passengers. The Clayton image was published in 1830. Clayton published three images, here is the more popular view, at the Bridgewater Canal. I believe these are the same carriages, but the wheels are very small and do not align with the Booth advertisement: "diameter of wheels two feet six inches in diameter". As a final tidbit, we have a report from 12 Sept 1829 in the Waterford Chronicle. It states that a locomotive with two vertical boilers (very probably Twin Sisters) is at work on Chat Moss, hauling between 50 and 60 tons in waggons, 5 to 6 mph. Returning empty at 10 mph. Marl is sedimentary rock of clay and lime. The density is ~ 140 lbs/ft³. Given a common railway waggon of (depth, width, length) 2 ft × 5 ft × 6 ft, it has a capacity of ~ 4 tons of marl. We must also assign a weight to the common railway waggon itself, guess 1 ton. Thus, when Twin Sisters pulls 50 to 60 tons, that implies 10 to 12 waggons in consist, a very reasonable quantity. Hornby denotes R60164 as "Coal Wagons". They really are "Common Railway Waggons". Based on the Twin Sisters computation, it looks like I need to get more! I will continue the rolling stock investigation in future posts. The next carriage would have been the velocipede, end of August 1829, but that has already been covered here. Bee

@Ratch I see you have a sheriff¹ badge so I will choose my words here with extraordinary care. Let us hope you are not the Sheriff of Nottingham, but have a more benign view of conversation. The badge system has a distinctly undesirable affect. It strictly rewards longevity and verbosity. Not quality. As such, highly skilled and experienced members can easily and readily be "ranked" lower than a curmudgeon with a keyboard², simply because they do not comment enough. Not only does this engender ill will, it encourages competition, wherein a more collegiate atmosphere here in the Hornby Train forums applies. I do not know how it is in the Airfix Forums. Perhaps you lads like to be ranked. But over here, many have distinctly expressed their desire to get rid of it. Sure, I ignore my badges and associated silliness, but others see it and therein lies the rub. I do not wish to be ranked higher than anyone. I wish to remain ... just me. Bee ¹moderator ²me

@Ratch I am well over my attachment limit, primarily because I believe an image is worth more than all the descriptive words I can try. In combination, fine, but words alone make it difficult to communicate centuries old information, as there is no reference frame There is a work around. Step 1: Place the image into "Gallery" Step 2: In your post, "add existing attachment", "attachment location", "gallery". Voila! As proof, I am at 123% of attachment limit. Here is an image Bee