Letters
Dear Mike,
I recently found at the PRO  the following
letter from T.W. Worsdell
(Works Manager) to Mr. Ellis (one of the Shop Foremen), and it may be
relevant to Mary Forsyth’s water troughs:
‘Trough for Whitmore
The above must be coated with a composition made out of the following
ingredients:
36 gallons gas tar
½ bucket of pitch
1 gallon coal oil
The trough to be dipped when hot into the above. I have instructed Mr
Kern (? – writing unclear) to prepare a well for dipping
them’.
Ted Talbot
TRAIN LOADING
Dear Mike,
I must have looked at Plate 102 in Ted Talbot’s LNWR
Miscellany Vol.1 many, many times but the full impact of the caption
only struck me recently. I quote:
‘A special train of forty 16ft vans, containing 500 tons of
galvanised iron sheets ... behind Cauliflower 0-6-0
No.464’.
All very nicely posed with the vans specially labelled and, I have
no doubt, caption courtesy of LNWR Publicity Dept.
First of all, the 16ft vans weighed, on average, 5 tons 18 cwt so
forty of them, plus load, is 236 plus 500 equals 736 tons. Not bad
for an 18in engine I submit. No wonder the tender was piled
high.
But the 16ft van had a capacity of 7 tons and 500 divided by 40
gives 12.5 tons! Even if these vans had been specially up-rated to
10 tons with heavier axles and journals they would still have been
grossly overloaded.
Have I missed something? Would other readers care to comment?
Don Rowland
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PTARMIGAN
Dear Mike,
If anyone hasn’t already responded, the photo of PTARMIGAN
used to illustrate Bill Broadbent’s article on bye-pass valves
in the December Journal was taken outside Holyhead shed. A photo in
Hawkins & Reeve’s shed book shows the same brick work and
(just) the yard lamp, which is sited unusually close to the shed
entrance.
Simon Fountain
ACCIDENT AT HOLYHEAD 27th August 1899
Dear Mike,
For the record, the carriages involved (which were damaged beyond
repair) were:
TPO No.26, 32ft 0in (would have been D.399). Replaced by new 50ft 0in
TPO carriage to D.392. 30ft 6in Parcel Van No.2023 – a
supplementary vehicle, hence not replaced.
Philip Millard
ANCOATS SHED.
Joe Brown kindly sent this view of Ancoats Shed, 
taken in 1917.
Many Webb and Whale engines can be seen and
the engine with its smoke
box door open is a Super D 0-8-0.
The shed is of standard LNWR design with four roads and ten bays,
but before reaching for your trusty Ian Allan pregrouping railway
atlas we must admit that Ancoats shed is Joe’s 7mm scale model
and represents an imaginary shed in Manchester, on a truncated link
intended to connect London Road and Oldham Road stations. The
over-track signal box is based on that previously existing at
Linthwaite, near Huddersfield.
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