A ‘SLIP COACH’ ON THE LONDON & BIRMINGHAM RAILWAY

Canon R. B. Fellows

The following was spotted by John Hill in The Locomotive. for 15^th January 1944

Although it is certain that the practice of slipping carriages off passenger trains at speed was inaugurated early in February 1858, by the London Brighton & South Coast Railway  at Haywards Heath, yet an isolated instance of a vehicle being slipped off a passenger train occurred nearly twenty years earlier on the London & Birmingham Railway. The vehicle was slipped by a young engineer for his own convenience in August 1838, and the slip vehicle consisted of a carriage-truck which was attached to the Up train due to leave Denbigh Hall, then the temporary terminus of the London & Birmingham line, at 7.30pm. The carriage-truck had no brake. Whishaw’s Railways of Great Britain, produced in 1840, states that the carriage-trucks belonging to that company were 14ft long and 7ft 4½in wide, the weight being 43cwt. They were furnished with moveable cross-bars to be fitted into the side frames for steadying the carriage when carried on it. Unlike the carriage-trucks of the Great Western Railway, which were fitted with a Stanhope lever brake, those of the London & Birmingham Railway of that period appear to have had no brake.

The carriage-truck which formed the slip vehicle was detached near Harrow by its sole occupant, Herbert Spencer — in later life known as the eminent English philosopher and economist, but in 1838 as assistant to Mr. (later Sir) Charles Fox, then resident Engineer of the London Division of the London & Birmingham Railway. Herbert Spencer tells us in his Autobiography, published posthumously in 1904 (Vol.1, p134—138) that he had been sent by Mr. Fox with a colleague ‘to make a survey of the Wolverton Station in preparation, probably, for enlargement.’ When the line between Denbigh Hall and Rugby was opened in September 1838, the temporary passenger station at Wolverton was, according to Whishaw, on the north side of the canal, but soon afterwards the permanent station on the south side of the bridge was completed. It was probably in connection with the permanent station the survey was required.

Having completed the survey in time to catch the last Up train, Spencer enquired if there was a vehicle with a brake which could be attached to the train, and which he could detach when approaching Harrow, as the train would not stop at that station. It happened that no vehicle having a brake was available, nothing but a coach-truck with no brake. ‘Being without alternative, I directed the Station master  to attach this to the train. After travelling with my companion in the usual way until we reached Watford, I bade him good-night and got into the coach-truck’. The time-table shows that the train was due at Watford at 9.13pm. The Autobiography continues: