Quirky Questions No.8 “Covering up (in) the Past” is about a simple and important aspect of goods services… how were wagon sheets, and the ropes which secured those sheets to open wagons, managed within and between railway companies? Modellers with a hankering for the Midland Railway are served well by an excellent article in issue no.3 of the Midland Record journal (Wild Swan). Other railways are not so well served as the Midland Rlwy. hence the request for information within Quirky Query No.8.
An initial response has been posted to the GWR E-list (a Yahoo Group) which reminds us that a GWR Sheet Store was at Worcester – clearly something to be pursued. Thanks to John Greenough who is an ex-pat in the Antipodes.
Graham
Edit the first
An extract from the GWR WTT/STT section no.5, 1925, courtesy of Brian Bailey.
Basilica Fields 
May 8, 2012 at 7:02 pm
You will be aware that the GWR had a system of timetabled Station Trucks. Well, it also had a system of timetabled wagons to return sheets to Worcester or other depots. My WTTs have only one example, so I assume that the system developed after 1908 and that the Marshalling Instructions were moved from the WTT to a separate document sometime between July 1908 and February 1912.
The July 1912 WTT (Service Time Table in GWR parlance) contains the following on page 9:
10.30 a.m., Aberdare to Pontypool Road. To convey traffic to and from where timed to call. Traffic picked up at Treharris, except for Ocean Navigation and Penallta Junction, must be taken on rough and shunted into position at the most convenient place. An empty wagon to be attached to this train at Aberdare, next to the Engine, and all sheets lying at Stations en route must be loaded in this vehicle, the wagon to be labelled to Pontypool Road. On the first Monday in each month an empty truck, labelled to Pontypool Road, must also be attached to this train in which empty petroleum barrels from Aberdare and intermediate stations and signal boxes to Pontypool Road must be loaded. – When the Monday is a Bank Holiday the truck must be provided on the day following on which the Train runs.
This train did not convey any Station Trucks, but the 3.10 a.m. from Neath to Pontypool Road conveyed no less than nine.
So you now have three potential types of “internal” traffic from and to the GWR – Station trucks in both directions, a probable daily up direction wagon for sheets and possibly a weekly up direction wagon for petroleum barrels.
May 8, 2012 at 7:33 pm
This is truly wonderful information in that here is an answer to the original question and information about a question I did not know I had to ask!
Now – the WTT states that the truck is for the collection of sheets. What does the WTT say about ropes?
thank you, Graham
April 18, 2017 at 4:15 pm
I’m fairly certain that sheets and ropes had to be returned to the owning company, in the same way as empty wagons. You should read the Appendix of each of the companies concerned, which will almost certainly have instructions about what to do with the sheets. Some companies had separate Instructions booklet for goods stations. Also there will be references, implicit if not explicit, in the minutes of RCH Goods Managers’ Conference in RAIL1180.
Re the GWR, there was a “Marshalling Instructions” booklet, separate from the WTT, in 1913. There may have been a previous issue, that I haven’t seen.
I recently discovered that sheets were “common user” from 1917, due to the War. See article by Richard Foster in the latest Journal of the LNWRS.
Reg Instone
Research Co-ordinator, Signalling Record Society
May 10, 2012 at 7:06 am
First a correction. It is the July 1908 GWR WTT I was quoting from.
Re ropes, the system seems to have been different from that for sheets, perhaps because they were more easily “lost”. There is nothing in the WTT and I do not have a GWR General Appendix, but the Rhymney Railway General Appendix for 1915 has a long section on ropes. It refers to RCH Regulations governing the movement of ropes between companies, quoting a 10 shilling invoice (a lot of money in those days). It also says that ropes must not be returned in empty open wagons. I think it was intended that the equivalent of GWR Station Trucks were to be used where possible, or a van sent especially if there was no suitable Station Truck. Certainly the RR wanted all ropes returned to HQ in Cardiff or to the owning company as soon as possible.
There is also a section on sheets in the General Appendix but it is all about their care and says nothing about how they were returned to base.
May 13, 2012 at 8:27 am
With thanks to Brian Bailey, Basilica Fields has been favoured with an extract from a GWR WTT / STT relating to the “return” of sheets and ropes. The original document is Section No.5, of 1925, and dealing with the area from Salisbury to Taunton, Newton Abbot to Bridgewater, and branches from those lines. Bridgewater is the focus for sheets ands ropes in that district as there was a sheet store at that location. This information has been incorporated into the original post.
So what would be nice is a similar extract for the GWR lines goods facilities in the City of London and the London docklands.
July 2, 2015 at 2:16 pm
I have been researching the railway wagon sheet shops and thought you might be interested in seeing some of the documents I have copied from files in the National Archive. They were made with a hand-held camera so are not perfect but are (mostly) legible. I haven’t copied every document in the files, or even all the pages of particular documents. Of course not all sheet shops had the same facilities. Some like Worcester or Peterborough were full-scale factories that manufactured sheets. Others just made patch repairs. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone with further information, particularly on the precise locations of the shops, facilities available and any surviving remains. Click on the links to download.
RAIL 1080/627, Sheet and Rope Superintendents, 1918-1924
http://www.mediafire.com/download/s54jlzpup01u141/RAIL_1080_627.zip
RAIL 1172/2063, Reservation of sheet factory workers and rates of pay of railway wagon sheet repairers, 1941 Mar – 1949 June
http://www.mediafire.com/download/envjah4lxndb4cn/RAIL_1172_2063.zip
AN 171/114, Reorganisation of British Railways sheet works, 1962 Sep 01 – 1977 May 31
http://www.mediafire.com/download/whc3xlmdhb1d1f3/AN_171_114.zip
October 1, 2015 at 6:31 pm
This link states that the RCH tracked sheets post First World War
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/9-loads/9-tarps.htm so they may have fallen under common user regulations. It suggests that company A’s sheet could be used on company B’s wagon running on company C’s metal.
Not much use for pre WW1 period. I shall follow this research with interest as it is an intriguing little detail.
October 2, 2015 at 1:51 am
I’m still working on this, but the emerging picture is that the Common User Scheme developed progressively. The Railway Executive Committee agreed that it would be introduced for certain types of stock on all controlled railway companies from 2nd January 1917 “on similar lines to those in operation between the Great Western, Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North Western, Midland and North Eastern Companies”. From time to time, consideration was given to extending the range of applicable vehicles. Common User of sheets was formally recognised from 15 February 1917. In practice, all companies were doing this already, but it was causing some difficulty, particularly at Manchester and London Docks. Company A’s sheet may arrive on Company’s B’s wagon, but if the dock company then wished to load the same wagon out to Company C, the local agent would insist that only a Company C sheet could be used. Common User arrangements for repair of sheets were introduced in February 1917, with sheets being repaired by the company on whose lines the repairs were found to be necessary, rather than being returned to the owning company. Common User of ropes was implemented from 12 July 1917 and similar arrangements for Common User repairs to ropes from 1 March 1918.
Decontrol of railways took effect from midnight on 15 August 1921. But some of the Common User arrangements for repair of sheets lingered on, as reverting to the previous system of returning to the owning company for repaired had an adverse effect on availability as foreign sheets would accumulate until there was a wagon load.
I have made further visits to the National Archive and shall share what I have here in due course.
October 11, 2015 at 11:48 am
Here are a few more links to copies of National Archives documents. Again, I have not copied everything. These are from the Rolling Stock Controllers’ Common User Committee. They give some further details of Common User arrangements.
1915-1921
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9u329xqtczjiijf/RAIL_1080_%281915-1921%29.zip
1921-1924
http://www.mediafire.com/download/oyej08wxrtzg1ic/Rail_1080_%281921-1924%29.zip
1924-1927
http://www.mediafire.com/download/tebf6ko6emriu7r/RAIL_1080_%281924-1927%29.zip
July 10, 2017 at 4:43 pm
Here are parts 1 and 2 of my series on wagon sheet factories which have appeared in ‘Link’ the journal of the Engine Shed Society. I add them here for whatever they may contribute to the discussion, but please ask before re-publishing elsewhere. Part 3 is still in preparation.
Click to access British_Railways_Wagon_Sheet_Factories_-_Part_1.pdf
Click to access British_Railways_Wagon_Sheet_Factories_-_Part_2.pdf