I reckon I've had some beer brewed from that,in the past.........
Regards
Steve
Anyone know what "alumina" is?
IIRC there was a whole load of pre-cast concrete used in schools and swimming baths that had "high ilumina cement"... that fell to pieces and caused some huge scares if not accidents. I know of at leat one sports building that stood out of use for years while the claims were settled and then while they worked out how to knock it down safely.
TIA
marknewton wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote:PS... I have a vague recall that BR did have some 4 wheel, 3 bay covered hoppers for grain traffic...Yeah, I'd forgotten about them - "COVHOP", or TOPS code "CHO". IIIRC they had 4 bays, 2 either side of each axle. To my knowledge there's no 4mm RTR COVHOP on the market, but they shouldn't be too hard to scratchbuild.Mark.
Dave-the-Train wrote:PS... I have a vague recall that BR did have some 4 wheel, 3 bay covered hoppers for grain traffic...
PS... I have a vague recall that BR did have some 4 wheel, 3 bay covered hoppers for grain traffic...
corksean12 wrote: talyar15,I actually live in Cork(small world eh?).Where is this abandoned distillery? i might check it out myself.
talyar15,I actually live in Cork(small world eh?).Where is this abandoned distillery? i might check it out myself.
I'll have to find my book about Irish Whiskey Distilleries to tell you exactly where, but I seem to remember it was served by a branch of the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway as was. It boasted a large standard gauge internal rail system. I'll let you know when I've found the book.
Coal for a brewery would be moved in a local freight more often than a coal train being run to a brewery. Except in the North East the wagons would far more usually be PO wagons (Private Owner).
Never heard of hooded signal lamps for semaphore signals... and, having "lamped" a few would think them extremely difficult to "hood". On the other hand I have aural history that signals around Portsmputh were converted to electric lamps (light bulbs) instead of the regular oil lamps so that they could be turned off during air raids. I have no evidence that this was done anywhere else... except... One of my Boxes, Reigate, had switched electric lamps in some of the signals. There is a faint possibility that this would have been linked with the existance of a wartime control bunker deep in the chalk hill extending above and behind the town in the area. Elements of this control bunker further west along the ridge were still exclusion zones in the 1970s... I don't know their current status.
Air Raid shelters came in a huge range of shapes and sizes some of which were regional, some local and some private/individual. Not even public shelters were standard across the country... they were possibly the responsibilty of various councils rather than any centrel organistation.
I know that there are books on pill boxes and similar defences. Also at least two volumes on standard RAF structures. The place to enquire would be the Imperial War Museum.
Whoever had my parents house in 1939/40 had the sense to build the shelter at the bottom of the 110' garden but most put the shelter closer to the house. These were probably half-underground shelters covered with earth (as distinct from completely underground or surface). The result was that when my parents moved in my Dad shifted the heap of rubble to form the sub-base of a 20' garage which had his 0 Gauge railway along the back (east) wall. Most of the other local gardens had a "rockery"/ "alpine" flower bed half way down the garden where the shelter had been collapsed inwards.
Something else to think about for the era is local cinemas... they ranged from "flee pits" to elaborate picture palaces. Even without the structure near the railway there would often be posters at or near the station to inform the travelling public of what was on or what was coming.
Thanks for the info everyone.
My Layout is quite small, a shelf layout.The Brewery, Coalmine and Villages are small, one or two sidings each. I figured a brewery wouldnt need much coal, which was one of the reasons I picked it (small layout + small Mine = short coal trains) and Picked the mid 1940's-1950 because I would like to run BR and some GWR, and i wanted a wartorn layout without it actually having to modify everything to hide it from air raids(Black out windows,hooded signal lamps and whatnot). Someone mentioned air raid shelters, i think i might build one in by one of my stations, shouldnt be too hard and would add a bit of interest.
marknewton wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: If it was a case it would be whiskey and definitely in a van with seals on the doors.Sorry, Dave, we're at cross purposes. Allow me to rephrase that last post: "I'd have to assume they (the kegs) were empties, in those examples shown in the photos?"
Dave-the-Train wrote: If it was a case it would be whiskey and definitely in a van with seals on the doors.
If it was a case it would be whiskey and definitely in a van with seals on the doors.
It was more fun the first way round ... and gave me a lead into a load more waffle
Dave-the-Train wrote:If it was a case it would be whiskey and definitely in a van with seals on the doors.
corksean12 wrote: My layout will consist of a small welsh country town, a coalmine and a larger town/city with a brewery
My layout will consist of a small welsh country town, a coalmine and a larger town/city with a brewery
WOW! How many hectares/acres is your train room?
Part of any one of these (just modelling the railway and immediate surrounds) is enough for most people to buile and maintain... even before leraning to operate it. Anything huge also needs lots of people commited to it.
Not to mention lots of money...
corksean12 wrote: .my thinking is these industries all serve each other in many ways(Beer ingredients from country station to brewery and beer back,miners from the country station to the coal mine and coal back, coal to power the brewery and some beer back to the miners as an 'incentive' to work )
Up to the 60s (and cars becoming more affordable) the majority of people worked within walking distance, a short bus/tram ride or a short train journey of their home. This applied the more so to heavy/dirty industry. The exeption would be the South East around London but, for the most part, that would include far more white collar work. London commuter traffic would still have been mostly within the M25 circuit (built much later).
Transport providers didn't want their upholstery messed up by mucky workers. Where mining areas did have trains for miners they were run as specific trains and had old and worn stock. There were also workmen's trains that ran at specific times with lower fares... again these would tend to be older stock in the more heavy industry areas.
What you are describing as "incentive" beer would largely be low alcohol content (between 3% and 4%) and brewed on the doorstep. There was a long tradition of beer being collected for home consumption in enamel jugs. Large chunks of Wales were "dry" especially on Sundays... Sunday being dry persisted until recent times and still exists in at least one Scottish island. Temperance and Temperance Halls were major social elements from at least the mid 1850s in all industrial towns. I have worked with men that had "Taken the Pledge" in the 20s or 30s and would never touch anything remotely alcoholic.
Being "Pye Eyed" in public was a social disgrace well into the 60s while being drunk on the street was an invitation to arrest or a good whacking if the cells were full. This didn't mean that people didn't get drunk but the modern "normality" of it would have been unthinkable. A woman getting drunk was a shame and disgrace that she would not be allowed to forget. At the same time fist fights and even "spats" between husbands and wives in the street were far more common.
There was a much larger element of "social justice" within the community. Policemen would resolve issues at the time and place. Kids could get a "clip round the ear"... and if you told your parents you'd as like get another one. If anyone was too heavy handed (including a copper) they could have a meeting in a dark alley...
You did not want beer near a pit. Far too dangerous. If a man was stupid enough to turn up smelling of drink his mates would send him home before he even reached the gate... because if a gaffer smelt him he'd be out on his ear.
The railway (back then) was a different matter. I've worked with Drivers (in the 70s) - old steam men - who couldn't look at a train and not get the shakes without their "ration" inside them. Once lubricated they were perfectly safe to work with. I would still rather work with those guys than some of the modern "Boil in the Bag" traindrivers. Some of the Managers and clerks were probably never sober 24/7. Provided he pulled his weight most of the time a man would be covered by his mates. If he began to be a problem he'd be spoken to quietly. I would guess that many that didn't (or couldn't) listen never got to "management's attention" because they realised that leaving was a better option to getting a thorough kicking whenever they showed up for work. I've seen men knocked cold by their "Ganger". They got the message or left. (Consider this... you do not want a smack from a man who can swing a 10lb key hammer all day, run home, change, run to the pitch and then play an energetic game of football or Rugby...)
One thing that applied with management was "Free Masonry". This was really weird. Who got what jobs and who defered (or cow-towed) to who depended not on what they did on the railway but their position in the lodge. You could get a manager from BR Board showing significant respect to a carriage cleaner. The one good thing that seems to have come out of Privatisation is that this seems to have been broken up. On the other hand the multitude of tiny companies is like a cross between Chinese Secret Societies and a Liverpool Catholic family as in the TV series "Bread".
corksean12 wrote: my question is, how would beer and its ingrediants be transported by rail in the british midlands around 1945-1950? I would guess beer would mean barrels in vans (boxcars to you U.S folk across the pond), but its just a guess.as for the wheat,hops,barley etc i have know idea what rolling stock i need. can anyone please help?
Bear in mind that with a van or sheeted wagon you have no idea at all what's in it unless it's opened. (You can't read the waybill tacked on the side or in the clip in 4mm).
Crated beer could be "handballed" using a chain of men or, sometimes, either smooth planks or roller ways would be used to slide/roll large numbers of crates into/out of vans/warehouses. Apart from the extension into the van and the bit through the building door these could be left/fixed in place.
Grain bags could be hoisted into warehoues through a "lufcumb". This is the square wooden structure you see sticking out on the side wall of warehouses dealing with grain. Grain going out in bags would be shot down shutes... these would be straight if short or spiral if longer. They were very well built to prevent damage to the bags and made smooth by the bags zooming down them. You did not stand in front of the bottom end of a shute.
You would want goods stock with between 10' and 16' wheelbases... not the later longer stuff.
Post war and early BR stock ended up all over so there would be a huge mix of Big Four markings except for "Non-Common User" and dedicated stock. Private Owner coal stock (mainly 7 plank 12-16 ton with a single door each side) would be what you are looking for for the coal delivery you quote. NB Most neighbourhood stations had a minimum of their own coal staithes and a coal merchant's office. Ev
Except for Burton a brewery would rarely consume large amounts of coal [question is "What's large"?].
1947-mid 50s is of course the change from war time government control of the Big Four to British Rail (in 1948).
Prestige things got a lick of paint and there was some new stock/locos around. Most of the country was knackered from the war effort - particularly the railways. Maintenence had been "derfered" to the point of not happening except where it had to be done. Rolling stock was nearer to filthy than dirty in many cases with almost zero repainting. Locos wern't much better off. Passenger stock varied widely.
Industrial areas in particular would have still had a lot of ARP (Air Raid Precautions) evidence in sight. Most station canopy glass had been painted over to stop light spilling upwards and making them a target. Various designs of bomb shelter would still be evident. There's a whole enormous list.
There would of course have still been some bombed out sites - made safe and (by 47) increasingly growing weeds and small (becoming large) trees.
Things like recovery trucks were often built up from ex military vehices (The QUAD gun tractor was a favourite for small ones). Some of the bigger ones used Diamond Ts and the like... BUT don't forget that British is 00/1:72/4mm=1ft NOT H0/1:87/3.5mm=1ft.
marknewton wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: Full beer barrels would not be loaded in opens... they would soon be empties.That's what I would have thought too, but a number of the photos published in "BRILL" clearly show opens loaded with kegs. I'd have to assume they were empties, in that case?Cheers,Mark.
Dave-the-Train wrote: Full beer barrels would not be loaded in opens... they would soon be empties.
Full beer barrels would not be loaded in opens... they would soon be empties.
If it was a case it would be whiskey and definitely in a van with seals on the doors. Until probably as late as the mid 60s wine consumption would have been so low in most of the country that it would have hardly registered as a traffic at all. By then it would have been imported by road. In earlier times the off case would probably have been carried as "smalls" traffic by passenger train... probably with the premium paid for it to travel as "Registered" traffic... similar to registered mail.
Beer bottles - and lemonade etc - was shifted in crates.. wooden originally and well into the 60s if not later... then pressed metal before plastic... which came to rule the world in these things. Beer tended to be in quart bottles, some of the more specialist beers were in pints (Guiness was in pints IIRC) Other Stouts would have been in pints or, like Meckeson, in half pints. Clearly there is a lot of wooden crate and weight and glass relative to beer in the smaller quantities so they tended to be the premium priced beers... and the relatively few beers that travelled further. Until modern developments beer did not travel very well and often had to be left to stand for some days if it moved far (in the barrel)... which didn't matter when local consumption from small breweries meant that it was never going to get very far anyway.
Much more can probably be found on or Via CAMRA's website (search CAMRA?).
I can recall pubs in the early 70s that wouldn't serve a woman if she had the temerity to enter the pub. I'm pleased to say that this ignorance vanished in the 70s.
ALSO...
Don't forget that modern style steel drums didn't become common until ??? I would guess the late 50s or early 60s... anyone know??? Before then a barrel was a wooden barrel most of the time in myriad sizes.
A Keg can be an alluminium barrel shaped similarly to a wooden barrel with distinct ribs around it. "Keg beer...
Dave-the-Train wrote:Full beer barrels would not be loaded in opens... they would soon be empties.
PS... I have a vague recall that BR did have some 4 wheel, 3 bay covered hoppers for grain traffic. Not sure about this or where they were used.
It occurs to me that under BR traffic would have become palletised and travelled in "Palvans" and some of the plywood sided vans. These were both 9 or 10' wheelbase IIRC. they would not usually have used the longer wheelbases for the traffic... partly because the doors would not have matched up on the load docks.
Glassware may have been moved in "Shocvans"... basically the same as a Durea Frame English style.
There would be significant differences between parts of the Midlands and Wales.
Until no earlier than the 60s most Brewing was local and wouldn't reach much beyond the size of a county such as Staffordshire... with the exception of the products of Burton-on-Trent (do a search... in particular on "Bass".
The 1960s brought in industrialy produced slop in alluminium kegs pushed out by gas instead of poured or drawn out by pumps.
One of the Scottish railways (HR I think) had large slat sided opens for empties.
There was a huge trade in bottled beers which involved wooden crates and returned empties. Both the crates and bottles had value in themselves so they would have gone in vans.
Pilfering was always a problem.
You could reckon that most reasonable sized market towns had at least one brewery until the 50s. this was because of the life nad condition of the beer and the relative costs/security issues of moving the ingredients compared to the product.
Hops were transported from the hop fields in special long course fabric bags (can't recall the name). These would have gone in vans.
Grain would normally be bagged (up to 180lb bags)... usually in vans but could be in tarpaulin covered opens... preferably one with a tarpaulin bar.
Sugar would be in bags in vans... a hated load... it packed down hard with the vibration of the journey (all those rail joints).
Yeast and Malt would tend to be local.
A lot of the input as well as the output of a brewery would be local and therefore would be moved by cart or lurry moving on to almost everything shifting to road transport partly for the "convenience" but also as a result of BR's government directed policies.
If you are dealing with the West Midlands you should also look at cider production. This was far more tied to the apple growing areas and therefore would have sent the product further afield.
Guinness was also imported from Dublin. You might like to search for the brewery railway which had special 2' gauge locos and cars... the locos could be craned into standard (Irish) Gauge converters to haul 5'3" gauge stock around the sidings. They also had a spiral between levels long before model railroaders thought of them.
Burton is the big example of railways and beer.
Beer probably also travelled by narrow boat. Grain certainly did. Every last grain had to be cleaned out between trips to avoid contamination, germination and the dangers of rotting gain making gas.
Bill
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig"
My layout will consist of a small welsh country town, a coalmine and a larger town/city with a brewery.my thinking is these industries all serve each other in many ways(Beer ingredients from country station to brewery and beer back,miners from the country station to the coal mine and coal back, coal to power the brewery and some beer back to the miners as an 'incentive' to work ) my question is, how would beer and its ingrediants be transported by rail in the british midlands around 1945-1950? i would geuss beer would mean barrels in vans (boxcars to you U.S folk across the pond), but its just a guess.as for the wheat,hops,barley etc i have know idea what rolling stock i need. can anyone please help?
thanks in advance,
Sean