Website Wakefield Kirkgate, 1851

[AJC]

Well, sort of. Here's a blog from the conservation team at The National Archives, Kew, which features plans drawn up for the L&Y and GNR prior to the construction of the (extant) buildings at Kirkgate. Hopefully this should give some sense of how fragile some of these documents are and how much effort goes into making these things presentable. Granted, transparent paper does not keep well so presents a particular challenge, but the subject matter should be of some interest, I hope?

Bringing two 19th century rail plans back on track

Declaring an interest, there should be another blog featuring a map I flagged for urgent conservation in the course of my day job up soonish - that has zero railway interest, however!

Adam

 

[cmax]

Adam,

Thank you for posting, I have in my possession a track plan of Normanton, the next station down the line, drawn i think in 1903, its a bit battered, but hope its of interest.

Sorry for the quality of the photo's

 

[Rob Pulham]

Well, sort of. Here's a blog from the conservation team at The National Archives, Kew which features plans drawn up for the L&Y and GNR prior to the construction of the (extant) buildings at Kirkgate. Hopefully this should give some sense of how fragile some of these documents are and how much effort goes into making these things presentable. Granted, transparent paper does not keep well so presents a particular challenge, but the subject matter should be of some interest, I hope?

Bringing two 19th century rail plans back on track

Declaring an interest, there should be another blog featuring a map I flagged for urgent conservation in the course of my day job up soonish - that has zero railway interest, however!

Adam

Thanks for this Adam, it's of interest to me from a modelling perspective but also to Chris who was born and bred in the city. - I am a Bradford lad myself.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Excellent stuff Gary,

Interesting to see New Zealand sidings I do wonder how things get so named.

Where I used to live in Thornton (Bradford) nearby there was Moscow, Jerusalem and the Walls of Jericho

 

[cmax]

Hi Rob,

I have no idea whats so ever, I dont even know where the map originally came from, My dad used to live in Newland Lodge which is about 20 yds from the old Midland main line, My uncle in the 60's was a signalman working in most of the boxes in and a round Normanton, but he doesnt know where it came from either.

Next time I see you I will bring it along.

Gary

 

[daifly]

Interesting to see New Zealand sidings I do wonder how things get so named.
Where I used to live in Thornton (Bradford) nearby there was Moscow, Jerusalem and the Walls of Jericho

A village near me is passed by the embryonic Hampshire Avon (about 6ft wide at this point) and separated from ‘France Farm’ - so called because it lies ‘across the water’. I suspect that the same ‘down under’ (the main line) humour applies here too!
Dave

 

[adrian]

Interesting to see New Zealand sidings I do wonder how things get so named.

Also each siding seems to be allocated to a specific colliery or railway company use.

 

[AJC]

Also each siding seems to be allocated to a specific colliery or railway company use.

Yes, the operational distinctions shown there are really interesting; and it's something that would be more or less impossible to discern from photographs and unrecorded on - for example - an OS map. Thank you @cmax for sharing (and, if you get the chance, do ask your local archive about caring for the document and perhaps safe ways to remove that cellotape).

By the by, there's an academic project underway at the minute, early days, I think, looking at freight on the railways (partly because this sort of detail is passing from the oral domain, I suppose - I'm a medieval historian, the academic study of railways isn't really my manor and I can't be bothered to find the grant proposal right now) which has a presence on Facebook: Freight History Project and, more promisingly, Twitter: The Freight History Project (@FreightHistory) on Twitter

The secondary point is that whenever the subject of drawings and so on come up in an archival context, as enthusiasts we could try harder to understand what our comrades who work in archives do and cannot do perhaps as quickly as we might wish. As enthusiasts, when we make use of archives we could do MUCH better in showing our working and giving details of the references we've taken the trouble to look at.

Adam

 

[Steph Dale]

The secondary point is that whenever the subject of drawings and so on come up in an archival context, as enthusiasts we could try harder to understand what our comrades who work in archives do and cannot do perhaps as quickly as we might wish. As enthusiasts, when we make use of archives we could do MUCH better in showing our working and giving details of the references we've taken the trouble to look at.

Adam

Hehe, funnily enough that's a subject I'm currently debating with members of this forum in the context of LSWR locos. I think I found out some 'new stuff', but without context of how and where it was found and the argument* necessary to tell the story it's otherwise totally meaningless...

It's also something I find personally infuriating; if an author makes a controversial imperative statement I'd like to understand how they got there.

Steph

*argument, as 'assertion and evidence', not 'dispute'.

 

[AJC]

Hehe, funnily enough that's a subject I'm currently debating with members of this forum in the context of LSWR locos. I think I found out some 'new stuff', but without context of how and where it was found and the argument* necessary to tell the story it's otherwise totally meaningless...

It's also something I find personally infuriating; if an author makes a controversial imperative statement I'd like to understand how they got there.

Steph

*argument, as 'assertion and evidence', not 'dispute'.

Just so; and I'm afraid that, among historians, railway types have an especially bad name. The amount of unsubstantiated, unreferenced assertions found in railway histories (of all kinds, even good ones) almost defies belief; in all of the splendid books about wagons, for example, only one makes any explicit mention of the archival sources employed, even when I know they *have* been.

Adam

 

[adrian]

The amount of unsubstantiated, unreferenced assertions found in railway histories (of all kinds, even good ones) almost defies belief;

What! You mean the strategic reserve of steam locos hidden next to Box Tunnel is an apocryphal story! Well I never!

ps thanks for the twitter link - some fascinating photos already although at £3K per year I might give the Masters in Railway Studies a miss.

 

[AJC]

What! You mean the strategic reserve of steam locos hidden next to Box Tunnel is an apocryphal story! Well I never!

ps thanks for the twitter link - some fascinating photos already although at £3K per year I might give the Masters in Railway Studies a miss.

The Box Tunnel nonsense is really is not what I had in mind (and I know you know that ). Little things like HMI reports of newly-built railways are never properly cited, oral testimony is seldom so-described and so on.

In this context a Masters programme is - and I haven't checked on their demographics but this is my suspicion - just a different way of taking a hobby seriously; though for others, mostly museum curators, it's a form of CPD. A modeller might spend the money of loco kits or a lathe or baseboards, but both individuals might be interested in, say, the St Ives branch. There's at least one member of this forum who's done it. Something broadly similar is true of most specialist history MA programmes in my experience.

Adam

 

[adrian]

The Box Tunnel nonsense is really is not what I had in mind (and I know you know that ). Little things like HMI reports of newly-built railways are never properly cited, oral testimony is seldom so-described and so on.

Was the Sunday Sport Headline that obvious?

Although I can empathise with the frustration historians must feel. Within my own field of work, the majority of it on Eurofighter Typhoon, there is a common misconception that the aircraft is unstable to make it more manoeuvrable. This has been repeated by numerous "authorative" authors but sadly lack the required evidence to back up their claims. Even the official Eurofighter website peddles this myth which doesn't help. The real reason for the instability is actually for supersonic performance, if anyone is interested in the gory details then best to PM me rather than pollute this thread further.

 

[Osgood]

Fascinating information. That map of Normanton Sidings would have effectively been the sole operational document for what today would probably require a multi-page method statement, in that it contains all information necessary to sort wagons into trainloads for onward travel. Each siding is allocated to a certain train consist, e.g. empty wagons for a specific colliery are collected together to form a train, empties belonging to a specific railway company would be shunted into the same line to make up a train for eventual return to their owner, freight for a specific route into another siding.

As traffic patterns changed a new plan would be drawn up showing revised siding designations - you could imagine a copy of this map being pinned to the wall of each shunters' cabin, just in case they ever needed to remind themselves of what they had already learned - probably without ever having looked at a plan or piece of paper!

This sheet of worn folded paper is probably the only surviving record of the detailed physical sorting of wagons at this location at that period, and I imagine complements surviving freight timetables, and shows how valuable such resources are in studies of freight movement since they indicate all scheduled freight trips originating from here or passing through and picking up further wagons.