Talk:West Midland Railway

Merge proposal

I think there is a case for merging these three pages:

• Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line
• Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway
• West Midlands Railway

Biscuittin 16:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Is not the correct name of the company "West Midland Railway", not "West Midlands Railway"? Bruern Crossing (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:22, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

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West Midlands Railway → West Midland Railway — The current name "West Midlands Railway" is incorrect. Source: Oxford Companion to British Railway History edited by Jack Simmons & Gordon Biddle, published by Oxford University Press 1997. Page 561. I can't do a simple move as the target page exists as a redirect --Bruern Crossing (talk) 20:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support per nom. This is as about as definitive a source as can be imagined (an official report on the Coed-y-gric accident from 1861) for "West Midland" rather than "West Midlands". The majority of other on-line sources use "West Midland" - it's only the one that we cite that uses the incorrect "West Midlands". Perhaps we should change it? Tevildo (talk) 20:32, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment. I've removed all existing links to West Midlands Railway in mainspace - everything now points to the correct West Midland Railway. Tevildo (talk) 00:13, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Accidents and incidents

Regarding West Midland Railway#Accidents and incidents, it says

• In 1858, a bridge at Hereford collapsed under a freight train, which was hauled by 2-4-2 locomotive No. 700.

I've checked the source, and it agrees with that. However, there are problems. The WMR didn't exist in 1858 (it was created by amalgamation in 1860); neither the WMR or its predecessors had any 2-4-2 locomotives (this could be a misprint for 2-4-0, 2-2-2 or 0-4-2, all three of which they had in both tender and tank forms); neither the WMR or its predecessors had any locos numbered 700 (the highest number used by the WMR was 131; however they did have a no. 70, but this was an 0-6-0 - and not built until 1861). The accident is not mentioned in any of these:

• Jenkins, Stanley C.; Quayle, H.L. (1977). The Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway. The Oakwood Library of Railway History. Blandford: Oakwood Press. OL40.
• MacDermot, E.T. (1927). History of the Great Western Railway, vol. I: 1833-1863. Paddington: Great Western Railway.
• Reed, P.J.T. (December 1956). White, D.E. (ed.). The Locomotives of the Great Western Railway, part three: Absorbed Engines, 1854-1921. Kenilworth: RCTS. ISBN 0-901115-33-9.

All in all, it seems rather dubious. If the wheel arrangement (2-4-2) is correct, either it was a tank loco (and not many British railways had any 2-4-2T at that date) or the accident can't have been in Britain - the closest we ever had to a 2-4-2 tender engine were the 2-2-2-2 Webb compounds of the "Greater Britain" and "John Hick" classes on the LNWR - but those were introduced in 1891 and 1894 respectively. If the number 700 is correct, the date must be wrong, because according to

• Casserley, H.C. (1959). "Locomotive No. 700". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 105, no. 700. pp. 513–4. {{cite magazine}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

the first British locomotive to be numbered 700 was on the LNWR, when in May 1862 the erstwhile Southern Division stock was renumbered by the simple addition of 600 to the former numbers, so LNWR (Southern Div) no. 100 became LNWR no. 700. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the section for now, pending further investigation. Will see what The Times and regional newspapers have to say on the subject. Mjroots (talk) 06:10, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

@Redrose64: - A trawl of The Times and Berrow's Worcester Journal for 1858 produced nothing. The entry in 'Trains in Trouble does state that the bridge was "newly erected" and "near Hereford".

Shrewsbury and Hereford railway was opened between 1850 and 1853.

The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton railway was opened between 1852 and 1853

The Hereford, Hay and Brecon railway was opened between 1862 and 1864.

The Hereford, Ross and Gloucester railway opened in 1855.

I Think we can discount the HH&B, leaving the other three. Knowing likely misprints, 1853 is a good candidate, leaving the first two railways as more likely. Mjroots (talk) 07:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

@Mjroots: It still leaves the mystery of the wheel arrangement and the loco number. Of the four photos on pp. 6-7 of Trains in Trouble Vol. 1, the two on the left are clearly the same accident as each other, seen from opposite sides. The locos in the two right-hand photos are clearly different - the upper one is an inside-cylinder 0-6-0 with double frames having curved tops, and the lower one is an inside-frame outside-cylinder 2-4-0. Little can be seen of the loco in the two left-hand photos, but it does have a very tall dome on the boiler, which looks like that of the upper-right photo. I would say that the lower right photo is the Tottenham derailment (defective tyre weld), and the other three are all the same accident, mysteriously described as "on the West Midland". So, concentrating on those, the 0-6-0 loco doesn't help much, since they were very common - after about 1845 they were found on almost all railways that had tender engines (except the Great North of Scotland which never had any). I see that the relatively undamaged vehicle perched on top (at the right of the upper-left photo, and the left of the lower-left photo) is a goods brake van, with the number applied on a black rectangle with incurved corners - like this. That's a style distinctive of the Midland Railway, which did have a loco numbered 700, one of which was an inside-cylinder 0-6-0 with double frames having curved tops - the first example of Kirtley's "700" Class, introduced 1869 (there was an earlier no. 700 on the MR, of Kirtley's "240" class, but those had straight-topped frames). The Midland Railway worked the Hereford, Hay & Brecon from October 1869, so I would say that although the bridge may have been on the erstwhile West Midland Railway (it amalgamated with the GWR in 1863), the train was of the Midland Railway, and the date no earlier than October 1869. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:20, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

A check of BWJ post September 1869 also failed to reveal anything. Looks like we'll have to leave this one for now. Are there any decent books on the Kirtley 700 class? Mjroots (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

There's

• Hunt, David; Essery, R.J.; James, Fred (2002). Midland Engines, no. 4 - The '700' Class Double-Frame Goods Engines. Didcot: Wild Swan. ISBN 1-874103-73-9.

but it's mainly technical, little on accidents. There are plenty of photos which show that the design corresponds with the upper-right photo in Trains in Trouble. On p. 98 we find that no. 700 was allocated to Brecon in December 1880 and in June 1892, so would have worked to Hereford quite often. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:38, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

In which case, the HH&B becomes the prime candidate, does it not? Any books on that line that might be able to shed some light on this? Mjroots (talk) 08:56, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't have any books on the HH&BR. But returning to that brake van:

• Essery, R.J. (1980). An Illustrated History of Midland Wagons, Volume Two. Headington: Oxford Publishing Co. p. 84. ISBN 0-86093-041-6.

it seems to be of a style first introduced on the Midland Railway in 1875. The date gets later and later... --Redrose64 (talk) 10:06, 3 June 2014 (UTC)