LMS Route: The Shakespeare Route

Ettington Limestone Company: smjel100a

Close up of image 'smjel100' showing four of the side-tipping wagons standing on the siding's embankment and loading dock in Goldicote Cutting. Side-tipping wagons were commonly used throughout the quarry industry and are also very similar to those used by contractors building railways, (see contractors working on the Great Central Railway), albeit the GCR wagons were much greater in size being standard gauge. The narrow gauge version was still however very robust being made out of substantial timber sections. Points to note include, the wagon's extremely short wheelbase, the wagon's dumb buffers being a continuation of the chassis, and the short chain links located between the dumb buffers. The stack of stone seen above played an essential part of loading standard gauge wagons as by having a large quantity of stone to hand it could be loaded rapidly into the railway wagons, compared to just using the narrow gauge trucks, thus saving considerable time. This was because third parties using railway owned wagons to transport their goods were only allowed three days to load or unload the wagon before additional charges for their use was incurred. To the left of the photograph on the narrow gauge a point lever is just visible.

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