LMS: Birmingham New Street to Tamworth

Kingsbury Branch: misc_kt380

A typical contract of sale in the 1930s coal trade, showing 13,520 to 14,560 tons of beans (small graded coal, usually screened twice and washed) to the London coal factors Lamont and Warne for delivery direct from the colliery to Jacksons Millboard Company at Bourne End (on the Marlow branch of the Great Western Railway) to be loaded into colliery-owned wagons by rail over a 12 month period.

There were hundreds of like transactions every day in the coal trade, but very, very little evidence has survived. This is one of a bundle of documents lodged in the Guildhall Library, London, and there is much to learn from it.

Deliveries spread over 12 months would average 1220 tons a month, or 120 wagons loads. These would have been despatched in lots of thirty wagons a week, almost a train load and the possibility is that they could have been despatched as such, (pity there were no wagon spotters in those days!) therefore there would always be Coventry wagons at Bourne End station, the private siding of the mill, and en route.. Note also the calculation of delivered cost per ton, price at pit plus rail freight plus wagon hire. This would have been billed by the colliery to Lamont and Warne, based on the record of the colliery weighbridge which discloses the actual tonnage sent, and an invoice would be prepared by the factor and sent to the consignee.

As this was an early wartime transaction, part of the terms and conditions have been blotted out. (authors collection)

Keith Turton

back