When running a tour as a guide, often people visiting tell
us of surprising things about the railway or ask questions that will lead
through research to new discoveries. A recent tour I gave for guests of our
President Sir Bob Russell, was one such occasion. It prompted a glimpse of
living railway history; from a retired farmer who lives locally. He recalled
that a family descendent from
Scotland came to live this way 90 years
or so ago bringing with him with cattle from his old farm all transported by
rail.
Sir Bob himself has Scottish farming ancestors, I was told there were in fact many
Scottish farming descendants in Essex and across the border in Suffolk. I then enquired
of my own farming acquaintance; he too had a great grandfather that moved to
Essex with a herd from Kilmarnock. Some
research followed and then found Essex lands at the time were often abandoned as
scrub land, partly as the soil itself being composed of heavy clay and therefore was so difficult to
work.
During the late Victorian period there was a rising demand for milk from the rising London population it was ideal to start dairy farming as an alternative to arable crops. This was seen as a profitable exercise by the canny Scots. Transporting milk as was something the Great Eastern railway was also pleased to develop, maybe using some of the 17-gallon churns we exhibit on Platform 3, which in times past was the original Cattle Dock at Chappel.
Scottish connections can also made between between Essex and
Ayrshire farmers -with Kilmarnock in particular. At The museum there are examples of another Scottish heritage , for the product of the
Andrew Barclay locomotive works in the form of both steam locomotive No.11,
also John Peel, diesel a locomotive
built in Scotland and supplied with a Colchester diesel engine!
Social historians have also picked up on this exodus from
Scotland, it is further described in
this web link and in further detail another link within that posting.
By reference to a rail industry calculator, to find the distance by rail from Kilmarnock to
Colchester. it's 414 miles and 74 chains; chains being a quaint old measure still used in the
railway industry being 22 yards in length, that of a surveyor’s chain-linked
chain. Such a move could still follow a traditional route via Dumfries Carlisle, Settle and
Carlisle line, Doncaster, Peterborough. Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich.
Knowing the distance , then rates can be applied to approximate
what such a move might cost. While can’t tell you the rates back in the 19th
century, but I know per archive does hold Goods paperwork from Takeley, there
is a mileage book from those times,
maybe a 19th century rate book may surface to more precisely take us back to
the rates paid at the time.
In the booking office we display a copy of the 1957 rates manual which was published in ready reckoner fashion and pictured here. Every type of merchandise is listed in great detail, including our tour guides favourite examples, rates for elephants, and sea lions. For transporting 411 miles there is a rate published of £70 12s 10d.
Decimal currency was brought into use 50 years ago in 1971, so it gave me a reason to work in a pre-decimal calculation to work in
Pounds, shillings and old pence. Referring our our rate book in 1957 the cost can be calculated at £918 for the farmer transporting 60 cattle. Using an internet inflation checker, that equates to
£2070 in today’s money. What it actually
cost the railway, in building and maintaining rolling stock, marshalling the wagons together ,transport the
animals then adding labour to load and unload,
possibly watering feeding on route of
course is incalculable.
It is also so incredulous that railways were for decades duty
bound by law to accept any traffic offered, and having published rates also meant the
competition could always undercut their prices to take business. Finally, the
Transport Act of 1962 took away that obligation, taking many freights flows off the railway. Livestock facilities such as cattle docks were then immediately withdrawn
from 2493 stations down to just 282 in that year. When cattle traffic itself
ceased locally we don’t know but tall freight traffic had ceased at Chappel and
Wakes Colne by 1963. From 1968 only the livestock traffic was that transporting
Irish cattle which itself ended in 1975. Finally of course we have one of only three 12 ton Cattle wagons preserved which runs in our demonstration freight train.
