Wagons (2)

Gobey’s influence was far more subtle for, having selected 20ft as the length of his underframe, he brought all the general stock into line with his thinking. Under his aegis there was an attempt to fit vacuum braking to all new vehicles, oil axleboxes having been adopted as standard in 1903, and all covered goods were included but cost forced the abandonment of this. He was severely hampered by the building and finance restrictions of the Great War but he was sharp enough to alter his designs to suit every specialist demand made of them after 1915.

The main traffic for the L&Y was cotton, landed raw at Liverpool or Manchester, transported in bales to the spinning mills of South Lancashire (for which there were generally 8 to 10 thousand single plank opens in stock), the spindles were worked overnight in baskets to the weaving sheds of East Lancashire (usually covered goods) and the dyed and finished cloth dispatched as required. Wool was the principle traffic in Yorkshire, dealt with in roughly the same way. There was a prodigious coal traffic but this was largely handled via private owner wagons with the Wigan, Burnley and West Yorkshire coalfields being the most important.

Another famous traffic, which was largely promoted by the Company itself from 1906 was that of fish. Specialist covered vehicles (now considered a trademark of the L&Y) were built and used to get the fresh fish to the major cities of Manchester or Bradford. (In LMS days this traffic was expanded to include Birmingham and London). Such vehicles, although classed as wagons, were easily able to run at passenger train speeds.

On the Traffic Control front a system was introduced in August 1915 which covered the movement of every merchandise or coal train on the L&Y system. Within this was the requirement to let Control at Hunts Bank, Manchester know the whereabouts of every specialist open or covered vehicle, brake van or cattle van each weekday so that immediate future requirements could be met.