Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

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Oldjohnw
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Oldjohnw »

There are old yellow National Freight van bodies and a few old railway goods vans all over the wilder parts of Northumberland for storage.
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Mike Sales
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Mike Sales »

I guess the modern equivalent is shipping containers. They are used for many purposes besides shipping, even housing.
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colin54
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by colin54 »

Mike Sales wrote: 11 May 2021, 12:12pm I guess the modern equivalent is shipping containers. They are used for many purposes besides shipping, even housing.
I'd forgotten about shipping containers, but as if by magic, today near the Ribble estuary at Longton W.Lanc's.
I liked the sign on the side of the old truck body next to the container as well, a contemporary sign on a temporary shelter.
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Mick F
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Mick F »

Colin, you and I know the area well!

Chatting online to Chat Noir a few times, and been in contact via email only yesterday.
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Met and cycled with him, and in the same class with his older brother at primary school in Wigan back in the 1950s and 60s. :D
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Pebble »

colin54 wrote: 11 May 2021, 9:53am Funnily enough, I've been reading about the Gypsies at Kirk Yetholm recently. My family on my Father's side were from the Borders.
https://www.gypsypalace.co.uk/section468194.html
this was long before I come up to the borders, these were all ex Irish Gypsies, there was a whole load that had went into brick where I was brought up - it was a mad place - LOL
I think the Yetholm ones were Romany ?


anyway, back on topic. Old railway goods vans are quite a feature up in the Cheviot hills, many of which now seem to be coming to the end of their life but they have been used for storing stuff like dry hay and feed in some very remote places, It has often puzzled me ow they got some of them to where they are.

Don't approve of the following, used for pheasant rearing, total blot on the landscape.
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colin54
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by colin54 »

Thanks for posting those Pebble, great pictures. That's such a clever & simple way of fixing the shelters to the ground.
So easy to move them elsewhere if required. Ingenious.
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velorog
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by velorog »

My grandfather was a railway worker living in a 2 bedroomed cottage next to a rail line. He had 8 children, 4 girls and 4 boys. Somehow, he managed to have a carriage hoisted into the garden by one of the rail company's cranes. The girls slept in the house and the boys slept in the carriage.
After the boys left home the carriage became a garden shed and as a youngster I would spend hours in the shed. It was full of tools, bikes and bike bits. There was a Raleigh Lenton Sports in bits, and when I was 13 my uncle gave me the frame and a box of bits. With my mother's help we carried them home on the bus for me to build up. It was my first proper bike and the start of a lifetime's cycle touring.
colin54
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by colin54 »

Thank you for sharing that velorog, great story of your family.

I just noticed in Pebbles pictures above that the blue barrels (presumably pheasant shelters) have wooden battens mounted on the outside to stop them rolling down the hill, clever.
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colin54
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by colin54 »

The farmer I linked to in my first post in this thread has added another aircraft fuselage ( the smaller one ) to his shed collection, type unknown...
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by rjb »

Looks like there's a bike awaiting restoration in one of them. Time for another visit. :wink:
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Paulatic
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Paulatic »

colin54 wrote: 12 May 2021, 10:45pm

I just noticed in Pebbles pictures above that the blue barrels (presumably pheasant shelters) have wooden battens mounted on the outside to stop them rolling down the hill, clever.
The blue barrels are feeders which have fallen over. They usually have a large spring fitted in the bottom which birds peck at and grain falls out.
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axel_knutt
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by axel_knutt »

You can spend the night in an old brake van at the Exeter & Teign Valley Railway if you want, I always meant to, but never got around to it.

The Pullman Inn at Cressing used to have a restaurant made from a Pullman car that was part of Winston Churchills funeral train. I've been in the pub, but never had a meal in the carriage.
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Nearholmer »

Railways have been selling-off redundant wagons and carriages since about 1850, usually as they were superseded by “the next thing”, as in bigger, faster, steel instead of timber etc, and the modern equivalent is the selling-off of worn out ISO containers.

Hereabouts, every allotment, chicken-run etc used to have a carriage or a van, because we are near what was a major railways works, but most have either decayed away or been rescued over the past c25 years. There are a few left “in the wild” though, including s small collection at one farm.

I’m not totally sure what this began life as, but I suspect an LNWR milk van.

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Audax67
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by Audax67 »

colin54 wrote: 12 May 2021, 5:59am Thanks for posting those Pebble, great pictures. That's such a clever & simple way of fixing the shelters to the ground.
So easy to move them elsewhere if required. Ingenious.
But as ugly as something stuck to a blanket.

There's an old Maersk container lurking in the back yard of a garage near us. It's remarkably ugly but everything else there - wrecks, old tyres, the owner, etc. - is too so it sorta fades in.
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colin54
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Re: Old Railway Goods Vans etc.

Post by colin54 »

Paulatic wrote: 19 May 2023, 12:41pm
colin54 wrote: 12 May 2021, 10:45pm

I just noticed in Pebbles pictures above that the blue barrels (presumably pheasant shelters) have wooden battens mounted on the outside to stop them rolling down the hill, clever.
The blue barrels are feeders which have fallen over. They usually have a large spring fitted in the bottom which birds peck at and grain falls out.
Whoops - that's what guessing does for you, thanks for the proper usage. :oops:
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