From 1888 to 2014 and still going strong

The sight of a Pechot wagon at the Apedale Heritage Centre may seem unremarkable. To see it loaded with rail may not excite much interest, save a small sigh of satisfaction. After all it's better to move rail-related material on a railway rather than using road transport. Would you believe it but we have followed a lorry carrying a Caledonian sleeper carriage! But I digress.

Photo courtesy Jim Hawkesworth

Yet this photograph deserves a closer look. Pechot wagons - Artillery 1888 material, to give them the correct name - were built between 1888 and 1893. The one making its way around the yard at Apedale is a sprightly centenarian. In fact, in Tolkien terminology, it has celebrated its eleventy first birthday. As our friend Jim Hawkesworth gathers, the wagon was used by the French army until the Second World War. Somehow it escaped the Germans. It was then used industrially in northern France. At some point, it lost the stanchions which go into the little pockets you can see as bulges along the wagon side. Not only did the stanchions serve to retain the load on the wagon, but they could also be used as re-railing bars. The wagon has also lost the brakestands which should be at each end. Recently, it was purchased by an English enthusiast for  light duties and an honourable retirement.

Photo courtesy Jim Hawkesworth Beside the coupling chain can be seen a pocket to take the re-railing bar - going off the rails occurred all too frequently.

Not many wagons of this age look this good. Other countries such as Germany and Britain emulated the Pechot system. They simplified the design - cut corners, you might say. By the 1960s, their wagons were sad, battered shadows, bulging at the side, bowed below by their load.Their reasoning was sound enough. Even the admirers of Artillerie 1888 admitted that it was 'too complicated, too expensive, too perfect. It couldn't be manufactured in the quantities required for war' (Lt Georges Mangin, who saw service during the First World War) All the same, if you want wagons which wear well, nothing beats a good Pechot design. If the brakestands are removed by some reason, the brakes can still be operated by a screw lever.

The stanchions have survived on this wagon, and also the brake-stand at the left hand side.

The Apedale wagon is not exceptional. When we visited Fermont, a post on the Maginot line, we found another Pechot wagon. It is not quite in original condition; it has been repainted. Originally Artillery 1888 wagons were grey; as we all know, colour was invented half-way through the 20th century! The history of the wagon was something like this. It was used by the French Army and retained at the end of the First Word War. Once plans were made to create the Maginot Line, it was moved east to the frontier with Germany. During the Occupation, it was pushed into the deepest part of the Maginot fortification. When enthusiasts decided to preserve Fermont as a historic monument, the wagon was returned to the surface. There it sits. Like the Apedale wagon, it's still game. Unlike the one in England, it can't move - it is on a short length of track!

Tracks to the trenches - someone else got our title

As you know, we have been preparing a book about Colonel Pechot, a modest French soldier who, almost single-handedly, introduced 60 centimetre gauge railways as a way of supplying an army at war. These  narrow gauge railways were used by both sides on the Western Front and elsewhere between 1914 and 1918. We therefore were going to call our book 'Colonel Pechot: Tracks to the Trenches' If it doesn't say what's inside the tin, folk aren't going to buy the tin; and what applies to groceries, applies also to literature!

The good people at the Apedale Heritage Centre - Loomer Road, Chesterton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs ST5 7RR - have used our title! We are fond of Apedale. It is on an industrial site which took advantage of 60cm equipment that was sold off after the First World War. The site, now run by volunteers, features a coal-mine that can still be visited and an abundance of preserved stock, some of which dates back to the time of the Great War.  One or two photos in our Pechot book were taken there, so we always look to see what's new, so to speak. This time, we were startled to say the least!

We saw a trench!

Digging a trench is hard work and involves some extra materials. You can see how they stand out against the freshly turned earth. When the War began, French soldiers actually had to fight in bright blue uniforms. The British were more fortunate to be in khaki.

For an instant we wondered if we had been swept back in time, but no, the world was still in full glorious colour, and the sound was working perfectly. We went over to investigate. Three lads were indeed digging a trench system.

The trenches are being constructed with corrugated iron, sandbags or, just seen, woven willow

This is to be part of the Living History display at their World War 1 Event which will take place 12th - 14th September. They decided to call the event 'Tracks to the Trenches'
For more details go to www.ww1-event.org

We took a closer look. Three sorts of trenches were under construction. Some had walls of corrugated iron. A length of trench was being skilfully sided with willow - back in the days of the War, some of the conscripts were old-fashioned hedgers and used their skills in the earth of the Western Front. Some trenches were walled with sandbags. Interestingly, if pressed, most veterans of World War 1 used to recount a version of the 'hand' story. A corpse has been incorporated into a trench wall; the hand protrudes. Any soldier passing shakes the hand. My grandpa, who was at the Western Front, used to tell the story. A similar tale was brought home by the soldiers from the Potteries. As Staffordshire is the county of the hearty hand-shake, story ends with the hand coming away in a soldier's grip! If there is a moral to the tale it is this. Veterans of the Great War knew that their listeners would never comprehend the full horror of their experiences. They fell back on macabre humour!

We looked into the construction. As it had been raining, the trench floors already looked authentically muddy. Although they looked deep, walking has to be achieved half-crouching. The trenches follow the authentic pattern of the Western Front, never straight for long. They weren't designed by drunkards; they zig-zig in order to foil enemy gunners.

The material at Apedale is mainly British. The British came late to 60cm railways, starting the War with a small amount of 2'6" gauge material, as I recounted in an earlier blog. Haulage was supposed to be accomplished by animal or human power.

To complete the Trench experience, you have to imagine the full-size version of this locomotive chugging towards the Front. Steam locomotives would stop short of the trenches and allow a petrol-powered one to take the train the rest of the way. Model of a British War Department Baldwin 4-6-0T by Wrightscale

Trench railways were introduced in a 'bottom-up' sort of way. Once the boys on the ground saw the Pechot system, they imitated it. Between spring and autumn 1916, the Top Brass followed, adopting the metric 60cm gauge in preference to 2'

Another system was being developed during the War. You could see from the photographs taken at Apedale how well bright colours show up against mud. The British had learned the value of khaki during the Boer War of 1899 to 1902. The art of camouflage continued to be studied during the 1914-18 War. Indeed, while my grandpa was running bent double along the trenches, Malcolm's grandpa was developing camouflage.

This model was built by Jim Hawkesworth, using a Wrightscale WD bogie kit. It shows a War Department water tank in camouflage. As well as using field colouring, the shape has been 'broken up' to help disguise the shape. WD wagons followed the idea introduced by Pechot - use braked bogies and standardise as far as possible

What if there hadn't been a Pechot?

Looking back at the fifty three months of the Great War, no-one thinks it could have been different. Somehow huge armies on several Fronts magicked the resources to slug it out for a protracted period. In fact, since the American civil war, nothing on this scale had occurred. The answer, we believe, is that portable narrow gauge railways, quickly laid, had overcome the logistics problem. Millions could be fed, watered and reinforced on the field.

Yet the invention was not inevitable. History turns on human will, not on faceless 'forces'. If Pechot hadn't devoted his considerable energies over a life-time to military transport, the French wouldn't have had a supply system ready - well - almost. There were the little problems of actually getting stuff made and training up the troops. They overcame such problems for the best possible reason - the opposition already had railways and trained troops. We are confident that the German Feldbahn system - of just such portable railways - owed its existence to the fact that, some years before the War, they saw what the French were doing!

A 60cm railway goes into the French fort  of Bois L'Abbe near Epinal. Before 1914, the French strategy was to depend on a network of these forts to deter invaders. Supplies and reinforcements were quickly moved thanks to the little railway which was equally at home inside as out.

There was nothing 'inevitable' about the Pechot System. We can imagine how things might have been if there had been no Prosper Pechot. Let us look at the British experience. In the 1870s, around the time that Pechot was looking at difficulties in military transport, the British Army were aware of these problems and setting their best minds to it. Those minds were in the Royal Engineers - allow me to be a little prejudiced - my Grandpa was a Sapper! Railways were the best form of military supply for the period but were hard to lay quickly, one obstacle being steep gradients. Mother Nature does not like flat spaces. If there are any, she fills them up with water. Elevated track in 18" (45cm) gauge looked promising. This was the Fell System. 500 man-days, it was calculated, were required to construct each mile of track. After a few trials in 1872-4, the Engineers filed a report and that was it.

The British Pechot, Mr Henry Handyside, lately Assistant Engineer to the Government of Nelson Province, New Zealand, then came forward. The Handyside Patent System enabled a locomotive to be used as a stationary engine to haul  its train up inconvenient gradients. Existing locomotives could be retrofitted with the necessary equipment. The need for civil engineering was much reduced. Handyside got into the Press and found himself a commercial backer. In 1876, the Royal Engineers were moved to witness trials, and by November 1876, they were ordering their own version - in their favoured gauge of 18". Trials went on until 1885 when it was decided to abandon the system Handyside System altogether on the grounds of unit and operational cost. Metre gauge lines were proposed as an alternative although no-one was delegated to look into the matter. Naivety or complacency? You decide. By 1914, 2'6" (75cm) was the British Army's gauge of choice - not that they had much material anyway (4 1/2 miles).

In the period 1874-80, Captain Pechot of the French Artillerie had conducted trials to determine which gauge would be best for portable military track. When his superiors were too mean or cautious to help him, he turned to Paul Decauville the industrialist. He encountered opposition from the French equivalent of the Sappers. At the time that the British abandoned their trials, the French concluded to their own satisfaction that metre gauge would do for military purposes.  Pechot looked to the Navy for support. Then the Press discovered that all France's defences could be blown to smithereens by high explosive. The Government were forced to act. By sheer force of personality and the sacrifice of all his weekends, Pechot showed that 60cm gauge could, cheaply and quickly, provide the new mobility that was required.

And what of the Germans? They had favoured 75cm for military gauge. When the French were conducting trials around Toul, they too switched gauge to ... 60cm. Soon after the Pechot Bourdon loco appeared, the Germans switched from small locomotives with conical boilers and horse-drawn wagons to a system of bogie wagons of roughly the same dimensions as the Pechot ones, pulled by locomotives analogous to the Pechot one. They worked even harder at field supply than the French. By Christmas 1914, at the time when most experts decreed that the War would be over, it had only just begun.

More progress in the Workshop

More work has been going into the batch of Quarry Hunslets.  Last time I prepared the bar stock to make the cylinder blocks.  This time more of the same.  The first operation is to machine the middle of the block away to form the valve face.

Using the table stops on the mill makes machining the valve face quick work.

This is recessed so that the valve chest sits under the smoke box of the engine. Then narrow grooves are milled across the width of the block, these are to take 1/16" wide keys that retain and lock the block into the frames.  They also provide a useful point to index the block when machining the locations for the cylinders themselves.  Again the face of the machine vice provides the datum, material in the slot  providing a useful stop.  In this way all the blocks end the same size and the cylinders are parallel and the same distance from the face of the frames.  All done without measuring just using a centre finder, the machine vice face  and the stops on the machine.
The next stage is bench work with a small drill press and a pendant drill. This is the bit where a mistake is starting to be costly. First the centre line have to be lightly marked on the valve face.

Having machined the valve face the tool marks have to abraded away without the flatness being lost.

Then the hardened drilling jig is clamped on, sighting the scribed lines through the holes in the jig.  Then the ports are drilled through.  I have found that round ports work perfectly well and drilling them all the same size does not adversley affect the running of the engine.

Using the jig to drill the ports.

Then all the steam ways have to be drilled into the block  and sockets formed to take the inlet and exhaust steam couplings. Connecting the exhaust to the central exhaust ports is the bit I like least since it has to be done by eye using a pendant drill.  If you miss the port  you can write off the block.  The drill press is used to drill from the cylinder face to the inlet ports , it is a deep hole and can wander if the chips are not cleared.

All the steam ways drilled, next make the cylinders.The valve face is offset to one side to give room for the exhaust pipe.

Back in the Workshop.

It was an enjoyable break in France, as Sarah told you, the visit to the Gare de Sos was a real treat.
At the 16mm AGM show in Peterborough I purchased a kit from Swift Sixteen for a protected Simplex(Tin Turtle).  The were built in large numbers, 104 were ordered in 1917 and quite a few are still around.  This kit was based on the locomotive at Apedale. Where they are having a WD commemoration  on 12th/13th September this year.  Well worth going to, not only a unique assembly of WD locomotives and stock but also an accurate re-creation of a section of trench showing all the different trenching methods used.
The kit itself was excellent.  Well detailed and no problems in assembly- everthing fitted and the downloaded instructions were OK, perhaps some of the photos were a little hard on old eyes. Last weekend saw it built and painted.  I still have to paint the details and apply the well etched works plate and number plates.

The Tin Turtle assembled from a Swift Sixteen kit

After the Turtle was finished thoughts turned to the Quarry Hunslet locos.  We have notes of interest in over 50!  So the time has arrived to start building them.  I have decided to start with the mechanism.  We make this in house by fabrication.  The cylinder block starts out as a length of 3/4" x 1/2" bar.  The first operation is to get the batch all square and the same length having cut them roughly on a chop saw.

All machined to length

Next using the end of the machine vice as the datum they are all endmilled with a recess that is going to become the valve face between the frames of the loco.  The removal of metal is limited by the table stops and the down stops.  So once set up not much skill is needed.  The machine takes off 50 thou at a pass.

Starting to machine the last one in the batch.

Visit to France reopens memories of writing our last book

We have been away to France. Our hope was to hide away and make progress on the book about Colonel Pechot and the tracks to the trenches. We were distracted by friends who lured us to the Gers. We didn't need much persuading! South-west France is the land of perpetual spring, roses that bloom in April, cherries that ripen in May and idyllic domaines/wine-growers' properties surrounded by vineyards. The locals have a wonderful wide spread of animals to chase - they love animals, especially on their plates.
We were not disappointed. After the usual catch-up between good friends - politics, scandals and so on, they took us to Sos. Sos? I'd never heard of it, though Malcolm had, as a station on the Midi which closed in the early Sixties. As we approached, the years fell away and I was back to my youth (well almost) researching our last book, the Tramways a Vapeur du Tarn (TVT).

Book on the TVT Oakwood Press 2001

 Like Sos, this is also in the area once dominated by the Midi Railway Company but further to the east. Let's tell you more about Sos.
The old station has become a gite of luxury and character. To find out more and see it, go to the website which is www.gare-de-sos.com  It is a perfect little Midi station. The halle/goods shed is tacked on to the batiment des voyageurs/station building. (No accents - sorry!) A length of platform still survives, as does the pumping house which once brought water for the steam engines. The site of the water tower is still visible, though it has gone. The amazing thing was my feeling of deja vu. I could almost have been standing outside the station at Lavaur, researching our book about the narrow gauge railway in Tarn -  well, almost. In this picture we are standing beside the station hotel and Lavaur gare is larger.

Ex Midi station at Lavaur, a small town which is still served by a railway in the department of Tarn. The picture was taken by Malcolm in 2000

My previous book was pretty thorough. A reader told me that I was obviously determined to have the last word on the subject and I suppose that I nearly did. Yet apart from a peek inside the ticket office at Lavaur, I never saw inside any of the old buildings that served the TVT. Readers were probably spared another chapter! Yet here we were, being invited by David, the owner, to have a look around a perfect little Midi station at Sos.
When David purchased the station as a restoration project 20 years ago little could he have expected to find in the old salle d'attente/waiting room, hidden behind decaying wall board a set of Midi poster panels from the 1920s with layer after layer of promotional pictures. The rows of posters were high on the walls and below this pasted to the walls were the timetables. It would have been possible to travel from Sos to Tarbes in the south and Agen in the north. Sitting in the living room of the gite, you are in an atmosphere which must be unique, with unspoiled walls dating from the 1920s. We are not going to spoil it for you with any photographs. Stay at the gite and enjoy a trip back in time. We were invited upstairs to the old station-master's lodgings - a living room looking over the station yard, a kitchen looking over the sidings and three bedrooms which once had a view of the water tower. Stairs lead up to the attic which was once a store. These have been converted, but with sensitivity and panache. Once again, look at the website to be reassured that the creature comforts of the 21st century have all been included.

The Baldwin Gas Mechanical BGM         Sarah's Remarks

We all love a mystery and this family of locomotives offers a few. First of all, there is her name. The official US title is ‘Baldwin Gas Mechanical’ but her crew preferred the term ‘tractor’ although the term already applied to that ubiquitous bit of farm machinery. The attitude spread to France where the official name was ‘locomotive à essence’ (petrol) where the name locotracteur stuck. http://appeva.perso.neuf.fr/imgapp/t33-01.jpg

Photo. A model in 16mm scale made from a Wrightscale kit by the late Henry Holdesworth.

There is also power in her mystery. Scrutiny of original Baldwin documents – the 1919 catalogue – explains that she was supplied in 35hp and 50hp versions. Richard Dunn suggests that the original order may have been for 20 and 40 hp locomotives, but given the famous just-do-it philosophy of the Baldwin Works, this may have changed to suit the engines available. It all seems very simple 35 and 50 hp were delivered – 35Cv and 50Cv (chevaux/horses) to France.

And yet … the myth of the 20, 40 and 45 hp locotractors persists quite obstinately. In a splendid, well researched book of 2002, we see a photo of a US train passing over a wooden bridge of the Wild West type. Below are the august Paris-Strasbourg mainline and the equally regal Canal de l’Est. In the background is the elegant arch of a stone bridge. The cheery tourists are hitching a ride on a Péchot wagon while being hauled by a cheeky Baldwin locotractor, also carrying some passengers. The caption reads ‘The locomotive is Baldwin 45hp no 7023’ How do myths develop? In this case, one suspects that it is through careless labelling by the war photographer.

At the beginning of the War, steam locomotives were used on trench narrow gauge, but both the French and the Germans soon realised that internal combustion locomotives had many advantages, chief of which being they were less visible. They were also less likely to emit stray sparks – given the combustible environment, quite an advantage. The British and French had their own designs, but they were just not being produced in enough numbers. When the USA entered the war, they looked to Baldwin who was already delivering locomotives in large numbers to both the French and British. We must remember that the powerful reliable internal combustion engine that we so take for granted was only just emerging.

            

Baldwin combined existing technologies. It was accustomed to cast steel bar frames, as used for example on the Baldwin 4-6-0T it was producing for the British War Department. It developed existing gear boxes. Usually, at the time these may have been 4-speed, but the BGM had only two. Its usual top speed was 6mph though 12mph was a theoretical maximum. It had an electric starter for the motor and lights, a boon for the atrocious conditions. The motor modified existing technology. Each cylinder was a separate piece for ease of maintenance

Trench conditions did not allow for turning and so machines such as the Péchot-Bourdon could be run in either direction. The Simplex 40 hp and the BGM solved the problem by having the driver sit side-on.

Telling them apart? The divided windscreen on the 50hp version consists of a pair of rectangles whereas those on the 35hp are a pair of squares. The transmission jack shaft crank is larger on the 50hp version. The pair of louvres in the bonnet next to the cab are narrower than the third louver in the 35hp version. All three are the same width on the 50ph.

Was the BGM loved? It was certainly more convenient than a steam locomotive, but it did have problems. Large, tallish and balanced on four wheels, it tended to derail and topple too easily. Most squaddies would have liked a four-speed gear-box, it would have prevent strain on couplings. The War Department Simplex and the French Schneider were more popular at the time, so is reported. Yet, in a cold dawn, with supplies running low, throb of its arrival and the sight of its angular bulk looming out of the mist must have cheered many a heart.

As so many were produced – 600 50hp for France, 126 50hp for the AEF in France and at home, 65 35hp - many survived the Great War and some were sold off for War Surplus, finding their way on to agricultural and industrial lines. They were often customised, a process that fills Malcolm with horror. A survivor at Froissy was re-gauged. Another went to the Festiniog Railway- Moelwyn.http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=381723  ‘Malheureusement’ scolds Jacques Pradayrol of APPEVA who is of the same mind as Malcolm, they gave it a front bogie to help adhesion. To me personally, change is part of the process, a labour of love, even. Today, judging by the interest in this highly distinctive locomotive, the BGM has puttered its way into many hearts.