Heritage under the hammer
This month’s canalia auction reports by Geoff Courtney include a builder’s plate from a named locomotive that operated on the Manchester Ship Canal’s railway system a century ago, and another from a Trinity House pilots’ vessel which went under the hammer for four figures.
A BUILDER’s plate froma steam locomotive that operated on the Manchester Ship Canal’s railway system for more than halfa century sold for £340 at a Great Central Railwayana auction on September 3.
The standard gauge railway comprised temporary track used by a large fleet of locomotives, trucks and wagons supplying materials for the construction of the 36-mile canal from 1887 to 1893. Such was the railway’s importance to the work that at its peak it had a fleet of 180 locomotives and more than 6000 trucks and wagons supplying an astonishing 10,000 tons of coal and 8000 tons of cement every month.
Rather than dismantling the railway when the canal opened, the canal company left much of it in place and converted it to commercial use, initially with freight trains in February1893 and threemonths later with public passenger services. The locomotivewhose builder’s platewas sold at the auction was froman0-6-0T delivered to the canal company by Hudswell Clarke of Leeds in 1912. It wasnumbered54and named Odessa and ran on the railway until being withdrawn in 1966.
The railway, which had a link with the main line railway system, remained in private hands after Nationalisation in 1948, ceased running passenger services in 1964 but operated freight trains until closure in1978. Thecanal, which links Manchesterwith the Irish Sea, is now ownedbyPeelHoldings and currently handles 8000 containers a year.
At the same auction a Shropshire Union Railway and Canal Company cast iron sign warning of a bridge weight restriction fetched£120. This company was established in 1846 to manage a number of canals, and was leased to the London & North Western Railway the following year and bought outright by the rail company in 1857.
TheShropshireUnion Canal, which is navigable and is described by the Canal & River Trust as a “charmingly rural and isolatedwaterway formuch of its length,” runs for 66½ miles and is part of the circular and rural holiday route called the Four Counties Ring.
A sale held on October 15 by Talisman Railwayana, another leading specialist auction house, also featured a builder’s plate, from Trinity House pilots’ vessel Brook. This coal-fired steam cutter was built in 1932 by shipbuilders and engineers Cammell Laird& Co at Birkenhead for the Isle of Wight Pilotage District, withdrawn in the late 1960s and cut up in Belgium. The large 18x12in brass plate sold for £1700.
The prices quoted at both auctions exclude buyer’spremium of 15% (+ VAT).