Highland Railway - January 1896 - Jones Goods Class?

Hi all,

I'm currently writing a book on the pioneer era of sport in the Highlands. My topic leads me here as I am hoping to find out what type of train may have been used to transport a team of sportsmen from the Tain station to the Dingwall station in January/February of 1896. My limited research has led me to the Jones Good Class locomotive as an engine that may have been used at the time. Am I correct, or were there alternatives? Is this an engine that would have been used to pull carriages with passengers, or just freight? In addition, some indication of the speed of the train, or thereby the time required to travel 26 miles, would also be useful. My apologies in advance for my limited knowledge.

My apologies also if this post is in the wrong place.

Kind regards,

Niall

 

Hi Martin,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I am quite surprised at the duration of travel, as even now, I find myself travelling for about 45 minutes from Tain to Dingwall! Would there have been any special requirement for a party of 15-20 sportsmen travelling via rail at the time that you know of? Typically, how many carriages would have been on this route?

Niall

 

You'd have to check timetables for the duration, but I'd have thought 26 miles of single line with passing places would have been an hour at least. I suspect there also would have been a certain amount of erratic running, in that some trains would likely have waited for connections with services from London (which could have been running potentially hours late), so departure times - and therefore crossing times at other stations - may have led to long delays on a rather variable basis.

As for continuous brakes - that would effectively have been a requirement by 1896, wouldn't it, not just prefereable? (Railways were compelled by an 1878 Act of Parliament to make twice-yearly returns on their progress towards continuous brakes on all passenger trains. The 1889 Regulation of Railways Act effectively gave the Board of Trade the power to compel railways to adopt continuous brakes for passenger trains, but by then it was effectively tidying up a process that most railways had already got well in progress.).

Tom