Oil can

A friend of mine has just bought an oil can, see pictures attached. There has been some corrosion on the side, but it appears to have been stamped SWR with a small superscript Y after the R. There is no sign of any letter in front of the S, which itself is firly indistinct due to the corrosion. Can anyone say if it looks like an LSWR oil can, or is there another company who might have owned it?

 

There was a South Wales Railway company.......

 

Some years ago I was talking to an SVR driver at Bridgnorth, an ex GW man who had a very similar oilcan with some initials on it. When I asked what they were the story he told me was that when a fireman was made up to driver he would go to the coppersmith and pay him a few bob to make him a customised oilcan with the length of spout and size etc chosen by the driver. The driver's initials were invariably stamped on the can to prevent theft. His can was given to him by his regular driver when he retired and still had his initials on it. I'm not sure if this tradition was universal but those initials could be those of the driver who owned it.

 

Interesting story, but I'd have thought the R^Y would have made that rather unlikely?

 

True, I should have looked a bit more closely.

 

You could ask on the LSWR Yahoo group. SWR or SWRy would certainly not be unusual for the LSWR, particularly in the Drummond era. Though looking at the photo, I'm struggling to see the "S" - I can see the W Ry very clearly?

Tom

 

Thanks for that. From Wikipedia:
"The South Wales Railway (Welsh: Rheilffordd De Cymru) was an early main line which connected the Great Western Railway near Gloucester with South Wales. It was constructed on the broad gauge, and was opened in stages from 1850.An original aspiration was to reach Fishguard to engender an Irish ferry transit and transatlantic trade, but the latter did not materialise for many years, and never became an important sector of the business; Neyland on the upstream end of the Milford Haven estuary was the western terminus of the line until 1906."
Given that the oil can was bought from a junk shop in Pembrokeshire, it does seem that it did originally belong to the South Wales Railway. More likely, in this corner of Wales, than the LSWR.

 

The S is very indistinct and only visible if you are looking at the original. Just the top curve and the top serif are still visible. Could you give me a link for the LSWR Yahoo group please. A search on the Yahoo Groups site for LSWR or London & South Western returned no results.

 

In that case, could the S actually be a G?

 

That was my first thought, but on careful examination, it's definitely an S.

 

It's here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/LSWRR/info

Tom

 

A long shot (especially with it being found in Pembrokeshire), but could it be the Shrewsbury and Welshpool Railway?