Scottish Traders' Wagons Volume 3: Traders N-Z (Lightmoor)

£35.00

Scottish Traders’ Wagons Volume Three: Traders N to Z is the final part in a three-volume survey of private traders’ wagons in Scotland. In part three a further 409 traders, the majority either coalmasters or coal merchants, are covered. Together the three volumes in the set give information about well over 1,250 businesses and provide details of about 50,000 wagons.

Some of the coal merchants described in this volume had large wagon fleets and have interesting histories. James Waldie was one of the first Scottish coal merchants to purchase his own wagons and built up a fleet which, at its maximum, totalled 404 wagons. Waldie’s wagons delivered house coal, steam coal and coke from a variety of sources and have been recorded as far north as Rogart and Kyle of Lochalsh in the highlands. Robert Taylor of Dundee registered just under 200 wagons with the Caledonian Railway and established branch offices in Arbroath, Montrose, supplying coal to various trawler firms.

The United Collieries venture to consolidate Lanarkshire coalmasters’ businesses into a concern to rival the Fife Coal Co. ran into financial trouble almost as soon as it started, and several collieries that were profitable before joining the conglomerate were sold off, because they could not be made to pay under United Collieries’ control. Having failed to meet production and financial targets its first managing director had to resign in 1904. He later had the dubious distinction of being declared bankrupt in England and Scotland at the same time.

Another type of merger, this time at the instigation of the Government, put the surviving shale oil producers under unified control immediately after the end of World War One. More than 400 tanks from the various firms were renumbered in blocks according to their capacity, with others added in the 1920s/30s. A maintenance contract agreed in May 1929 covered 684 tanks.

298 black & white photographs. Hardback. 320 pages.