Idle curiosity: goods or freight?

[Rescars]

D. L. Smith comments in his GSWR anecdotes about a working of the "Dalmellington goods, or 'freight' as we now had to call it". This was in 1926 and implies an edict from Euston that the LMS used the term 'freight' in preference to 'goods'. Most references I have seen pre-Grouping use the term 'goods', but IIRC BR operated 'freight' trains. Does anyone know when and why this change in terminology from 'goods' to 'freight' came about? Did the LMS take the lead over this perhaps?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Was 'freight' a word used, previously, more in the United States?

 

[Ashley Hill]

BR operated 'freight' trains

The brake timing changeover switch/lever on most wagons and locos that I’ve been involved with have always said Goods/Passenger or foreign variants. The rule book seems to always refer to freight trains and yet they often run on goods lines or put in goods loops.

 

[Western Sunset]

The WTTs were generally split into one for "Passenger Trains" and one for "Freight Trains".

 

[Rescars]

A bit more digging reveals that the Railway Clearing House standard locomotive headcodes differentiated various types of freight trains by 1926, but the GWR and LMS still had Chief Goods Managers in 1932. Was the change was an RCH innovation perhaps? That said, it appears that the RCH appointed a chairman annually for its Goods Managers Conference. This started in 1857, was still happening in 1932 (according to the 1932 Railway Year Book) and may well have continued more recently.

 

[BeijingDave]

Before his cricket career took off, Phil DeFreitas was particularly accomplished at loading goods trains.

 

[Fleetwood Boy]

When did the LMS first start using F in their loco classifications? And they never used G before that?

 

[Western Sunset]

GWR WTTs (pre WW1) generally referred to "Goods Trains", though the term "Freight Trains" was also used, though to a lesser degree.

 

[Rescars]

Before his cricket career took off, Phil DeFreitas was particularly accomplished at loading goods trains.

Howzat!!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Apr 2025 ==

When did the LMS first start using F in their loco classifications? And they never used G before that?

Good questions indeed. The first of Fowler's 4Fs would seem to have emerged from Derby in 1924.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Apr 2025 ==

The brake timing changeover switch/lever on most wagons and locos that I’ve been involved with have always said Goods/Passenger or foreign variants. The rule book seems to always refer to freight trains and yet they often run on goods lines or put in goods loops.

I wonder how long ago some of these lines and loops got their names. Possibly before "freight" had been invented?!

 

[The exile]

Very much a layperson's perspective but "goods" always to me seems to suggest the stuff that from the word "go" would have been a millstone round the railways' necks - the individual items that required manual handling, goods sheds etc , while freight was, to put it crudely, the stuff you couldn't count. Hence "pick-up goods" but "bulk (or wagonload) freight". Looking back far enough though, that's probably historically inaccurate.

 

[John Webb]

According to "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History" (Biddle and Simmons, OUP 1997) The early railways used the term 'goods' as used by road and canal transport before them. The term 'freight' was used by the later American railroads, and arrived in the UK in the early 1900s. It predominated from 1948 - implicitly from British Railways foundation (? - not clear).

 

[etr221]

According to "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History" (Biddle and Simmons, OUP 1997) The early railways used the term 'goods' as used by road and canal transport before them. The term 'freight' was used by the later American railroads, and arrived in the UK in the early 1900s. It predominated from 1948 - implicitly from British Railways foundation (? - not clear).

I think in the early part of the twentieth century there was some study of American practice by British railway management, and the adoption of the term 'freight' came with this, and steadily took over from 'goods' through the years.

There is I think a subtle difference between the two terms: 'goods' are essentially things/stuff/(moveable) property, that might be transported; 'freight' (a term which came from the shipping (by sea) business) the transport thereof, or things/goods being transported, an equivalent perhaps to 'cargo', or (when talking about persons) 'passenger'. The joys of language!

 

[stuving]

Very much a layperson's perspective but "goods" always to me seems to suggest the stuff that from the word "go" would have been a millstone round the railways' necks - the individual items that required manual handling, goods sheds etc , while freight was, to put it crudely, the stuff you couldn't count. Hence "pick-up goods" but "bulk (or wagonload) freight". Looking back far enough though, that's probably historically inaccurate.

I think that's basically right about the difference between the words. "Goods" are what is traded, and there were lots of complicated regulations and tariffs relating to the "carriage of goods". "Freight" is Dutch in origin, and comes to English first as a ship's cargo or loading it on board.

When a new working community comes together as in the early railways, new usage gets fixed very quickly and can look arbitrary from the outside. I imagine that office clerks dealt mostly with goods, while railway operations hauled freight, and also goods but that was hidden away inside vans. So different parts of the railway used the two words to different degrees, but not with exactly the same meaning. Different usage crystallised in the USA, and that then influenced usage here.


"Goods" I suspect is very old indeed in English, even going back to before money and specialised workers. Its relevant basic meaning is your best possessions, wherever you got them from. Those are the things you would trade with someone else for something you really desired, or give as a present to someone important to curry favour with. Being a merchant is basically the same as that, but on a larger scale.

 

[Rescars]

Many thanks for all your comments. Spurred on by these I have now been thumbing through the Oxford Companion. I note the entry for "Goods Traffic" reads "see Freight Traffic"!

 

[Dr Hoo]

The ‘switch’ from goods to freight was very drawn out and patchy. It has struck me that in the GWR’s ‘Next Station’ (its ‘last look forward’ published in 1946 the very traditional company eschewed the word ‘goods’ and had a chapter entitled The Freight Service.

The thrusting new British Transport Commission on the other hand took over the residual work of the Railway Clearing House and persisted in distinguishing between Passenger and Goods facilities in the Handbook of Stations right through to its abolition (under Chairman Dr Beeching) in the 1960s.

 

[Western Sunset]

Railway infrastructure almost invariably used the term "goods". The High Level Goods line at Trent, the "goods lines" at numerous locations, signalbox names (eg Leicester Goods South on the old GC).

Yet train classification tended to refer to freight; such as Class C Express freight.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Going a little off-piste - but it ties in with my understanding in the retail sector years ago:

"Goods" in Old English meant property / possessions. By mid 15th Century, it also meant "saleable commodities" and is the term I recall from 35 years ago.

That could infer "goods" are merchandise in a finished state (selling), whereas merchandise in a non-saleable state (raw material) is "freight".

 

[Lloyds siding]

Lots of thing carried by the railway would probably be classed as 'goods' whereas 'freight' implies purpose built rolling stock. Our old class 502s would carry lots of things besides passengers. The largeish guards compartment would take baggage, parcels, newspapers, mushrooms, pigeons, day-old chicks, mail bags, asparagus and other 'goods', passengers too sometimes.

 

[Adrian Barr]

The Collins Dictionary defines freight as an uncountable noun meaning "the movement of goods by lorries, trains, ships, or aeroplanes."

This page on a US website is quite helpful discussing the use of the term "freight" vs "cargo" - note how many times the word "goods" is used in that discussion. https://thejunctionllc.com/why-is-it-called-freight/

Broadly, I think "freight" implies goods that are being transported, in the same way that "mail" implies letters that are being transported. You could have a warehouse full of goods, but it wouldn't make sense to refer to them as "freight" if they weren't being transported anywhere.

Noting the comment about the LMS, I have a 1966 "Freight Handbook" from British Rail London Midland Region. The use of the term "freight" appears to be standard (there is a picture captioned "Lancaster Freight Terminal" - not goods depot - showing the handling of loose packages in various sizes from traditional 2-axle vans undercover in a large shed. However, there is long list of "Goods Agents" and a reference to a labelling service which "at a reasonable cost" can be used for Goods stored with British Railways / Goods collected from a trader / Goods sent "to order" at destination station / Goods stored in public warehouses. The term "general merchandise" is also used.

There's a previous thread on this topic, although I don't think it reached a definitive conclusion.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-the-latter-become-the-most-prominent.213210/

This was in 1926 and implies an edict from Euston that the LMS used the term 'freight' in preference to 'goods'.

It wouldn't surprise me if the later preference for the term freight was down to some change in "approved terminology" at some point. For example, when did goods yards and goods depots become freight terminals? It may be that the term freight was preferred to give a modern ring to the railways commercial offerings, or to bring it into line with the terminology in other modes of transport. That might also explain why they weren't bothered about terminology such as "goods lines" which would only be used internally.

 

[Bevan Price]

The Collins Dictionary defines freight as an uncountable noun meaning "the movement of goods by lorries, trains, ships, or aeroplanes."

This page on a US website is quite helpful discussing the use of the term "freight" vs "cargo" - note how many times the word "goods" is used in that discussion. https://thejunctionllc.com/why-is-it-called-freight/

Broadly, I think "freight" implies goods that are being transported, in the same way that "mail" implies letters that are being transported. You could have a warehouse full of goods, but it wouldn't make sense to refer to them as "freight" if they weren't being transported anywhere.

Noting the comment about the LMS, I have a 1966 "Freight Handbook" from British Rail London Midland Region. The use of the term "freight" appears to be standard (there is a picture captioned "Lancaster Freight Terminal" - not goods depot - showing the handling of loose packages in various sizes from traditional 2-axle vans undercover in a large shed. However, there is long list of "Goods Agents" and a reference to a labelling service which "at a reasonable cost" can be used for Goods stored with British Railways / Goods collected from a trader / Goods sent "to order" at destination station / Goods stored in public warehouses. The term "general merchandise" is also used.

There's a previous thread on this topic, although I don't think it reached a definitive conclusion.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-the-latter-become-the-most-prominent.213210/



It wouldn't surprise me if the later preference for the term freight was down to some change in "approved terminology" at some point. For example, when did goods yards and goods depots become freight terminals? It may be that the term freight was preferred to give a modern ring to the railways commercial offerings, or to bring it into line with the terminology in other modes of transport. That might also explain why they weren't bothered about terminology such as "goods lines" which would only be used internally.

Compare with the shipping industry - they have freighters or cargo vessels, but "goods" is not normally used, so they are no "goods ships" or "goodsers", etc.

 

[midland1]

Railway infrastructure almost invariably used the term "goods". The High Level Goods line at Trent, the "goods lines" at numerous locations, signalbox names (eg Leicester Goods South on the old GC).

Yet train classification tended to refer to freight; such as Class C Express freight.

Goods lines are still called goods lines so they do not clash with say "up fast" (UF). So its "up goods" (UG) not "up freight" which would also be (UF).

 

[Class15]

Goods lines are still called goods lines so they do not clash with say "up fast" (UF). So its "up goods" (UG) not "up freight" which would also be (UF).

This. It would be an unnecessary change and would mess up abbreviations.

 

[Adrian Barr]

Compare with the shipping industry - they have freighters or cargo vessels, but "goods" is not normally used, so they are no "goods ships" or "goodsers", etc.

I thought it was interesting that although they were talking about freight and cargo in a US context where "freight" is normally used instead of "goods" on the railroads, to discuss the difference between cargo and freight they nevertheless referred to "goods" more than ten times in about 3 paragraphs to describe what was being transported as either freight or cargo.

As already mentioned in previous posts, it suggests that "goods" primarily refers to what is being transported, but can also overlap into descriptions of the transport itself (like goods train, goods loop) while the meaning of "freight" is tied to the act of transporting goods, but overlaps into being used to describe the goods that are being transported. Perhaps as suggested in post #12, the use of "goods" for both meanings was more common in the UK, and the use of "freight" for both meanings was more common in the US but influenced later British usage.

Does anyone know a specific date when British Railways or British Rail stopped referring to goods depots? By the time TOPS was introduced in the 70s the term "freight terminal" or "freight depot" seems to be preferred.

Goods lines are still called goods lines so they do not clash with say "up fast" (UF). So its "up goods" (UG) not "up freight" which would also be (UF).

That's a good point.

 

[stuving]

The Railways Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 includes this in its list of interpretations:

The word “goods” shall include things of every kind conveyed upon the railway:

That list does not include the word "freight". I'm sure that was based on usage at the time, and fixed that usage in laws and regulations afterwards. That part of the act is still in force, so you can hardly determine an end date for the act's effect!