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Lifting The Tracks - Cheetham's Anyone?

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Andy873

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The following I'm hoping should be of interest to many of you.

Once more, to cover myself the following details come from file AN155/185 held by the National Archives, Kew and contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v3.0 If you are not familiar with it please have a read:

Open Government License v3.0

In a letter dated 1 March 1965 from no less than the Vice Chairman of the BRB board to the General Manager of the LM region, there is an intriguing last paragraph. He states:

You might like to know an interesting fact... Cheetham have placed contracts for no less than 277 miles of uplifting.
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Uplifting of course means in this context, lifting the tracks of closed lines.
Has anyone heard of this company? know anything about them?

Frustratingly, he doesn't say where this company is from, he just mentions the name. What is strange to me is that all his other correspondence is (just like all the other letters from various departments) very business like, and yet this is not.

Do you think (as he is giving his view on lifting a certain branch line in the first / other paragraph) that he is hinting to the GM which company he thinks should do the lift?

Any thoughts and theories welcome please!
 
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zwk500

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Last edited:
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Gloster

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I can’t find Cheetham’s in Grace’s Guide or elsewhere. A possible source might be the Industrial Railway Society handbook for the area as they tend to list lifting contractors that had locos; there is nothing on the forum. There is a Cheetham Hill Construction, but that says it was formed in 1966.

An alternative reason for the comment might be a gentle warning to check them out if they put in the best offer. If they were a new or unknown company, there might be a slight concern that with 277 miles to lift they could have overreached themselves or might take far too long to get around to the work.
 
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6Gman

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sh24 said:
Looks likely, incorporated in 1946 and the historic address was Manchester.
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Only doubt - woiuld a "manufacturer of metal products" be interested in salvaging huge tonnages of scrap?

Also the phrasing of "Cheetham have placed contracts" reads as though it was Cheetham placing, rather than securing or tendering for, the contracts.

All rather puzzling.
 
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Gloster

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I have to say that I am doubtful that this is the same company. The nature of business in the notice of liquidation and also what can be inferred from a few vague references in Grace’s Guide appears not even to be similar to what would be expected of a track removal contractor. The location given, which seems to have been their base for some years, is Dob Lane Mill in Morton Street and this is not rail connected.

None of definitely disproves the suggestion, but in a case like this I would need a lot of definite proof.
 
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Nelson84

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Methinks there may be some misunderstanding here. The sentence reads as Cheetham being the entity placing the contracts with one or more contractors. My guess is that “Cheetham” is shorthand, recognisable by both the VC and the GM, for the BRB department responsible. Possibly Cheetham House or offices on Cheetham Hill Road?
 
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sh24

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6Gman said:
Only doubt - woiuld a "manufacturer of metal products" be interested in salvaging huge tonnages of scrap?

Also the phrasing of "Cheetham have placed contracts" reads as though it was Cheetham placing, rather than securing or tendering for, the contracts.

All rather puzzling.
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SIC codes can be very loosely applied. They could have a scrap salvage department that is a small part of the total manufacturing business.
 
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Gloster

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Nelson84 said:
Methinks there may be some misunderstanding here. The sentence reads as Cheetham being the entity placing the contracts with one or more contractors. My guess is that “Cheetham” is shorthand, recognisable by both the VC and the GM, for the BRB department responsible. Possibly Cheetham House or offices on Cheetham Hill Road?
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Yes. I missed the word ‘placed’, so it is quite likely that, as you say, Cheetham is shorthand for the BR department agreeing the lifting contracts. As Cheetham Hill Road starts at the north-west corner of Manchester Victoris, that would be quite possible.

1964 was the year that the Beeching closures really got going: once the paperwork had been done there would be a lot of mileage to lift. Although a lot of goods lines went, it wasn’t until September that the first of the LMR’s 1964 complete closures of a passenger line took place: Carlisle-Silloth on the 7th.
 
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Merle Haggard

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Nelson84 said:
Methinks there may be some misunderstanding here. The sentence reads as Cheetham being the entity placing the contracts with one or more contractors. My guess is that “Cheetham” is shorthand, recognisable by both the VC and the GM, for the BRB department responsible. Possibly Cheetham House or offices on Cheetham Hill Road?
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I agree. The arrangements for the disposal of scrap steam locos at the time is well recoded, and all were organised by a part of the Chief Stores Controller. Those were under the control of A.B. McLeod (not sure of spelling) although I don't know whether he was in overall control of all scrap disposals or just locos.
The use of 'have' rather than 'has' suggests an organisation not an an individual.The BRB Stores Controller organisation, like other small and individual BRB ones, probably led a nomadic existence around BR office buildings, but I've never heard of Cheetham.
Using 'Cheetham' as almost a code-word is the way that senior BR managers tended to speak; not sure whether it was to keep confidentiality or to give an air of importance/superior level of knowledge
 
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6Gman

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I have a theory.

The L&Y/ Northern Lines/ Manchester Division offices were - were they not? - at Hunts Bank, opposite Victoria station.

Immediately adjacent to Chetham's School & Library (which are still there, though the railway offices are long gone).

Was "Cheetham" (it's often mis-spelt) used to identify the Hunts Bank office?

So it was a note of the scale of work being put out to contract by the Line/Divisional Office at Hunts Bank.

(In my early days at Crewe I had lots of colleagues who had transferred to Crewe when the Northern Lines and Midland Lines operating functions were centralised at Crewe - late 1960s - with Western Lines, who were already there. I heard some lively tales of goings on at Hunts Bank! Not least when the outside printers went on strike and the printing bureau at Hunts Bank operated 24 hours a day - an advert for "Ladies required for night work in Central Manchester location" drew some ... interesting applicants.)
 
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Andy873

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zwk500 said:
These guys? https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/2872462

www.thegazette.co.uk

ALEX J.CHEETHAM LIMITED

www.thegazette.co.uk www.thegazette.co.uk
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Thanks for taking the time to search for this, don't think it's this company, but still appreciated!

Gloster said:
An alternative reason for the comment might be a gentle warning to check them out if they put in the best offer. If they were a new or unknown company, there might be a slight concern that with 277 miles to lift they could have overreached themselves or might take far too long to get around to the work.
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Yes, that might raise a few eyebrows.

Merle Haggard said:
The use of 'have' rather than 'has' suggests an organisation not an an individual
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With hindsight it does sound like a place not a person.

6Gman said:
I have a theory.

The L&Y/ Northern Lines/ Manchester Division offices were - were they not? - at Hunts Bank, opposite Victoria station.

Immediately adjacent to Chetham's School & Library (which are still there, though the railway offices are long gone).

Was "Cheetham" (it's often mis-spelt) used to identify the Hunts Bank office?

So it was a note of the scale of work being put out to contract by the Line/Divisional Office at Hunts Bank.
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This to me sounds very plausible. Going back to the L&Y days, Hunt Bank was the place all tenders for work had to be sent to, it was also the place that sent out the contracts awarded.

I decided to follow the person (in the documentation, all 88 pages!) to see who was actually pestering to get the tracks lifted on the loop line, it was in fact the CCE (Chief Civil Engineer and his department, Manchester). In 1965 He and his department were based at Fennel Street, which is a stone's throw from Hunts Bank, Victoria station and Cheetham Hill.

I could well imagine the Vice Chairman of the BRB and the GM of the LM region, (both based in London) simply calling the CCE's dept in Manchester "Cheetham" just as I did a moment ago referring to Manchester Victoria station as just Victoria.

I'm quite sure now Cheetham was a given name for a department / place, The phrase Cheetham have placed contracts... does indeed sound like they are the ones who are dishing out the track removal contracts to outside companies?

As a side note, you might like to know how much BR were expecting to get for the removal and selling of track, ballast and signaling etc (don't think it included scrap value for the bridges but might have done):

£23,500 for the track & ballast, Removing the signaling and telecommunications equipment, a loss of £2,000. Net profit £21,500 - That's the figure for track milage of 17.75 miles of the loop line. Interesting, yes?
 
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Rescars

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Just speculation, but the turn of phrase adopted by the Vice Chairman implies that he was passing on potentially confidential information of which the LM General Manager might well be unaware. This implies that Cheetham's activities were impacting parts of the railway beyond the orbit of the LM General Manager. If this were to be the case, then there is no certainty that Cheetham was local or indeed based anywhere within the LM regional boundaries.
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Sir Felix Pole

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Andy873 said:
Thanks for taking the time to search for this, don't think it's this company, but still appreciated!


Yes, that might raise a few eyebrows.




I decided to follow the person (in the documentation, all 88 pages!) to see who was actually pestering to get the tracks lifted on the loop line, it was in fact the CCE (Chief Civil Engineer and his department, Manchester). In 1965 He and his department were based at Fennel Street, which is a stone's throw from Hunts Bank, Victoria station and Cheetham Hill.
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An office in Fennel St. would have been part of the Corn Exchange complex - bit of a stretch to call that 'Cheetham'. Having said that, the Hunts Bank offices were being run down at this time pending the move to Rail House, Piccadilly so perhaps it was a temporary arrangement.
 
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Andy873

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Sir Felix Pole said:
An office in Fennel St. would have been part of the Corn Exchange complex - bit of a stretch to call that 'Cheetham'. Having said that, the Hunts Bank offices were being run down at this time pending the move to Rail House, Piccadilly so perhaps it was a temporary arrangement.
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Think it was temporary. The letters from the CCE Manchester start off in 1964 with Oxford Street, crossed out and Fennel St typed instead. When we get to Feb 1966, the CCE department is now operating from the tower block of Manchester Piccadilly station.
 
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Acathater

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FWIW there appears to have been some kind of metals processing business named "Cheetham" in Wrexham, but I can't find any note as to what they actually did
 
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Andy873

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Acathater said:
FWIW there appears to have been some kind of metals processing business named "Cheetham" in Wrexham, but I can't find any note as to what they actually did
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Thanks for trying!

What I can say is wherever or whatever Cheetham is / was, we can't just say because a line being lifted is in one BR region, that the contractor doing the lift has to be in the same BR region. Example, the company who removed one railway bridge in Padiham (LM region) was done by a Sheffield company which I think was in the Eastern region?
 
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The lifting contractors were private companies and had no direct connection with BR or its regions. There was no reason why a company could not bid for a lifting contract miles from their base: Pittrail of Aldridge near Walsall lifted the Chacewater-Newquay line in Cornwall, most of the Exe Valley line in Devon and the Taunton-Chard line in Somerset. There are plenty of other examples.

The responsible BR office might have had a list of companies in or close to a region that would automatically be circulated when a contract was put up, but there would no reason why another contractor couldn’t show interest.
 
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