Horse box history 1850 to present.

[Peter Fox]

Before WW1 personal transport for the rich was often still by their own horses. Back in 1850s era flats for carriages and boxes would be shunted at intermediate stations like smarties. By this era was horse-boxing more common or less common or what? In short, (forget the decade before WW1 specified above) What is the history of the horse box on British Railways?

Peter Fox

 

[Helvellyn]

Traffic was still sufficiently high for a Mark 1 design horsebox to be produced, but the traffic fell away very quickly.

Some good photographs and drawings in Parkin's book about Mark 1 coaches.

Can find some photos with a Google search - link to one here.

 

[4069]

Post WW1 horse boxes were used mainly for racehorse traffic, rather than horse and carriage. Some hunter transport, in the fashionable parts of the country.

 

[John Webb]

Horseboxes were brought into use in parallel with the flat trucks bearing the carriages. This dates from the early days of the railways. As railway carriages improved, fewer people took their own carriages with them, and the practice was reducing in the 1850s and 1860s. It continued particularly into Scotland where railways were not so widespread and to get to a remote destination coach and horses were still needed. Special trains ran in the Summer (until the grouse-shooting season started on the 12th August) up to Scotland until the 1890s.
It seems the greatest effect of the availability of railway horseboxes was on horse racing, and they were a major factor in the growth of the sport in the second half of the C19th. Not only could horses be easily and quickly carried, but the railways also brought the majority of spectators to race courses as well.
Between WW1 and WW2 motor transport started taking over from the railways. The last horseboxes were taken out of service in 1972.
(Information from "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History", Biddle and Simmons, Oxford University Press, 1997)

 

[Peter Fox]

Thanks. When I'm browsing accident reports at The Railway Archive the countryside stations are often involved with stopping a passenger train to add or remove a horsebox. How quaint!

 

[John Webb]

Thanks. When I'm browsing accident reports at The Railway Archive the countryside stations are often involved with stopping a passenger train to add or remove a horsebox. How quaint!

Adrian Vaughan, in the first volume of his autobiography "Signalman's Morning" relates how as a learner porter at Challow station in 1960, he found himself clamping points to allow a passenger train to shunt back into a siding to attach a horsebox to the rear of the train. This was after he'd helped load the horse into the horsebox first!

 

[Merle Haggard]

Even into my days on BR some trains were still referred to as 'The H&C' originally meaning Horse and Carriage.

 

[eastdyke]

I remember seeing horseboxes at Newmarket Goods Station in the mid-1950's. Horses were still transported by rail into the very early 1960's.
Some info and a few pics on the Newmarket Local History Society website (page 9)

Newmarket Railways

Nissen Huts, basic post-war accommodation

www.newmarketlhs.org.uk

Extracts:

The New 1902 (very grand) Station:




Northern end of Warren Hill tunnel, horseboxes in the background on the site of the original station:



Racehorses being unloaded at the goods station (former second station), southern side of Warren Hill tunnel:



And some text:

1960 Newmarket Station was still very busy. The records show that 64,679 passenger tickets were issued and 17,461 parcels handled during the year. On the goods side, caravans, agricultural implements, fertilizers and barley left the station and much paper imported from the USA was received. Horse traffic amounted to 1,073 sent and 1,573 received. The station building itself still retained its old importance, including the spacious booking hall with oak panelled walls on the up platform.