The dandy waggon is a type of railroad car used to carry horses on gravity trains.[1] They are particularly associated with the narrow gauge Festiniog Railway (FR) in Wales where they were used between 1836 and 1863.
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The challenge on the FR was to move slate from an elevated location to a harbour for shipping, in this case from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog, Wales.[2] In 2006 this is a 28 minute drive over 11.9 miles (19.1 kilometers),[3] but in 1832 it was a remote mountain area. The railway was laid on an average grade of about 1 in 80. Trains running downhill were powered by gravity, with 3 stops. The total journey time was about an hour and a half. Trains were moved uphill by horses until 1863, the journey taking almost 6 hours.[4] It was therefore necessary to find a way to bring the horses back down again.
George Stephenson is credited for having proposed a solution: build special cars for the horses to ride in on the way down for use on the Stockton & Darlington Railway which was opened in 1825.[5] With improvements in the track, the horses were becoming increasingly hard-pressed. By 1827 the Stockton and Darlington Railway was in difficulties with its unreliable steam locomotives, and was on the point of giving them up. They returned to using horse-drawn vehicles operated by independent contractors. Each horse was expected to haul some twelve-and-a-half tons of coal, making three round trips in six days. The work was exhausting for them and they soon became lame.
George Stephenson introduced the dandy wagon in 1828, which was simply a four-wheeled cart supplied with hay, attached to the rear of a four-chaldron train in which the horse could rest on the downhill sections. It was said that if the dandy wagon was missing the horse would try to jump onto the rearmost chaldron.[6]
On the FR this gave the horses a chance to eat and rest on the way down, and after the slate cars were unloaded refreshed horses were available to haul the cars back to the top. On other railways the downhill horse haulage was generally shorter, occurring only along some areas of the track, but still allowed the horses a rest before going back to work.
According to the Traveller's Guide (Blue Cover) [7] Wagon number 50, a 4- wheel Iron Horse Dandy, built at Boston Lodge c.1861 was still in existence and stored at the Ffestiniog Railway museum as of April 1992.
Other names for horse carrying cars are “dandy cart” and “dandy truck” [8] they all refer to a vehicle on a horse worked railway that a horse pulls to the top of the hill and a horse rides down the hill in. The term “dandy cart” is also used to refer to horse drawn passenger trains on occasion.[9]
Almost all early railways used horses as the motive power for trains before the invention of the steam locomotive.
The Ballocheney Railway used a “dandy-cart” on the two “Ballochney Inclines” each having a grade of around 1 in 23 for distances of about 1000 yards. A descending train was connected by rope and pulley to an ascending train; the weight of the downhill train pulled the up hill train up the hill.[10] See Funicular.
The unique geography of the Ffestiniog Railway may have had some impact on allowing this imaginative solution to be applied to a large percentage of its total haulage; a relatively long section of track, running exclusively between two points, where a relatively constant and continuous downhill grade could be maintained.
The Ffestiniog Railway was incorporated by an act of parliament on May 23, 1832. James Spooner was appointed engineer. Slate trains ran from Blaenau Ffestiniog on a 1 ft 11 1⁄2 in (597 mm) narrow gauge rail to the Porthmadog harbour on the Irish Sea coast. In 1863 Charles Easton Spooner, the son of James Spooner, introduced steam locomotives built by the George England Co. and thus ended the use of dandy waggons on Ffestiniog and began "sanctioned" passenger service.[11]
In 1828 Alfred Pocock, who was developing a non-rail horseless carriage propelled by a kite(s), proposed on a particular trip that the kite carriage should tow a dandy-cart to carry a pony in the event of the wind being unfavorable.[12]
In the UK, in the early days of rail and tramways, either spelling was acceptable. In the UK, today, in national rail operations, the spelling is "wagon". Within the Festiniog (note 1 F), during the 19th century the spelling was interchangeable. For commonality, now, a single g is often used. However, it is still common to use "waggon" to refer to goods stock.[13]
The term Dandy Wagon (regionally correct spelling) referred to a horse drawn private buggy used in America during the 1800s.[14]
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