Spooner & Co.
Spooner & Co was a company of railway consultants formed by Charles Easton Spooner. It operated at Harbour Station for some time.
Boyd records that a Spooner & Co. designed locomotive called Taffy from Votty & Bowydd Quarry was repaired at Boston Lodge in 1915. According to Bradley and Hindley it was an 0-4-0 tank engine built by Vulcan Foundry in 1878. It seems Spooner & Co had arrangements with Vulcan Foundry to get their locomotive designs built.
Boyd has a nine page appendix (No. 2) about Spooner & Co. "In fact, one may ask how many of those early narrow gauge schemes in which the whole Spooner family, each or collectively, were engaged, were born beside the Glaslyn?" asks Boyd. "One may hazard the suggestion that ALL the many schemes for narrow gauge projects of 2 foot gauge in North Wales, sprang from Spooner & Co. even if they used others as their mouthpieces." The locomotive designer for Spooner & Co. was G P Spooner and the business declined after he left the company and England in 1879/80.
Charles Spooner's interests were not confined to the narrow gauge. On March 6th 1865 a Mr C Spooner was vice-chair of a congratulatory dinner for the workmen provided by the contractors, Messrs. Waring Bros. of London, on completion of the Bristol Port Railway and Pier Company.[1] Their line ran from Hotwells to Avonmouth, was standard gauge and at the time unconnected to any other railway and at its closest (Sea Mills) was only a mile from where John Graves Livingston lived. Livingston was at Coombe House in 1877 but we do not know when he arrived there or indeed when he became based in the Bristol Area. Livingston joined the FR Board in 1851 and must have known Spooner very well. Up to 1867 there was no standard gauge line to Porthmadog but Bristol was well linked to N. Wales by ship.
References[edit]
- The Spooner Album
- Census records
- FR Archives
- Boyd, James I.C. (1975) [1959]. The Festiniog Railway 1800 - 1974; Vol. 1 - History and Route. Blandford: The Oakwood Press. ISBN 0-8536-1167-X. OCLC 2074549.
- ^ Vincent M (1979) Lines to Avonmouth, Oxford Publishing Company, 8 The Roundway, Headington, Oxford, UK. p6.