Army Training camp photos possibly Longmoor / Woolmer military railway

[tallpoppy]

Seeking all your cumulative expertise on these four photos which are small (approx 10x7cm) format on flimsy paper. I wondered if they might be of Longmoor. They are eerily unpopulated, perhaps it was between intakes of new recruits coming for training? The roads and parade grounds look somewhat chalky.

Photo 1. Armstrong huts with a larger Adrian hut and a curved line of small Nissen huts 2/3 up the photo on the right. In front of the Nissen huts there is a covered goods wagon on a railway line. Mid picture in the distance there are football posts on open ground with a crane to the right and what is possibly a water tower mid left at far distance. A soldier with a British Army cap shape is sat on a bench outside the hut front right.

Photo 2. Railyard. At the front are open USA trucks numbered 14588 through to 14591. Trucks in the middle of the photo have GNGC painted on them. Left of photo is a saddle tank loco and middle right two pulman coaches which may have lettering on them. There is open space beyond the railyard with a hut gable (?possibly YMCA sign) at the other side. Travelling crane to near left and another at the back of the railyard to the right.

Photo 3. Road with main camp to left and entrance roads. Railyard to right , near line curves away 90 degrees to the right in the distance. Powerhouse front right with 4 tall chimneys, 2 storey building beyond it with crane behind that. Another crane back right of photo.A very long windowless Armstrong-type hut is a right angle to the road on the middle left of photo, with possibly a parade ground beyond.

Photo 4. Parade ground with flagpole and football posts, with 18 men at the far end around the goal and 2 at the near end. The soldier walking onto the ground at this end appears to have a letter or paper in his hand. There are barracks huts to the right and at the back of the parade ground. Beyond the latter is an embankment with probably a railway line on it. In the distance on the right of the photo is a line of possibly more barracks huts.

Can anybody help me give a firm identification to the location (I'm not even 100% certain it's England!), your help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[Allan1892]

Photo number 2 -- the passenger train carriages do not look like UK carriages -- I have seen similar ones on old photos from the USA.

[tallpoppy]

Yes they do, don't they? On the evidence of this particular photo I originally thought it was an American Army camp, but the Armstrong huts indicate British (and they didn't play soccer in the American camps). Definitely look like British Army uniforms too. When the Americans entered the war in 1917, did they bring railway trucks and passenger railcars as well as the men in the troopships? I've never read anything to say that this happened, but it seems likely. Or maybe they were shipped separately?

The US rolling stock seems to date the photos to no earlier than summer 1917 which fits with the camp seemingly well-established with no tented accommodation.

Thank you for your reply.

[Moonraker]

Definitely not the Longmoor Military Railway, nor any other that I can think of in the UK.

In photo 2, the long wagons don't look British and I don't think the locomotive at left does either.  I Googled around for "G N O C" as shown in the centre and wondered if these indicated the United States' Great Northern Railway that extended into British Colombia.

This article, "The Strategy of Railway Abandonment: The Great Northern in Washington and British Columbia, 1917-1935," may provide clues.

(Back in Lockdown One, it was easy to register to read JSTOR articles. I'm not sure if this still the case, and my registration appears to have lapsed.)

If these were Canadian camps that might explain the Armstrong huts, football and British uniforms.

Members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group may be able to help, but their website does not host images. After others here on the GWF have provided more (perhaps better) insights, I could, on request, start a thread on the CEFSG linking to this GWF thread.

There was a Great Northern Railway of Canada that operated from 1892 to 1907 between Quebec and Ontario, but during that period Canada had only  a very small standing army.

 

[tallpoppy]

Hi Moonraker, thank you for that. Not Longmoor then, but Canada a possibility (and Armstrong huts were designed by a Canadian in the RE) but it would have to be in a temperate location, they had a particular design for Canadian provinces where the temperatures get very low. It's a shame there's no flag on the flagpole!

The long wagons at the front of photo 2 are definitely American, they say USA on them. I've tried to get a closer-up photo (see below) but it's such a tiny picture, and I've strained my eyesight with a magnifying glass as well. Just about all the other wagons on the photo are smallish ones including three in the middle, two of which say GN and a smaller GC (it looks like an O in photo 2 but its a G).

It's a mystery but it's early days yet. I live in hope! 

 

 

[Allan1892]

The locomotive in the 'blown up' image 2 shows the type of locomotive used in America in the 1910s - please see image attached. (the one in image 2 does not have it's coal tender)

A search of USA historical railroad sites would indicate that this style of locomotive was used by many companies including the Great Northern company (this would tie in with the rail truck with the initials GN). The Great Northern company operated in the following states : Maryland; North Dakota; South Dakota; Montana; Idaho; Washington and British Columbia, Canada. (There were two other railroad companies with the initials GN - Garyville Northern and Georgia Northern but these were smaller companies did not extend toward Canada).

A search of railroad companies with the initials GC came up with 7 companies, these were George's Creek; Golden Circle; Grafton Centre; Grand Canyon; Granite City; Green County and Gulf Coast. I can not come up with anything that would tie a specific company to the truck shown in image 2.

[green_acorn]

I would suggest the images are of a camp/s in France, not Britain, because of the variety and number of railway wagons, both Longmore and Woolmore were training sites, not operational and would not have had as many wagons.  

It is not a site in Canada with that many two axle vans in the distance, it is France. Some of the vans and brake vans look like types produced for the ROD, the brake van appears to of a type based on a LSWR van with plywood sheeting. The vans would mostly be types based on exisiting British diagrams and later and more frequently French design, so they could be onsold to France and Belgium to help those nations in their reconstruction after the war.

The locomotive in the second photo is a 2-6-2 Baldwin Saddle Tank engine designed for US logging railways, 75 of this type of locomotive were purchased by the Ministry of Munitions for use as a heavy shunter and short distance freight locomotive by the Royal Engineers Railway Operating Division and arrived in France from about November 1917, post war they were transferred to Belgium (SNCB) and were operating as the Type 57 up to 1960. 

The end platform coaches were probably on loan from a French railway company, most likely the Nord railway.

The ROD took up many locomotives, coaches and wagons from the British railway companies.  The short bogie platform near the two owner marked 4/5 plank wagons looks like a British "Macaw", a British anorak will know which variant it is.  The GC wagon is likely from the UK's Great Central Railway and the GN wagon the UK's Great Northern Railway, it wasn't unusual not to include the "R" on any of the regrouping wagons, we know it is a railway company's wagon and not a private owners wagons, so why waste paint!

Behind the Baldwin appear to be three axle coaches of the type taken up from UK companies. 

The US Army wagons are only a minor part of the wagons in this yard. I would suggest, based on the skeletons on the third track, in front of the crane on the left and behind the signals box on the right, that it was being used by a US Army railway unit to assemble/erect kits of the bogie wagons. The two US divisions allocated to the BEF in 1918, 27th and 30th Divisions would also have needed their own corps and divisional supply trains, so it may well be they supplied wagons for this traffic. Though the erection of the US Army wagons more normally occurred down at St Nazaire, which was one of the US Army's main ports of entry, to minimise traffic across heavily used French rails, they may have shipped some through the UK for the 27th and 30th and later the US Army II Corps. Based on that hypothesis, I would look at the primary BEF's ROD yards near the ports of Dieppe and Le Havre and date the images to the second half of 1918.

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

[MerchantOldSalt]

With considerable help from friends of a railway bent in France and Belgium the considered opinion is that these are photographs of a marshalling yard somewhere in France the photos are doing the rounds and hopefully a location will be forthcoming.

The steam locomotive on the left of photo 2 is a 2-6-2 Baldwin saddle tank built exclusively for the Railway Operating Division of the Royal Engineers, they were not used in the States.

The wagons have buffers, even the ones marked USA and the American railways apparently do not use buffers but buckeye couplings, so the American marked wagons are imports from the States along with many steam locomotives brought over from both America and Canada the wheels being regauged to fit the French track in places like the St.Etienne Railway workshops.

The coaches are British Midland Railway Clerestory, probably Pullman coaches, they are certainly sleeping cars, and maybe providing accommodation.

Some of the wagons behind the carriages are War Department covered wagons to a standard design.

As Chris has beaten me to it I will stop there but will relay any answer from la belle France

Tony

[tallpoppy]

Wow! Thank you all for putting so much effort into my quest to identify the photos. 

Would it be still a training camp (for RE?), there are so few people on the photos that I had assumed that they had been taken between a cohort of recruits leaving and the next one arriving. And surely it was against Army regulations to take photos of a site such as this?

Fingers crossed for an identification.

many thanks

Jane

[Moonraker]

Hardly a training camp. Most soldiers in France would arrive there trained. Now that  railway buffs more expert than I have joined the discussion, I should leave them to make replies, but I would guess that it's a major depot where railway stock in military use was stored and where stores,equipment and materials were off-loaded.

[sdparker]

It could be the military camp at Audruicq near Calais. This has featured in several threads on the forum, and have photos with similar distant tree lines,

which makes me think of Flanders. Several photos show men in front of American wagons, just like those in the op.

Not very good at links, but if you google Audruicq, military camp, the photos are there.

[sdparker]

It's definitely Audruicq. This was featured in a thread posted on GWF on 7/12/2018 by themonsstar under topic headed

Royal Engineers Railway Company.

The photos show the same railway carriages, and men standing in front of an American wagon no 14500- similar number

to the ones quoted by Jane.

Regards

Geoff

[Moonraker]

Let me partially redeem myself (having suggested that the scenes were Canadian) by giving the link.

[tallpoppy]

Oh it is! It is!  Themonsstar’s photo of the new yard is almost identical to my photo.

I am totally gobsmacked by the kindness and expertise of the great community on this forum. I’m so grateful to every single one of you who took the trouble to reply to me and the research you have put into it.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Jane