Talk:Aveling and Porter

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Move Proposal[edit]

Shouldn't this article be moved to Aveling & Porter? -- Arwel 14:54, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) It should, but I made a typo and don't have permissions to move it...

Done, then. I see Strood also now links there. I'll just fix Fred's article... -- Arwel 21:09, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have placed a few fact tags. I haven't the ref books at hand myself just local knowledge.Glad to talk.

ClemRutter (talk) 18:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)b[reply]

Companies based in[edit]

Have added the Categories for Lincolnshire as Aveling-Barford redirects here and was successor company to A&P, who moved to Grantham following collapse of AGE group.

Aveling-Barford could do with own article writing, I have started one here on the tractor wiki but its not up to wikipedia QA standard yet - BulldozerD11 (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a common problem. Often, company histories are merged into a single article, meaning that the correct categories cannot be applied. For example, someone reverted my (cat) addition of Seddon-Atkinson as a steam road vehicle manufacturer: they had a valid point, as S-A were not themselves, but the article also covered the pre-merger Atkinson who were well-known for their steam vehicles! That article also needs a split (and there are plenty more -- just the small matter of time!)
EdJogg (talk) 10:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for comment Ed, I think articles in general need a reasonable size of say 1 page (screen) or taking up a disproportionate part of a successor companies article to justify splitting. But others take a very narrow veiw on scope. Some are hard to decide whether they are a bio or a co article. I started the tractor wiki to take info that is not suitable for Wikipedia, especially list type info and more general related as the structure is looser. There is sections on the steam manufactures as well on there (based on Wikipedia articles if i could find one, as why reinvent the wheel)(all credited to source). there is a lot more on wikipedia than i originally thought, its just poorly indexed / linked at times. the intention is to add verifiable info back to wikipedia and create new articles (with refs) when substantial enough to avoid AfD.
Categorising of articles is an issue, as other than lots of list pages its the best way to group them. But a lot of articles are only catalogued under niche sectors, I'm going round cataloguing a lot of companies to areas and adding to projects as I track them down, as it helps to bring to a wider audience, via casual sightings. Is a UK Companies WikiProject for old engineering companies an Idea ? -BulldozerD11 (talk) 11:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There may well be scope for a project or taskforce, but you need more than a couple of participants to make it work. (And I'm already over the limit of what I can do in my time available to WP.) I think I've seen some kind of 'businesses'-related project added to some of the traction engine or steam loco manufacturer pages, but I can't remember which off-hand. Wasn't a UK-specific one though. In the meantime I suggest you keep doing your advertising as you described.
Thanks for the tip-off about the tractors wiki. I'll add a link from the traction engine page so I can find it again when I want. I'm sure there will be some useful sources I can pinch from there in the future!
And please keep up with the indexing/linking, it all helps; in particular, please keep your eye out for candidates for Category:Steam road vehicle manufacturing companies!
EdJogg (talk) 12:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Aveling-Barford article was (effectively) created on 15 Aug 2011. Links to Lincolnshire have now been removed. -- EdJogg (talk) 20:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Porter Family[edit]

  • Does anyone have any biographical notes on Richard Thomas Porter?
  • Does anyone know if Rosita Marion Porter who married Thomas Lake Porter Aveling was related to Richard Porter? It seems a bit co-incidental otherwise, but I have no references to hand.

Thanks Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:16, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Citations[edit]

I'm doing some research on this and will shortly be adding citations from multiple pages of the same book. This gets pretty ugly if the same information ahs to be repeated time and time again. It also spoils the flow when editing. Can I have concensus to change the citations in this article in line with WP:CITESHORT please? See St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Rochester for an example. If there are no objections by the beginning of next week I'll try to work through the page then. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:28, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • conditional support I'm in favour of merging cites to references, and of using a short citation form. Both of these make a more readable article. However WP:CITESHORT is poor technical practice. We should still link the cites to the references. This can be done quite easily, and with little extra work, by using the {{harvid}} and {{harvnb}} templates.
As to where the references are placed, I don't much care between leaving them inline, placing them with the {{Reflist}}, or by extracting them to a separate section. Here I'd do one of the first two, as it's only a short list. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:52, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've done the bulk of the moving, expanding references to books and websites where I could. I have adopted your suggestion for the use of {{harvnb}}. There are three or four websites referenced in the table that I may move for uniformity, but I think the page is rather more stable now. I'm having a bit of a break, but will try to add a final bit of detail on Major Aveling and the whole Porter clan when I return. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:50, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Steam sappers as locomotives[edit]

Yeatman starts by saying: "The story of the Lodge Hill & Upnor Railway begins in 1873 when a Manning Wardle 1ft 6in gauge locomotive named BURGOYNE was sent to the Royal Engineers at Upnor to assist in the construction of a light railway, which was to be known as the Chattenden & Upnor Railway. Some of the line must have been laid to 4ft 8½in gauge as we hear that six Aveling & Porter engines of 2−2−0 design were also supplied. These 5−ton "Steam Sappers" had two sets of wheels, one for road work and a flanged set for use on rails".

Yeatman's editor however notes: "The author is certain that there were six, and thinks there could possibly have been nine, ‘Steam Sappers’ in use on the railway. One such machine, STEAM SAPPER No.5, is featured elsewhere in this issue, and we can be reasonably certain that this locomotive did work on rails at Chattenden. Messrs. Aveling & Barford state, however: "We were not under the impression that the Steam Sapper was intended as a road-rail conversion machine. It was specially designed as a traction engine for Military Service. They were light machines specially constructed so that the weight did not exceed that of the heaviest siege gun and so ensured that pontoon bridges were not overloaded." The Club records show that there were six Aveling and Porter locomotives in the area at this time, although they are thought to have been at Chatham Dockyard. These, and the six Steam Sappers, are listed above but we have no evidence that any (other than STEAM SAPPER No.5) were used here".

Mullett states: "STEAM SAPPER No.5, however, seems to have been something of an exception. It was no. 830 of 1872 for the School of Military Engineering at Brompton (now known as Old Brompton), Gillingham, Kent, and from our illustration it appears to have been supplied as a convertible road to rail locomotive. The flywheel was 4' 6" in diameter, and the axles - 6' 4" long with a diameter of 4⅜" - were fitted with compensating gear and gunmetal axleboxes on both sides. The winding cone was keyed to the crankshaft which had a diameter of 2⅞". Double steam domes were fitted, and the wrought iron chimney had a cast iron base.

"This little engine, of 6 nominal horsepower, in common with most others of its class, was fitted with a single road speed and was put in or out of gear by sliding a pinion along the crankshaft and holding it in the required position by means of a leather strap buckled round the shaft. In its rail form a wooden beam seems to be inserted longitudinally beneath the boiler and ending in a simple buffer - and in our illustration the steering gear still seems to be connected! It should perhaps be mentioned that in the case of the engine at the Oxford Show a patent slip eccentric was used and link motion dispensed with, but in those examples the writer has been lucky enough to see - including the one preserved in the Science Museum at South Kensington and STEAM SAPPER No.5 - conventional link motion was used. The four slide bars, big ball governors, short smokebox and Salter safety valves are all very typical of the Aveling of this period.

"Messrs. Aveling-Barford Ltd., who have very kindly checked their records for me, seem unaware that any "Steam Sappers" were built other than as road machines, and it would be interesting to know why this one was so turned out".

According to Nowers the five engines ordered in 1872 were as the result of a trial of Sapper 2 which drove from Chatham to Blanford for manoeuvers during which it drove a pump for water supply. Nowers does state that number 9 was fitted with flanged wheels for a trial as a result of which number 12 was supplied with a set. However some tests were arried out on the Chatendon & Upnor line in 1874 according to a report by the then Commandant SME. The table in appendix I of Nowers only mentions number 5 as being "illustrated with flanged railway wheels". A picture of number 4 at the works (page 11) clearly shows road wheels.

In passing it should be noted that there is frequent use of the word "train" to describe several road wagons coupled to each other for example a "seige train" or a "balloon train". These are not railway trains.

I think therefore that the situation was:

  • Number 5 was fitted with railway wheels for at least part of its life.
  • Number 9 was so fitted for a trial.
  • Number 12 was convertable.

Therefore I will shortly modify the table of locomotives accordingly. In the short term I'll leave the original information commented out in case anyone disputes this and can point to better evidence. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:38, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commented out information removed as per the above. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 23:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Claims of size.[edit]

”Use with caution" - the author has a number of books all on the Medway area which were published before self-piblishing was easy. Multiple copes held by multiple libraries (inc LCC and BL). I think you’ve just demonstrated why this should not be asserted in the lede, as a simple fact: “books all on the Medway area”. Library shelves are filled with works which excel on local detail, but sometimes look a little parochial on broader perspective. I don’t doubt that something of the kind may be true, but without detail quantifying and qualifying it, it is too broad a claim to be plunked down in the lede. Qwirkle (talk) 18:43, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First, let me correct my spelling errors: for "self-piblishing" read "self-publishing" and for "LCC" read "LoC" (Library of Congress). I've just run a quick search and come up with the following URLs. Some of them may be derrived from WP, so use with caution, but others are clearly not (particularly Grace's Guide).
70% of the British Empire market and exporting to the USA at that time would be indicative of the claim. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
the first cite claims A&P were the largest “manufacturers of traction engines and road rollers in the country”. Note that claim is for Britain...or even England, come to think of it, and that it rolls in traction engines as well. (The cite also makes some disputable claims about A&P in popular culture.)

The second cite is almost certainly wikicircular.

Grace’s supports only that A&P produced about 3/4 of -domestic- demand at certain times, as far as I can see. Qwirkle (talk) 21:42, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, those URLs were simply the ones off the first page of a search. Fascinating as this discussion is the original point is that deleting invoking the self publishing as grounds for deletion is pushing caution too far. If you glance at the line below Preston (1977), you will see that Preston (1987) was not self-published. These are not random tweets, blogs or other electronic media but properly printed and bound books. Since it is a UK publication, I assume that the LoC purchased it rather than having it dumped on them, but that's a guess. As the statement is properly cited you need to find a better source rather than a knee-jerk reaction to anything self-published. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Neither are Preston’s books widely disseminated works aimed at, and delivered to, a global audience, a far more important consideration than the state of their binding. These are not sources to justify such broad claims...and, indeed, the reader can’t even be readily sure that they made them, exactly. Qwirkle (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
They are on sale on Amazon ([1] admittedly in the US, but they'd probably ship it anywhere) and available in libraries in the UK, Germany, Australia and across the US [2]. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:04, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Qwirkle: Can I invite you to stay over for a few nights with me in Rochester- so you can do a site visit. You could visit the local history section at Rochester Library and Baggins Bookshop where Godfrey would be happy to sell you a few rare titles. A visit would allow a visit the Library at Chatham Historic Dockyard too. But more importantly, you could walk 100m to the Medway Archives and find all of Prestons books in the reference section- "Preston Result". Medway Libraries. Retrieved 8 February 2020. ClemRutter (talk) 17:11, 8 February 2020 (UTC) of ME2 3HB[reply]
Given that my objections are based on the dangers of parochialism, how would the fact that a Rochester library, a Rochester museum, another museum nearby next town over address this? I’m sure a search in Buffalo or Springfield could easily show the same result, with a different firm, of course, in the lead. Qwirkle (talk) 17:40, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure where Springfield is, but from Buffalo the nearest library copies are in Rochester (NY, not Kent), London (Ontario), Binghamton NY, Princeton NJ and Washington DC. That's the first page, I can't be bothered to go further. Your initial comment was about self-publishing, now it is "parochialism"; what next NIH? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The words “Buffalo” and “Springfield” have no implications to you in this context?

‘Nuff said. Qwirkle (talk) 18:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. I was hoping that it was where you lived. I really hoped you weren't meaning that you don't believe anywhere in the world could possibly outproduce the US at any time in history. If that's the case then this conversation is going nowhere. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:22, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Globalization[edit]

Aveling and Porter were a British company who predominantly sold to the UK. What global perspective are you expecting. And that tag is not mentioned nor justified on the talk page.

No, A&P were also an exporter, unless you define the Raj et al as part of the UK. They exported to the US, and were a large part of the early history in North America before local manufacturers expanded. What they were not is a company that made 70 percent of the world market. While You can find cites that make this sort of claim, they fail the giggle test. The dominant North American firm, Buffalo-Springfield (and its predecessors) alone made about as many steamrollers. Qwirkle (talk) 02:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You missed the word "predominantly" in what I wrote. I never claimed they did not export outside the UK, so your argument is a strawman. I've update the claim you marked as "dubious" to make it accurate. The sources do not fail some sort of 'giggle test", whatever that might be. They are accurately cited in the article. The Mirror Cracked (talk) 02:57, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A “giggle test”. Even has its own wikistub.

Adding a cherrypicked cite off a tendentious search, and one which stovepipes into another...no, really that is two which stovepipe into a third, is unlikely to improve the accuracy of anything. “Accurately cited” =/= “accurate.” Qwirkle (talk) 04:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is globalization Mainly irrelevant to this article.?[edit]

Were the article not making world-wide claims, Roly Williams, that might be a valid point.Qwirkle (talk) 21:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your statement "This article seems too dependent on localized sources" but the information in the globalization box is largely irrelevant. Certainly too irrelevant to be put at the head of the article. (Maybe placed at the end might be more suitable?) --Roly (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Better still, as a steam-conscious kind of fellow, would you have any cites handy that might address this from a less parochial viewpoint? Qwirkle (talk) 21:54, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't; sorry. --Roly (talk) 22:06, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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