The wagon picture is on magazine-page 21 (pdf p. 23) but on p.18 (21) is a distant photograph of the Hindley factory, dominated by its huge water-wheel.

It is an intriguing photograph socially, starting with the intended purpose of the coal (I wonder how much fell off during the Carnival procession?).

The owner, Mr. Maloney, clearly did well, with his watch-chain and waistcoat highlighting a slight physical corporation suggesting the success of his business corporation. The two characters in their Sunday Best, standing on the load, but were probably Maloney employees, perhaps in managerial or supervisory roles. The wagon’s driver and his mate have that rather emaciated look typical of manual workers of the time; the chap at the back certainly does, and he looks as if he is very unsure he should even be photographed in such august company.

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The coal was to probably “given away” to the local poor. This was still the era of the work-house, places so dreadful people sought their shelter only in really desperate circumstances; and pensions were sparse and rare. So there must have been many scraping a living in semi-derelict cottages, sometimes helped by charity – such as this lorry-load of coal.

That wagon is of the pattern designated “Light Delivery Van” by its builders, and rated at 2-3 ton capacity. So there is perhaps 2 tons of coal on board. Judging by the size of the lumps, that coal has probably not travelled far, and indeed the nearest collieries were around Radstock and Frome, about 30-40 miles from Gillingham.

The coal would have arrived by train, probably on the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway with the last part from Templecombe Junction to Gillingham Station on enemy rails – those of the London & South Western Railway’s London – Exeter line. The former Southern route is still busy. The SDJR is long gone, killed as much by inter-Regional railway management “politics” as economics, and given a swan-song by Flanders & Swan (The Slow Train To Blandford Forum).

What identifies this lorry as the Light Delivery Van is the chain-drive.

That Y-shaped motion-plate seems of different shape on every picture!

The brake-shoe is seen bearing against the front of the wheel but on other examples, it is pulled onto the rear.

Just visible in the middle of the cab, behind the brake handle is a tall loop of pipe I think part of the compound / simple system, but it can’t have done the steam much good.

The chimney’s polished capuchon is not usual either. Usually the plain stove-pipe was finished with a half-round bead, and all painted one colour: as I have copied.

The side-lamps are standard but the headlamp and its rather crude wooden bracket seem owner-fitted.

The ‘FX” registration denotes Dorset County Council.

The bigger “Standard” wagon and its heavier-duty “Colonial” form were under-types with the engine geared directly to the rear axle. One review photograph of a “Standard” shows something just in front of the rear off-side wheel, which I think was the gear-lever. If so, the driver would have to dismount to change gear!

Charles Maloney must have been feeling kind to his staff when he ordered that wagon. The catalogue and other contemporary photographs suggests a canopy was an optional-extra, as only a few others were photographed so fitted. Even Pickfords, who bought a Standard fleet for furniture-bumping, managed only a token pram-type canopy screwed to the front of the lift-van body. Otherwise the crew had no weather protection at all. Still, neither did carters and most traction-engine drivers, so why should steam-wagon crews need molly-coddling?

I am fitting my specimen with a canopy approximately to that style. It looks a bit bare without!

Having mentioned the Somerset Coal Field, not far from Radstock is the village of Chewton Mendip, home to a contemporary engineering company, that of C.W. Harris. This bought a Hindley wagon, and there is a photograph of it carrying a large drum, probably a boiler.

Then Harris produced its own steam-wagon, labelled the “Mendip”. It looks so like the Hindley it begs the question of whether a blatant copy or licensed badge-engineering. Hindley could not have patented the wagon but it did patent the boiler – though how much protection that would give the whole vehicle I cannot say. Subsequently, Harris moved into making motor-cars instead, marketed as the “Mendip”.

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Hindley seems to have been looking at the burgeoning petrol engine market too, before the firm collapsed c.1919. It already made gas-engines for industrial plant, and it patented a way of casting water-jacketed cylinders to avoid contraction-cracking, perhaps a common problem to the fledgling industry. The patent was for corrugating the water-walls to absorb the strains, rather as cast flywheels often had curved spokes.

It also patented a supposedly shock-absorbing steam-wagon wheel. The novelty was hardly that: simply a deep wooden rim between the wheel plates and the smooth steel tyre. I have not seen a photograph of a wagon so fitted. Most had the all-steel wheels as in that DYB photograph, though artillery or Bauley-pattern wheels could be ordered. Nowt for it then but to fit my model with the Hindley Patent wheels!

Oh – how do you fit a steel tyre to such a wheel in miniature (12″ rear, 10″ front)? Shrink-fit of course: half an hour in the oven at Gas Mark 9, and a big hammer.

The present-day, full-size replica of this wagon was built to commission by Richard Vincent, suitably not far from Gillingham and Bourton.

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How to distinguish Dorset’s Gillingham from the Kent one? Hard and soft ‘G’ respectively. Easy to remember: as a Sherborne-native friend said about it, we’re harder in Dorset!

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