A couple of Hudson books.

Yesterday I visited Chapel en le Frith exhibition, where the Moseley Railway Trust always have a stand selling, amongst other goodies, some very interesting books, albeit on quite obscure subjects. I like obscure so naturally I took a good look and made a couple of purchases.

The first was a 34 page book about Robert Hudson Ltd, the famous light railway supplier;

 It covers the history of Hudsons as well as giving an overview of their vast range of railway, and non-railway, products. Hudsons really deserves a bigger, more in depth, book but this brief look at the company is a nonetheless worthwhile addition to my library.

The second book is purely about Hudsons famous 'Rugga' V skip wagons;

It only covers the narrow gauge wagons, a shame as I have a couple of standard gauge Hudson tippers on the workbench at the moment. However, it covers all of the variations of these skips, from those intended purely for hand tramming to beefier wagons for heavy locomotive haulage, and plenty of illustrations show how and where they were used. There are notes on filling the wagons as well, for example mechanical loaders should have a bucket capacity of 1/3 of the wagon capacity otherwise a loading hopper should be used, usefull information for modellers. Scale drawings are included, as well as some quite complicated calculations for working out train length. Further volumes are in preparation on mine cars, trackwork and Granby cars (automatic unloading mining wagons).

Each book cost £7.50, which will either be a fair price for a limited production publication appealing to a small audience, or vastly overpriced, depending on your point of view. Proceeds from the 'Rugga' book will go towards restoring Moseley's Hudswell Clarke.

Robert Hudson Ltd, Alan J. Haigh, no ISBN number.
The Standard "Rugga"  Tipping Wagon from Robert Hudson Ltd, Phil Robinson, ISBN 0-9540878-8-7

Moseley Railway Trust

Paul.