Not actually part of the album, but this card-mounted graphic (probably a formerly-framed print, which I slightly recall used to hang in one of the firm’s front offices at Park End street) came with it. And it illustrates wonderfully clearly the system of integrated road-rail transport for furniture removals from the hey-day of the railways in the 19th century. No doubt the saddle-tank shunting engine just visible at the RHS of the print gives some slight indication of the date of this shot. Possibly also there may be a reference to it elsewhere in the AC&Co records, that I shall be able to add to this text in due course. Presumably this may have been 6 wagons all relating to one particular removal. Don’t they look splendid. And when they arrive at the relevant railway station, they are all ready to be horse or traction-engine-drawn via road for the last stage of their journey. (Correction 23.2.17): two of them are ready with their own wheels, the other four each needing a road-going truck-base.
These Archer & Co wagons are closely technically-related to the rail-transported mail-coaches which, since about 1846, had taken-over entirely from the long-distance horse-drawn mail coaches for carrying what is now called the ‘Royal Mail’, the horse-drawn part of the journey for each mail coach being the beginning and the end of its travel, to and from the relevant railway station. It seems very likely that James Archer’s system for long-distance furniture removals was based very much on this concept. Whether my great great Uncle James in fact originated this widening of the applicability of the ‘railway mail-coach’ concept, I know not. But it seems extremely likely that use of the idea contributed enormously to his success as a transport contractor. Click here to go to an illustration of such a mail-coach.