The LNER Encyclopedia

since an earlier post i have been pouring over many books about carriages, and road coachbuilding, from jenkinson through casserley, to thrupp, and adams.

however, although i have more understanding of the early great northern carriages being teak from the get go, i am still not sure as to why teak which had to come from india/burma, should be sufficiently cheap for people to prefer it to mahogany, or other woods. i understand that preparation time for the coaches was quicker using teak, but still no news about who first used it and why?

the search goes on, but so far, no end in site, all the data seems to be lost in the mists of time.

paul

I believe initially at least teak logs were used as ballast in ships returning from the far east. The choice of teak was probably influenced by it's unique properties as much as by cost and certainly by the 1930s teak was considered expensive.

Sawdust.

I've noticed that some GNR carriage GA drawings state the framing behind the teak panels as oak

Ay up!

Could it be that it looked nice so it continued to be used?

Just a thought.

Dave wrote:I've noticed that some GNR carriage GA drawings state the framing behind the teak panels as oak

I'm not surprised by that. Oak continued to be used for some framing right through to the 1950 built Thompson's.

Oak frames tend to rot around the joints, so they probably switched to teak framing over time due it's resistance to fungal attack.

Sawdust.

Ay up!

I'm not an expert on wood, but isn't teak a resinous wood? And oak acidic? Would the two cancel each other out?

Please correct me if I'm talking through my hat!

You are probably right Andrew, certainly in WW2 empty American merchent ships returning home from the Pacific theater of war carried mahogany and teak logs as balast.

Also thinking about it some more, the rapid industrial expansion during the 19th century would probably have outstripped the domestic timber supply. This no doubt have pushed up the price of english oak at the time.

Sawdust.

By the end of the Napoleonic wars, most of the mature English oak trees had been felled and made into ships. After the war, the remaining warships that had not been sunk, were gradually dismantled so that the oak timber could be recycled. But they continued to build ships in oak. It is not surprising then that alternative hardwood supplies were sought.

The British Empire could supply plenty of timber and labour was cheap particularly in India and the rest of the far east, and so as has been stated, teak could be shipped back, almost as ballast.

They tried building men o' war out of teak but they found that teak has much more tendancy to splinter than oak, particularly when a ship was receiving a broadside. The Admiralty therefor preferred oak.

Colombo

Colombo wrote:They tried building men o' war out of teak but they found that teak has much more tendancy to splinter than oak, particularly when a ship was receiving a broadside. The Admiralty therefor preferred oak.

Colombo

I'm not surprised by that! You have to use slow cutter and feed speeds when machining teak or it tends to shatter.

Sawdust.

In marine usage Burma teak is considered the most rotproof timber available and I believe this would have affected the railway co.'s choice of teak over the drier mahogany....it is still in marine use(leisure largely) though seldom genuine Burma unless recycled though allegedly some new yacht builds have been done in Myanmar as I believe it is now known,apparently because the regime will supply teak,whilst afaik it is illegal to import it to say UK or US for use there.Probably its or its substitutes most typical modern usage is as decorative veneer on cabin panelling etc or "laid teak" whereby thinnish strips resembling planking are inlaid on the decks of GRP yachts,it provides excellent anti-slip,is usually left untreated for that purpose thus turns grey fairly rapidly.Famously Cutty Sark was teak planked on iron frames....interesting about Teak built menowar though Colombo.....it makes sense...at a guess mahogany would have been worse...both teak and mahogany are lighter than oak IIRC so hence their usage for performance ships like clippers and racing yachts.
It is notoriously difficult to paint or varnish as it is a very oily wood(hence its rot resistance)esp with modern poly materials...traditional boatbuilding varnishes containing Tung oil are I think recommended and Teak specific marine varnish used be available.This probably explains why teak coaches often did their best to shrug off BR paint!...I always think it a good choice that the GN,LNER etc choose to varnish teak,it is easier than painting and they must have been aware of the aesthetic impact of this beautiful wood....I remember seeing the schedule for overhauling LNER coaches at works once and noted Oxalic acid was used to clean and restore colour on the stripped teak...it is still used in proprietory marine "teak cleaners" for decks.Then IIRC 15 coats of varnish!(I was brought up on 7 coats but that probably has more to do with superstition than science!)
Re the oak framing again this echoes boatbuilding practice....two classic combinations are "mahagony on oak" and "pitchpine on oak" denoting firstly the planking then the framing....and IIRC some other of the constituents used mahogany panelling for coaches?
Once again drawing on some rather dim memories oak possibly offers greater resistance to splitting when nailed or drilled for fasteners and thereafter and was thus considered more suitable for frames?Wouldn't take an oath on this but its in my head from somewhere....!

Is the Burmese Teak actually any different to teak from other places (eg. is it a different species)? For example it is farmed in Central America - eg. quite a bit in Costa Rica that I know of. The Central American teak is non-native and has been introduced by humans (from Asia I believe).

The GNR minutes and correspondence made it clear that the material to be used was Moulmein teak which comes from Burma. This was recognised in Asia to be of a better quality than that from India of Indonesia.

Wiilams of Goswell STreet in the City of London who built the first GNR carriages, as a bespoke carriage builder, used this material for his carriages and because the timber did not take paint readilym varnished it and thus this became the GN standard finish. History repeats itself and the BR workshops at both York and Doncaster had the very devil of a job painting the teak vehicles when they went into BR livery as many photos from Doncaster at that time testify.

There is a photo on page 32 of HCD Vol 1 which illustrates this point.

2512silverfox wrote:The GNR minutes and correspondence made it clear that the material to be used was Moulmein teak which comes from Burma. This was recognised in Asia to be of a better quality than that from India of Indonesia.

As always with natural materials that will have been down to the environment in which it was grown - minerals in the soil, rainfall etc.

Going slightly off-topic but a good example is the longbow. Traditionally we're told it was made from yew and that's why so many old English churchyards still have yew trees growing in them, but in fact Mediterranean yew was preferred (and brought in as ballast) because while it was exactly the same plant, the climate and soil conditions produced a longer straighter grain

As always with natural materials that will have been down to the environment in which it was grown - minerals in the soil, rainfall etc.

Surely beer and whisky are good examples of this?

I have heard similar stories about the qualities of teak [vs oak and others]. Further to Columbo's comment, I heard the shipyards also tried building ships from pine, particularly during and after the American war of 1812-14 when the British Admiralty was desperately searching for an answer to the American 'spar-decked' frigates. (But that's another story!)

Whilst we're talking about timber, I thought ash was a favourite for use in frames?