OO Gauge Now Sold Out!
We have received 55 O Gauge, 144 OO Gauge and 140 N Gauge Thomas T Pascoe wagons. As before, once these have been sold, no further issues will be commissioned by the club. The prices for each gauge are O - £48, OO - £17 and N - £16. For those wishing to buy by post, the P&P charges are O -£5 per wagon, OO and N - £5 for one to five wagons.
The postage costs are for UK addresses only. For orders outside the UK and for any multiple O gauge purchases, please contact Noel Blows at the details below.
Models may be purchased from :
Noel Blows on Home - 01792 368768, Mobile - 07775 895054, email - po.wagons@srmg.org.uk or write to him at 38 Summerland Lane, Newton, Swansea. SA3 4UJ
No discussion about Swansea’s Victorian mercantile and industrial development would be complete without reference to the Vivians, the Morrises and the Grenfells [to name just three], but the firm of Thomas T Pascoe was just as significant in its own way, although seldom mentioned - or perhaps even remembered - today.
Arriving in Swansea from Cornwall during the very early 1880s, the young Thomas Pascoe established himself as a coal merchant with a trading office on St Helen’s Road. By the turn of that decade he had clearly diversified however, for he had moved his business to new offices in Mount Street, adjacent to the original Swansea Harbour Board Offices, and was now trading as a coal trader and shipper. Clearly a canny businessman who could exploit opportunities to his benefit, his business grew from strength to strength and he moved from Mount Street to more prestigious offices in both York Chambers and Burrows Chambers at various times. The acquisition of the sole agency for the Ammanford Colliery Company cemented his position as one of Swansea’s most prominent businessmen. That colliery was one of the largest anthracite producing companies in the UK and the agency made the firm of Thomas T Pascoe one of the principal anthracite exporters by the end of the 19th. Century, with coals being shipped to all parts of the globe.
Interestingly, there are on-line references to Thomas T Pascoe both owning the Aberpergwm Colliery and being a part owner of the firm of Grenfell and Sons. Both of these references are almost certainly incorrect however, the latter probably because of a coincidence of well-known Swansea names [Thomas Pascoe and Pascoe Grenfell].
Thomas T Pascoe ran quite a large fleet of coal wagons, manufactured by both the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company and Charles Roberts. The liveries were broadly the same as our limited edition, although there were slight body colour variations according to batch [black and also lead]. This heavily touched-up publicity photograph shows Pascoe’s wagons marshalled at Ammanford Colliery with different lettering however. It is probable that this lettering was applied later by the photographer to make it more legible [the original (see our wagon) being maybe too small to be read clearly] and reference both Pascoe and the Ammanford Colliery simultaneously.
Our wagon has not been produced in a ready-to-run form before although Slater’s made an O Gauge kit of it some time ago [a different running number was used] and transfers in OO have been available, too. Pendon Museum also commissioned an OO kit in the late ‘70s from Slater’s. Once our stock of Thomas T Pascoe has been exhausted, we shall not be repeating this commission. All of our previous commissions sold out quickly and this one is sure to follow.
Our O gauge wagon is shown opposite. It has opening side doors and sprung three-link couplings.
The N gauge [left] and OO gauge [right] models are shown above.