ANIMAL & MECHANICAL HORSEPOWER

Post-WW2 Quayside Freight Management

Richard Beckett

It is believed that this photo shows the first import of timber into Newhaven port after the end of WW2. Note the use of horses to haul the wagons, a great saving on the cost of using shunting locomotives.

Photo:Horse & Crane Power on the railway

Horse & Crane Power on the railway

Newhaven Maritime Museum

This page was added by Richard Beckett on 06/11/2008.
Comments about this page

What a picture. It hadn't moved on much when I was collecting timber from the Baltic saw mills yard in the early sixties. I wonder how a London Midland and Scottish wagon ended up at Newhaven docks, and pulled by a horse as well.

By Terry Howard
On 19/02/2011

Terry, wagons would have come in and gone out, over the Southern Railway, to all the other railways. Rather than transhipping goods from one wagon to another, the LMS wagons would run through onto the Southern, and the Southern Wagons onto the LMS. The railways had more horses than steam locomotives, being used, as here, to move wagons about within a yard.

By Richard Salmon
On 04/09/2013

I remember having a ride on one of those horses back in the very early 50s. I would have been pre-school age at the time.

By Doug Hall
On 04/09/2013
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