Stage Coach 1848 - Artesania Latina - 1/10 - by Kevin - July 2021

[Kevin Aris]

Good evening everyone

 

with my summer break i am starting another wagon, 

 

Taken from Wikki

 

Stagecoaches were familiar vehicles along the main roads of the East and the South before the coming of railroads in the 1830s and 1840s. Even as the nation's network of iron and steel rails grew larger and more comprehensive, stagecoach connections to small and isolated communities continued to supplement passenger trains well into the second decade of the twentieth century. However, stagecoach travel was most difficult and dangerous across the vast expanse of the American West, where it attracted the most attention. In large measure that was because of the inordinately great distances involved and the Herculean effort required to maintain regular service across the region's dry and sparsely populated landscape.

Stagecoach lines in the East tended to connect preexisting centers of population, and passengers took regular meals at the established inns and taverns along the way. Nothing of the kind existed in the West in 1858, when John Butterfield undertook an overland stage line connecting St. Louis and San Francisco by way of El Paso, Texas. The route also ran through Tucson and Los Angeles, but neither was more than a village of a few hundred residents at that time. A federal contract paid the stage company $600,000 a year to carry U.S. mail across the continent, and that money helped subsidize way stations at regular intervals, where, in the absence of existing settlements along most of the proposed route, the coaches could change draft animals and the passengers could find food. The Butterfield organization spent nearly a year getting everything into place to support semiweekly stagecoach service.

When Butterfield's Overland Mail Line opened for business on 16 September 1858, the 2,795-mile journey between San Francisco and St. Louis required approximately three weeks of hard traveling, and that was during the best weather. The coaches kept moving all through the day and night except for brief intervals at way stations. Stagecoach fare did not include the cost of meals, which at an average price of a dollar each three times a day for three weeks might effectively add 50 percent to the cost of a through ticket. Sleep had to be obtained aboard the rocking coach.

Antedating Butterfield's line, a stage line connected San Diego and San Antonio in 1857 with semimonthly coaches. Even earlier, in 1849, a stage line of sorts connected Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. But these earlier carriers were not as ambitious as the Butterfield line, nor were they run with the attention to detail that a large support structure demanded.

In the spring of 1861, with the threat of Civil War and Texas's secession from the Union, the transcontinental stage line moved north. Following the central Over-land Trail, it stretched through the future states of Wyoming,

Utah, and Nevada. Again the Overland Stage Line had to spend a small fortune to build the support structure required for regular operations across the sparsely populated corridor. The long transcontinental journey remained as rigorous as before.

The transcontinental stage line attained its greatest geographical reach under the leadership of Ben Holladay. In the mid-1860s, lines of the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company extended west from the Missouri River steamboat landings in Kansas and Nebraska to a hub in Salt Lake City. From there additional lines served outposts as distant as Butte, Montana, and The Dalles, Oregon, where steamboat connections to Portland were available. Incurring heavy losses in 1864 and 1965 during the Native American unrest that sometimes prevented overland stagecoaches from running, Holladay in November 1866 sold his interests to Wells, Fargo and Company. Wells, Fargo operated stagecoaches along the transcontinental route between Salt Lake City and Sacramento, California, where steamboats connected to San Francisco. Holladay subsequently acquired and built railroad lines in Oregon.

Railroads generated a great deal of excitement all across the West. As the tracks of the first transcontinental railroad extended east from Sacramento and west from Omaha in the late 1860s, stagecoaches served a shrinking gap. That gap closed when railroad officials drove a last spike at Promontory, Utah, in May 1869 and trains linked California with the rest of the United States for the first time. The era of stagecoaches along the central Overland Trail was over, but thereafter various smaller stage lines linked transcontinental trains to distant outposts. Until buses became popular around the time of World War I, many a road-weary stagecoach continued to meet passenger trains and provide transportation to remote villages in the West. The term "stage" was commonly used to describe any coach, wagon, or sleigh used as a public conveyance. In the 1860s, the heyday of stagecoach lines, the Concord coach, handcrafted in Concord, New Hampshire, by Abbot, Downing and Company, became the quintessential icon of transportation across the frontier West. The first Concord in California, transported aboard a clipper ship that sailed from New England around Cape Horn, inaugurated service out of San Francisco on 25 June 1850.

The familiar egg-shaped body of the Concord coach was renowned for its great strength and its ability to keep passengers dry while floating them across flood-swollen streams. Because the inevitable twisting of the coach body on the rough terrain could easily shatter glass windows, it had only adjustable leather curtains to keep out the dust, wind, and rain. The heavy body, often weighing a ton or more, rode on thick, six-or eight-ply leather belts called thoroughbraces to insulate it from the constant pounding of the wheels over makeshift roads. Nevertheless, the swaying made some passengers seasick. Mark Twain aptly characterized the Concord coach as a "cradle on wheels."

Not all stagecoaches were of the familiar type. Vehicles called "celerity" or "mud" wagons were much lighter and cheaper than Concord coaches and, because they had no springs, offered a much rougher ride. They were primarily used on lines where passenger and express traffic was too light to justify the expense of Concord coaches.

A Concord coach could accommodate as many as nine passengers inside and another six or more on the roof, though no one in a crowded coach rode in comfort. In an age renowned for its propriety and formality, perfect strangers, both men and women, might have to interlock knees in the cramped space of the interior or rest a weary head on another's shoulder. Some passengers passed the long hours of an overland journey by drinking themselves into alcoholic stupors, while others organized or participated in impromptu songfests. One common form of entertainment was to shoot at the wild animals, such as antelope and prairie dogs, visible from coach windows. Some passengers probably whiled away the long hours worrying about Indian attacks, even though attacks and stagecoach holdups were both infrequent. The violence associated with stagecoach travel in the West was for the most part an exaggeration fostered by dime novels, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and Hollywood westerns.

Each stagecoach passenger was allowed a maximum of twenty-five pounds of baggage, which rode in a large rear pouch called a boot. The U.S. mail typically rode in the front or rear boot, although, as Mark Twin recalled from personal experience in Roughing It (1872), a large load of mail might be shoved among the feet of passengers. Any express shipments, often gold and silver, rode close to the feet of the driver, a skilled horseman who handled the team of four or six draft animals from a seat atop the coach. Sometimes a special messenger accompanied express shipments to guard them from bandits. On occasion a stagecoach might carry a shipment of produce, such as fresh apples from the orchards of Utah to remote towns in Idaho and Montana.

Twain's personal account of overland stage travel in the early 1860s is evocative and true to fact. However, the 1939 Hollywood epic Stagecoach, directed by John Ford and featuring a young John Wayne, probably did more than anything else to foster modern perceptions of stagecoach travel as both romantic and dangerous. Louis McLane, onetime head of Wells, Fargo and Company, the most famous name in overland stagecoach travel, wrote to his wife in 1865 about artistic depictions of travel by coach, "I thought staging looked very well to the lithographer, but was the devil in reality." Many hearty travellers who crossed the West by stagecoach in the late 1850s and the 1860s surely would have agreed.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Kevin Aris

[Kevin Aris]

rated as one being better detailed than the 1/12 Model Trailways Concorde Stagecoach i fancied this after the discovery of my Tudor mansion, built and forgotten about, and it quickly follows my completion of the hearse build

what i have found to be a pain, no instruction handbook, just a CD, or you can download from different places

priced at about £130 im sure it will keep me out of trouble for the next few weeks

[kpnuts]

They make some amazing kits, will be following along mate.

[Kevin Aris]

good afternoon everyone

day 2 of my latest build, 

wheels are first, But having done them last on the hearse build i am going to wait a while, however i did the hubs as i am using a different sort of acrylic paint,  they are taking some work to make them presentable

starting the chassis

the kit provides 5mm x 5mm walnut for the longitudinals and have a cleft put along the full length, i did this by hand, it looked a utter mess, so i used some 6x6 and used the table saw, 3 clefts are on either sided of the chassis front and rear  

mainly only the laser side is painted, most of this has now had at least 3 coats, with no primer

at present i am now doing the hounds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[perdu]

Lovely beginnings of a fantastic project

 

I'm along for the ride.

 

The John Thompson book will be a fabulous assistant, I'm sure.

 

[Kevin Aris]

welcome aboard

 

[Kevin Aris]

good morning everyone

never got quite as much done yesterday, as the wife walked out on me

 

when i say the wife walked out on me that not quite what happed, for a start she got in a car, not walked, and it was our car,  and i was driving, and i knew where she was going, oh and she comes back Tuesday

 

the horse is still being worked on, but already i am changing things 

the instructions call out for a simple 3 sided brace but looking through other logs i am going with a full brace

[perdu]

I'd agree with bracing all round, good work.

[Kevin Aris]

good evening everyone

quite a bit done to the chassis today, although you wont believe it

the brass round will eventually be bent and attached to the handbrake lever, however the way the kit wants me to join them to the raft made me look at alternatives, but there would need to be more room required to achieve it so i came up with my own idea, which is tidier and looks better

the lever moves this raft which in turn creates friction on the wheels to slow them down

these bits of brass sandwich the raft which is tidier then a 1mm hole to attach

 

carriage suspension

each corner has a vertical metal bandings and has taken some time to get right 

two metal strips are turned at one end, and fixed to the frame the other, a folded bands secures them, and a rod stops them from collapsing 

still very much work in progress

Edited August 2, 2021 by Kevin Aris

[kpnuts]

Great progress 

[perdu]

Brilliant!

[Kevin Aris]

good evening everyone

its good to be back, i have been busy on my projects, and for some reason i never posted my updates on here

 

anyway, this has now been completed, after i had a break from it 

[JeroenS]

Very, very nice Kevin. Beautifully done.

[Jochen Barett]

Looks terrific!

 

In case anybody cares for 1/1 coach building: https://www.youtube.com/c/EngelsCoachShop1/videos

[rob Lyttle]

I just clicked on this one out of curiosity as I perused the car making forum, Kevin. Many years ago I built an Artisana boat, a Virginia Pilot (something).... So the name caught my eye. 

Brilliant run through the history and nature of the type to begin the thread. Thanks for that. Living in UK, or any European country I guess, gives absolutely NO IDEA of the size, the distances, the,, sheer emptyness of the untamed USA, or Canada or Australia. 

Unbelievable really that it was done as a commercial venture for the paying public, as a horse-drawn mode of transport. 

And delivering one from New England to California by sea via Cape Horn just sounds like madness to us now! 😲 I know most trading and transportation was done by sea, but THAT just sounds like a mad adventure, a challenge, like rowing across the Pacific or something. 

You got to admire and wonder at the tenacity of people back then, even the dogged determination a farepaying passenger in a stagecoach. 

So thanks again for the potted history of the era. 

I suppose it has some kind of similarities with the canal systems in the UK and elsewhere. Major investment in engineering and infrastructure, did the job, built a nation, and got totally wiped out almost instantly by the next technology. 

 

Lovely bit of wood work, by the way 😎

[Kevin Aris]

7 hours ago, rob Lyttle said:

I just clicked on this one out of curiosity as I perused the car making forum, Kevin. Many years ago I built an Artisana boat, a Virginia Pilot (something).... So the name caught my eye. 

Brilliant run through the history and nature of the type to begin the thread. Thanks for that. Living in UK, or any European country I guess, gives absolutely NO IDEA of the size, the distances, the,, sheer emptyness of the untamed USA, or Canada or Australia. 

Unbelievable really that it was done as a commercial venture for the paying public, as a horse-drawn mode of transport. 

And delivering one from New England to California by sea via Cape Horn just sounds like madness to us now! 😲 I know most trading and transportation was done by sea, but THAT just sounds like a mad adventure, a challenge, like rowing across the Pacific or something. 

You got to admire and wonder at the tenacity of people back then, even the dogged determination a farepaying passenger in a stagecoach. 

So thanks again for the potted history of the era. 

I suppose it has some kind of similarities with the canal systems in the UK and elsewhere. Major investment in engineering and infrastructure, did the job, built a nation, and got totally wiped out almost instantly by the next technology. 

 

Lovely bit of wood work, by the way 😎

im not normally a non ship builder, hut having built the hearse project it led onto the stagecoach, 

[perdu]

Well Kevin didn't you make a fabulous job of this huh?

 

It looks gorgeous thanks for sharing it.

[Kevin Aris]

50 minutes ago, perdu said:

Well Kevin didn't you make a fabulous job of this huh?

 

It looks gorgeous thanks for sharing it.

Thank you

[Bertie McBoatface]

Oh very nice Kev. Well done!