Triangle "871" (Weston-super-Mare) slogan cancel, 1949

The envelope below has an undated "871" triangle slogan cancel from Weston-super-Mare.  One can date the cover from the slogan to April 1949.

There is part of a second impression on the left of the envelope - I have been advised that it's a unified machine cancel with wrong tensioning of the trip mechanism (so not a continuous machine cancel).

Bristol IMPs: Test Images

A couple of different test images have been used on the IMPs - these probably should not have been used on live mail.  The first, shorter one, is titled "IMP / PREFLIGHT / Test Image / First Printer" and appears on the back of envelopes.

The second, longer one, is titled "IMP / PREFLIGHT / Test Image / Second Printer" and appears on the front of envelopes.

Bristol IMPs: Reduced Form cancels

In September 1997 it was found that on small envelopes the ink used for the postmark (which is printed a fixed distance from the top of an envelope) was interfering with the phosphor reaction of the ink used for the tagcode (which is printed a fixed distance from the bottom of the envelope).

To overcome this problem a Reduced Form of postmark was introduced for envelopes less than 106mm in height.

This first sheet is for "Bristol" ...

... followed by "Bath Bristol" ...

... and "Bath Bristol    Taunton".  The format for this form of cancel varied, the ones below from 1999 & 2000 had a narrow gap between "Royal Mail" and "Bath" ...

... while these from 2002 had a wider gap.

Bristol IMPs continued

At any one time not all the Filton IMPs used the same cancel.  One can identify which IMP a particular cancel came from by looking at the first digit of the 8-digit code at the bottom of the date block.

Between April and July 1998 a "Royal Mail / Bath / Bristol" cancel was in use (IMPs 5 & 2 shown) ...

... and from January 1998 a "Royal Mail / Bath Bristol / Taunton" cancel was being used (IMP 3).

Bristol and Somerset: Integrated Mail Processors at Filton

The following series of posts have examples of the crossover between Somerset and Bristol ...

From 13th October 1980 second class mail from Taunton was being sent to Bristol to be sorted.  In 1996 eight "Integrated Mail Processors" (IMPs) were installed in Bristol's new mail centre at Filton, going live from May 1997.

The initial cancels were for "BRISTOL" or "Bristol", followed by "Bath / Bristol" (April-July 1998) and "Bath Bristol / Taunton" (from January 1998).

In July 1997 as one of the IMPs was being introduced, it ran for a few days with "Royal Mail / office_line_1" in error.

Here are examples of the "Royal Mail / Bristol" cancels ...

... and here are examples of the "Royal Mail / BRISTOL" cancels.

Bristol Machine Cancels

Bristol had a Columbia continuous machine cancel machine from 1904; some examples from 1905 and 1906 are shown below.

 

I've also got an example of what I believe is a single impression machine cancel from 1905 - can anyone please tell me what it is ?

Bridgwater - Machine Cancels

A selection of machine cancels.

Bath Machine Cancels

A few sheets illustrating Bath machine cancels, continuous and single impression.  More later when I get on to Slogan cancellations.