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I'm getting intrigued by these now ... particularly since they have those distinctive names!

My own Ashby ancestors are a LOT further back than this, and in north Essex. I don't think these are going to link back into my line ... but you never know!

The Robert & Sarah on the crown appear to be Robert Ashby who married Sarah Raban in Whitechapel on 28 July 1793 (that's the easy bit ...  the date checks out with the date engraved on the crown!) BUT ... and here's the thing ... it looks like a marriage by Vicar-General's licence. Interesting. I wonder why?

Well, the why would appear to be that Robert Ashby is Robert Ashby, son of Harry & Sarah, who was baptised in Westminster on 9 October 1774 ... so if this was an infant baptism, he was under-age when he was married.

His parents appear to be Henry Ashby, widower who married Sarah Spilsbury, widow at St Andrew, Holborn by licence on 23 November 1769 (tying up nicely with the daughter Sarah Spilsbury Ashby, whose birth on 31 May 1794 is recorded in the engraving on the Crown).

There are a variety of quasi-censuses. For instance, the Great Fire of Potton in the 1780s burned down half the town, and the accounts of the trustees of the national appeal for relief survive. They list all of the loss claims ... who claimed, how much they had lost, and what dividend they received. And yes, all of their occupations are stated.

Then there are the registers of duty paid on apprenticeship deeds, which are digitised and searchable online. Their contents vary, but at best you get:  name, place of abode/business and trade of master, name of apprentice; name, place of abode and occupation of apprentice's father; date of apprenticeship deed and premium paid.

If you have innkeepers / publicans in your family then you may be able to tap into a rich seam of justices' recognisances. Once a year they had to enter into a recognisance to keep an orderly house (a bond, effectively, which could be forfeit if they failed to do so) and in many places the justices' registers of recognisances survive. They may not be well indexed or easily searchable, but they are there, and you can check year-on-year whether your ancestor is still keeping the same house, or has moved on to a different one.

(The London Metropolitan Archives have a LOT of London recognisances ... but then there were a lot of public houses in London. They are not well indexed, however, so they can take a lot of searching ... )

I suspect Coombs is more likely to have originated as an occupational name for a woolcomber ...

My understanding (and it may be wrong) is that the locational surnames generally came into being in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Some were of purely local significance (Hill, Athill, Wood, Dale, Ford etc.) as they helped to distinguish from others of the same name in the same parish; whilst others might identify the parish they were from when they moved to a different parish. A good example of the latter is Haradine, quite common in Bedfordshire and referring to the Bedfordshire village of Harrowden.

Society was much more mobile than many of us realise prior to the 17th century ... because the system of returning vagrants to their "home" parish only arose under the various Poor Law acts from 1601 onwards. So that gives a good two to three hundred years for these "local" names to spread and become established in distant parts.

The thing is ... the Railway Operating Division (which was recruited from professional railwaymen) was part of the Royal Engineers, not the Army Service Corps.

The narrow gauge lines from the foreard supply depots to the front lines were not operated by the ROD ... but I think that they WERE also under the aegis of the RE not the ASC.