BR Sectorisation - interesting freight operations?

[ngresley1938]

Sorry, been away a while.

I'm expanding my T-Trak layout and looking at putting in a long station.  As part of this I'd like to have some sort of freight operation but by the time I'm modelling wagon-load freight had gone.  Is there any alternative to block trains, ie something that might involve some shunting?  In particular, could an RES parcels/mail depot be included with the station and how would it operate?  More generally, any good layout plans with Sectorisation-era freight traffic?

Thanks!

[EtchedPixels]

Mail traffic was handled with the minimum of shunting like everything else. Fairly fixed formations, run around at the terminus only. Speedlink died in 1991 but the whole train freight service swung from massive losses to profitability. It just made everything very very boring and optimized !

A lot of that question depends upon location and time though. There were stations that saw a few freight movements (eg the runaround of clay trains in Cornwall, and the splitting of heavy freights for the banks at Newton Abbot, all the activity at Didgrot) but it was hardly the norm. After all if you had a platform spare for freight shunting you could close it and build houses, or if inconveniently a listed building sell it to a pub chain.

Scotland may be more productive in opportunities than most areas as it kept more small "trainload" services and in station areas. On the Wales side I'm not sure when the Aberystwyth oil terminal closed but it certainly illustrates some possibilities. I guess there is always engineering traffic.

(its entertaining to note that the *total* subsidy required by British Rail in 1993/4 was 724 million which is about 1.25billion in todays money)

Another possibility of course might be freightliner. Its block trains but some quite complex movements and the depots tended to be long and thin. As they were handling boxes they could also easily be close to a station without noise/dust problems.

[Delfin]

Small operations which would suit you still existed in the early nineties.  Here in Worcester a couple of wagons of steel coil were shunted into/out of the Metal Box factory each weekday.  They came up from South Wales in a block train destined for Round Oak.  On arrival at Worcester yard (around 0500-ish) the loco would detach and withdrawn the empty wagons before shunting the full ones into the siding.  Because the block train, 6M11 IIRC, sometimes missed it's slot leaving Worcester and had to wait until after the morning rush, the method was later changed to the full wagons being dropped off and the loco proceeding to Round Oak before returning mid-morning to do the shunting, afterwards returning to Round Oak.  This subsequently changed to the loco just bringing the wagons from Round Oak before returning.

Another working in Worcester which would suit you used two small bay platforms in Shrub Hill station.  Each would contain a parcels van which was filled by the Royal Mail.  In the late afternoon a parcels sector class 47 would arrive from Gloucester and pull the two vans.  I can't remember whether the empties were brought up at the same time or in the morning.  If you look on Google earth you will see the two sidings at the south end of the Down platform, although the track has been removed.  This operation disappeared a couple of years after we moved to Worcester in 1989.

Lastly there was a trip working from Bescot which would arrive mid-morning destined for the Civil Engineer's tip at Honeybourne.  This was full of spent ballast and spoil in a variety of CE wagons.  The loco was usually any old crock that Bescot didn't want to use for anything important.  Often there were two of them with classes 20, 31, 37 and 47 being the most common.  This train staged in the yard at Worcester waiting a path over the single line to Honeybourne.  Unfortunately changes to waste disposal regulations saw an end to the tip in the mid nineties.

Hope this helps.

Delfin 

[PostModN66]

Depends on what you mean by shunting - if you mean rearranging individual wagons, then the answer is generally no - but if you would count dividing block trains into "cuts" (US term) for loading/unloading there are examples and you could invent some without diverging to far from reality.

E.g.

- Oil train trip workings to Dalston (I think there is also an oil unloading road at Stalybridge station)
- Cement unloading at Northenden
- Cement exchange sidings such as Earl's sidings (Hope)
- Nuclear flasks at various loading points near Nuclear power stations

Cheers   Jon 

[SD35]

Any particular part of the UK? 

There were plenty of interesting little trip workings in areas around main yards.  Even my old little local station N-Le-W used to receive three chemical tanks in a very short siding every now and again on a trip from Warrington.

[scottishlocos]

Hi

Think I can be of help here firstly I am fairly sure that the parcels depot at Bolton lasted into the speedlink era and has featured in many books and magazine articles of the time. Often with a parcels or RES class 47 shunting the bay platform.
Secondly I would recommend a setting a paper mill on or near your layout location as there were a few rail served mills in different parts of the country and the produced some interesting wagonload freight trains right up to and including he EWS era. Freight traffic to and from a papermill could include china clay powder or slurry, various chemical tanks coal or oil for the burners/boilers wood pulp in vans and outgoing vans or ferry vans with reels of paper.

In speedlink days there may have been two or three trip workings with different types of traffic.The move toward efficiency in the 1990's and the Transrail enterprise era would have seen the trip workings reduce but all the freight seen on one train for example 2 clay slurry tanks 1 chemical tank and 3 vans this continued into the EWS era.

Try searching for Corpach paper mill or my personal favourite Auchmuty!!!!!!!!!
Am sure there were rail served papermills in or net Warrington and Sittingbourne.

Kind regards

Dave

[BernardTPM]

Sittingbourne's yard was still getting regular trains in the early to mid-'90s.

[ngresley1938]

Thanks for all the replies.  FWIW my layout is broadly somewhere on the ECML - haven't gotten more specific. 

[BernardTPM]

One particular service there then would be the Redland Tile traffic.

[apollo45115]

Mail loading/unloading was part of train station operations until the railnet dedicated depots came around 1996 or '97.They used the passenger platforms normally (as has been mentioned at Bolton) however there were some exceptions. At Preston (wrong mainline I know) part of the station; a single platform and associated buildings, was given over solely to mail and parcels traffic. There's no reason why you couldn't transfer the idea to an East coast inspired station on your layout. On the ECML, Leeds station had its' own mail terminal but that was much bigger! It would be a layout in itself.
As for interesting freight flows, there was lime from Thristlington in Northumberland, containerised coal to J G Russell depots in Scotland. I travel on the ECML a lot and there's a couple of potential sites you might want consider, although they're current or recent past you could easily set them in sectorisation days.

1. The tarmac concrete sleeper factory between Peterborough and Grantham. The location would make a good layout; 4 track mainline, countryside etc. The depot itself is small and the siding to it veers off at a very sharp angle. Trains are short; 2 or 3 bogie wagons.

2. Hitchin station. Again 4 track mainline, a station and a siding for  loading scrap metal. It even still has evidence of its' Royal Mail depot!

Plenty to chew over.


Carl
Carl

[SD35]

There are couple of specific wagon load options for the ECML.

- Household coal was still being delivered to small local terminals.  My first ever wagon kit was a TPM HEA to cover this kind of train (thanks Bernard!  ) 

- Scrap could be picked up from small yards.  Tinsley bound traffic in 4 wheel POAs, Sheerness bound in 73Te bogie wagons and some Lackenby workings still in MDVs in the mid 1980s.

Alternatively, you could pinch some operations from the LM.  There were some busy little trip workings from Warrington with a variety of loads some of which would only convey a single wagon including one which worked to Newton-Le-Willows, SP, Ashton and Gathurst with chemical tanks, fuel, scrap & chemical in vans respectively.  The small freight terminal at Gathurst can be seen here:

http://www.railbrit.co.uk/location.php?loc=Lancashire%20and%20Yorkshire%20Railway&offset=11

It was still being used in the mid 80s at least although the narrow gauge had gone by then.