Concrete beam sets

[LNERGE]

I've just finished reading a well written and interesting book that contained these passages..

 

Quote.. 

 

''All the beams were brought in by rail from Lenwade, in Norfolk, on special bolster sets used for this traffic. There were 80 of these huge beams, about two feet square and forty feet long, carried on ten of these special wagon sets. The length of the train was equal to fifty wagons with a total weight, including the wagons, of  something like 750 to 800 tons. We had it double headed with two steamers from Spital loco shed, not necessarily for hauling the load but for stopping the load. There was also shunting to do at Wansford to position the wagons for two large cranes to off-load the beams and place them in the proper sequence across the top of the abutments.

 

The train had been assembled at Stangrough Yard, at Peterborough East, having come from Lenwade in two or three lots''

 

What type of wagons would have been used? Does anyone have a photographic record of this event at Wansford around two weeks after Sunday 19th July 1959 (when the signalling alterations came into force)?

Edited January 27, 2013 by LNERGE

[AberdeenBill]

Hi LNERGE,

 

Interesting question, what book is this? ;-)     A few years' later, ARM (armour plate) flats were used to support beams, with spacers (conflats or whatever was to hand) in between them.    There was a thread just a couple of weeks ago with some pictures, probably from the late 1950s, of a Brush type 2 (class 31) on a concrete beam train, with what looked like WARFLATs.   It would be great to see more pictures.

 

Bill

[LNERGE]

The book is Crossing Fences by Henry Orbell ISBN 0-9531659-3-0 

 

Available on Amazon for £93 or from March museum for £6

[Jon Gwinnett]

There is a photo of a similar train, but some years later, in Shaun Pearce's Eastern Region Freight since 1960 - page 44, passing Reepham on its way from Lenwade

 

Unfortunately I can't make out the wagon types.

[jonhall]

I've just finished reading a well written and interesting book that contained these passages..

 

Quote.. 

 

''All the beams were brought in by rail from Lenwade, in Norfolk, on special bolster sets used for this traffic. There were 80 of these huge beams, about two feet square and forty feet long, carried on ten of these special wagon sets. The length of the train was equal to fifty wagons with a total weight, including the wagons, of  something like 750 to 800 tons.

Two foot square and 40ft long would have comfortably sat on the deck of a bogie bolster without sticking out the end, or fouling the loading guage anywhere, I don't know about the density of concrete, to work out the weight, but with those dimentions multiple beams on a single wagon might well have been possible.

 

Jon

[Fat Controller]

There were some BR-built Borails specially built for concrete beam traffic, lacking the bolsters normally fitted. Other wagons included ARM armour-plate wagons, along wth various girder wagons. This link should take you to the relevant BR Diagram book; there is a section at the rear dedicated to the various types of 'Specials' used for this traffic:-

http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/BRBDocuments/SpecialVehiclesIssue.pdf

If I recollect correctly, the beams in question were for a type of 'factory-built' tower block (check 'Ronan Point' on Google for these). The cladding panels also came from somewhere like Lenwade; they were delivered on 4-wheel Flatrols with special framing to hold them upright.

[Allegheny1600]

Two foot square and 40ft long would have comfortably sat on the deck of a bogie bolster without sticking out the end, or fouling the loading guage anywhere, I don't know about the density of concrete, to work out the weight, but with those dimentions multiple beams on a single wagon might well have been possible.

 

Jon

Hi Jon, All,

My interest in this is only due to having been a (shuttering) joiner in a concrete factory many years ago now.

The 'usual' weight for reinforced concrete is taken to be 150Lb per cubic foot (150pcf) and similarly for non reinforced is 145pcf.

Our beam above is 2 feet square? And, 40' long.

So, 2 x 2 = 4, 4 x 40 = 160 (cubic feet).

160 x 150 = 24,000 (Lbs), 160 x 145 = 23,200 (Lbs).

Divide by 2240 and we get a beam weighing between 10.7T and 10.35T

Therefore, you are completely correct in saying that a single bogie bolster wagon should have been able to comfortably carry at least one of these beams!

Interesting!!!

Cheers,

John E.

[Fat Controller]

The more I read about the dimensions and weight of the beams, the more I'm inclined to think that they're not meaty enough for bridge beams, and are part of some 'factory-built' housing scheme. Has anyone seen any mention of Taylor-Woodrow-Anglian in conjunction with this traffic? They were responsible for Ronan Point, and several other tower blocks in Newham, built using horizontal and vertical pre-cast concrete beams, infilled with non-structural panels.

I've just found a photo of a concrete-beam train from Lenwade, taken in July 1976. It's to be found on P44 of 'Focus on Freight- Eastern Region Freight since 1960' by Shaun Pearce. The wagons are what appear to be four BR Borail wagons. These beams aren't a uniform cross-section and appear to be about three to four feet deep, with a sort of 'ogee' profile to the side, a sort of thing you do see on precast bridge elements. The photo was taken at Reepham; I wonder if they were loaded there, as there are some HGVs parked up behind the train.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Fat Controller

[LNERGE]

The more I read about the dimensions and weight of the beams, the more I'm inclined to think that they're not meaty enough for bridge beams, and are part of some 'factory-built' housing scheme. 

They are definitely bridge beams.

[adrianbs]

 

Hiall I am trying to add some pictures of the concete beam trains but havig trouble, will the geeks please take

one step forward ??

Regards All adrianbs

[adrianbs]

Hi all, I have extracted my digit and found my album of concrete beam carrier photos !!. There is a notebook which

gives the exact formation of the trains. My memory has dulled with age, I think the photos were taken in the 1970s

and in fact there were 4 trains in total each with 7 (not 8) beam sets. The BR banana vans were actually I preseme

a fitted head as most of the other wagons were not fitted or piped. I assume the total weight of the train must have

been in the order of 900 to 1000 tons of which only the 100 plus tons on the vans would have had brakes. The train

would of course have had a very low speed on the line. If you want to see some of the near 100 photos tell me how

to upload them as I cannot seem to move them from my documenets file to the forum. Bye all adrianbs

[adrianbs]

[adrianbs]

Hi all Not sure if it has worked, I have uploaded 3 photos which were originally 11 Mb but have downsized via the Email to

26kb. Not sure if I have actaully posted them though, We will know shortly. adrianbs

[adrianbs]

Hi All Well that was a bit of a struggle, thanks Jon. don't know how to downsize photos to a specific resolution

so the above are very poor having gone from 11 Mb to only 27kb. If you want more perhaps you could advise, I send

my photos from My Docs to Email when I can reduce them and then send them back to My Docs under a new name. I am

willing to bet there is a better way and that each photo could be reduced to under 1Mb for posting. Come on you

geeks. That's it for today though adrianbs

[Fat Controller]

beam set 1a.jpg

The first wagon's a Flatrol ELL, I believe. By chance, Paul Bartlett's just posted an update on his site showing some of the wagons of a concrete-beam set stabled up:-

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/recentlyadded/hd7ce258#h1f85df6d

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/recentlyadded/hd7ce258#h1a576b4a

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/recentlyadded/hd7ce258#hd1125f6

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/recentlyadded/hd7ce258#hd281685

It looks as though someone was trying to have as mixed a rake as possible. I believe the trains originated somewhere in the Norwich area- Wensum rings a vague bell.

[Andy Y]

Hi Jon, Don't have photoshop or much else of that sort, tell me more about how to resize images without and I will post a few more

of the really interesting ones.

 

 

 

We do provide an Image Editor within RMweb if you have no suitable software.

 

Click on Image Editor on the tab towards the top of the page.

Click on 'Open image from your computer' - you'll then have to navigate to where your images are.

In the grey bar at the top click on 'Image' and then 'Image Size'

Enter a value of 800 in the width box and click OK.

 

In the grey bar at the top click on 'File' and then 'Save'

Chose a new name (or suffix) for your re-sized image and hit OK.

 

Follow the steps you did in previous posts for uploading the re-sized image.

[adrianbs]

    Hi  Jon,   Not much luck,  when I try uploading the picture  (952kb) it tell me I am "not permitted to upload this kind of file" !!  ??

          More bright ideas required !!     adrianbs

 

 

[adrianbs]

Hi Jon it is a bitmap image named concretebeam4a from my scanner Adrian

[Andy Y]

It's not possible to upload .bmp files to RMweb due to the inefficient file sizes.

[adrianbs]

 Hi Jon   That's odd, the other pictures were bmp files  although much smaller !! adrianbs

[adrianbs]

 

 

 

 Hoping this comes out better having changed from Bitmap to Jpeg    adrianbs

[jonhall]

Hurrah, at last.

 

I think that they might have been coming from the Taylor Woodrow Anglian factory at Lenwade - I've recently seen an article in Modern Railways from 1964 which describes precast components for high rise flats (made infamous by Ronan Point) coming by rail from Lenwade to Charlton.

 

Jon

Edited November 4, 2013 by jonhall

[adrianbs]

 Hi  All,    The last photo is of one of the BR built Flat EQ plate wagons, 5 of which were built in the early 1950s to the 3 off NER  pre WW1 design  used for

 the 160Ton gunset.  One assumes the originals must have actually carried the 3 18"  barrels that were made from the makers to the shipyard but I have never 

 seen any photos of the set loaded with one of these.  They were originally close coupled but later separated into 3 units with buffers added to the blank ends.

 

  It may well be they were built with the option of single use as bolting on buffers and adding couplings would not have been a major job and coupling up

  various wagons of this type was a regular occurrence to suit the loads being carried.  The chopped up Trestrol in my earlier post was fitted with a solid

  fairly crude but substantial double  I beam coupling bar, the conversion itself being done with very little finesse.  These beams sets were of necessity a

  very motley bunch simply because there was only a very limited pool of wagons available.  Only a handful of most designs were made and the "Poole

  Flyover" trains were probably made up of nearly all the existing wagons of some types.  I was very lucky to get to see the trains as otherwise I would

  never have seen most of these wagon types ever !!       Regards  all   adrianbs

[hmrspaul]

Hi Jon, Don't have photoshop or much else of that sort, tell me more about how to resize images without and I will post a few more

of the really interesting ones.

The concrete beams were labelled "ANOTHER ANGLIAN CONCRETE PRODUCT" but I am not sure where they came from although as Fat C

says Norwich, that would tie in with east ANGLIA !!

Below is the formation of Train 1 that I photograped.

Loco- BR Banana vans x7 - B.909650,906026,905106,909600----909651,906022,905108,909601----909659,902023,902019,090609----

908001,907228,E.217295----908012,922436,908010----908015,924564,98019----909652,901003?,909602 + Brake van

The load carrying wagons were labelled "concrete beam" and the intermediates "concrete beam spacer"

No doubt Paul B will be able to give chapter and verse of the wagon types but my notes do give some of this anyway.

 

Adrian - Lovely photos. Poole one of the few yards I was refused entry to, and I only ever saw the CBs in Whitemoor, very closed in and on poor days. They all worked from Lenwade, as you say a right motley collection, the 3 axle bogies were very crudely cut from earlier wagons and unfortunately were renumbered - I expect others know the origin of each one.

 

No need to give lots of info, the diagrams are in the Specially constructed diagram book on the Barrowmoremrg site - see 2/800 - 05. All the running numbers are given.

 

Paul Bartlett

[adrianbs]

Hi Paul Yes, I got chucked out a few times from Poole yard but while the C/Bs were there I mamaged to get in most days and I

don't think I missed much. The only constraint in those days was the cost of film and processing !!! Oh how good it would

have been to have had a modern digital camera. Like you the vehicles were not always easy to snap and the best time was in

the evening or afternoon when the sun was behind the camera but that was not always possible as the trains were on

parallel tracks. I hoped one day to make a Flat EQ set and discovered that the ali rail used on the larger live steam

M/E tracks ws a fairly close match in scale for an O gauge concrete beam !! Regards adrianbs