Upton Hanbury - GWR mainline fantasy

[clachnaharry]

MO - Mondays Only, MX - Mondays Excepted. I can't help you with regulated but I'm sure the Stationmaster will be along soon.

 

I presume that the list of freights only covers the trains which were booked to shunt at Hungerford? These only amount to two in each direction daily, and I would expect there were more through freights along the line?

[The Stationmaster]

MO - Mondays Only, MX - Mondays Excepted. I can't help you with regulated but I'm sure the Stationmaster will be along soon.

 

I presume that the list of freights only covers the trains which were booked to shunt at Hungerford? These only amount to two in each direction daily, and I would expect there were more through freights along the line?

 

Yes, only those booked to work at Hungerford as that was the question Phil asked.  There were other freights as well which were not booked to call there.

 

Regulated effectively means the same as 'recessed' - i.e. that particular train would be held for another train to overtake it (which I have shown in the case of the 02.25 Reading as it waited for the stone empties to pass).

As far as marshalling is concerned I don't have any pre-war information at all (it was published in books of Marshalling instructions separately from the STTs) but some of it is relatively straightforward assuming normal traffic patterns so it would have worked like this -

 

Reading West Jcn was probably the principal feeding yard although Bristol East depot would also have been a feeding yard - in both cases it depended where traffic was coming from and how connections were made at various intermediate marshalling yards.

The 02.25 Reading, and no doubt the Bristol starter as well, would have been marshalled in station order which usually meant that any traffic to be detached would have been next to the engine when the train arrived at each calling point (with the possible exception of things like cattle wagons which might have remained in one place on the train to be shunted out separately).  Detaching off the front was the quickest way to work any intermediate goods yard as it meant shunting with the shortest possible number of vehicles with no need to stand others aside before shunting commenced.    

 

Thus between them the two morning trains would have positioned inwards wagons ready for work on them to commence although on the shed road some might well have been left outside the shed to be moved in after others had been dealt with.  The only question mark against these two trains is whether or not they picked up any outwards traffic (very unlikely) or empties (I think that is also unlikely).  The obvious clearance train for outwards traffic was the 17.05 from Holt Jcn which was the evening clearance for the Berks & Hants Extension stations and of course arrived well after work in the goods yard would have finished, it probably took away empties as well as there was no other logical way of getting rid of them, we'll return to that in a moment.   The Didcot - Westbury was almost certainly there for some sort of specific, and occasional, traffic flow which would get a quicker transit via Westbury than being routed via Reading - quite what the traffic was, including possibly even specialised empties, would need some research into business activity in Hungerford.

 

Now back to the 17.05 Holt Jcn.  Definitely and very obviously the clearance train but it might possibly have conveyed some inwards traffic - if it did that would inevitably be in station order at the front (any specialised traffics apart).  The big question mark however is how the outwards traffic going into this train would be formed and this would largely depend on the time it had available to make connections at Reading but logically, especially at that time of the evening, I would have expected it to be segregated as a minimum into Reading Up Line and Reading Down Line sections or maybe even into a section for each of the three yards at Reading West Jcn, and it is possible that some empties were in their own section.  Really all of this depended on the volume of traffic the train picked up enroute and by the 1930s, particularly the late 1930s, I would think that the number of empty wagons it collected considerably exceeded the number of loaded with occasional exceptions (back to trade directories of the period) arising from firms shipping out particular products or seasonal traffic.  Looked at very simplistically, and from a long way off in time terms, the most logical segregations come back to Reading Up Line, Reading Down Line, and Empties.  There might even have been further segregation due to tight connections at Reading for specific regular flows of traffic.

 

You might perhaps draw some conclusions from the followinge figures?  General goods forwarded from Hungerford declined from 5112 tons in 1923 to 1818 tons in 1933; in the same period general goods received declined from 6483 tons to 4244 tons; coal and coke received declined from 995 tons to 800 tons; other minerals received increased from 4006 tons to 6741 tons;  and the number of wagons of livestock handled fell from 325 to150.  These are of course 'snapshot' figures and might be atypical but the increase in 'other minerals' no doubt reflects the increasing mileage of roads being surfaced with hard macadam surfaces in the interwar period as it had consistently risen since before the Great War.  Logically this traffic would have been roadstone and would have arrived on the 17.05 from Holt Jcn and the empties would probably have returned on the Didcot - Westbury as it would have come from Mendip quarries.

 

The general goods figure for 1933 incidentally averages out at less than one wagon forwarded per working day, the inwards general goods is probably no more than 10 or 12 wagons per week.   In other words Hungerford was, by 1933 a far from busy goods station - by way of comparison our local branch terminus received 5921 tons of inwards general goods in and forwarded over 2900 tons - and it was serviced by a single freight trip daily.

[Tallpaul69]

Right - to the freight services.  these are for Summer 1938 but were probably little altered over the years.  However it should be noted that the post-war (WWII) situation was very different and it looks as if traffic to/from Hungerford was routed in a different way then.  note also that I have used 'modern' WTT symbols and terminology except in respect of the term 'daily')

 

So 1938 Down freight trains (and these ran daily unless shown otherwise (n.b. 'daily' meant Monday - Saturday in those days).

 

02.25 MX Reading - Bristol (departed at 01.45 on Sats), Class K.  Called at all stations from Kintbury to Devizes, at Hungerford 05.35 - 06*15.  Regulated to 06*15 on the relevant days for the 02.55 WFO Old Oak Common/05.15 TThO Hayes to Westbury  Class H Stone Empties.

 

04.00 MO Q Reading West Jvcn - Bristol East depot.  Runs as required, MO equivalent of the 02.25 MX from Reading.  At Hungerford 06.00 - 06.25

 

18.25 Didcot - Westbury Class J.  Called at Hungerford if required, c.19.30  

 

Up Freight Trains

 

01.45 MX Bristol East Depot - Reading West Jcn Class J  06.55 - 07.20 at Hungerford

 

02.00 MO Q Bristol East Depot - Reading West Jcn. Runs as required.  At Hungerford 06.55 - 07.20

 

17.05 Holt Jcn - Reading West Jcn. At Hungerford 20.52 - 21.12

 

Interestingly there were no shunting engines shown to be at Hungerford so any iocal shunting would have been carried out by train engines or by ground staff using pinchbars etc.  An interesting comparison is that part of the shunting time at Newbury allocated to one particular included provision for it to shunt at Kintbury if required.

Hi Phil and Mike and everyone else watching this thread:- 

 

I don't know if this helps as I am without the 1938 WTTs:-

In the Winter 1958 Section A Passenger WTT there is a loco that leaves Newbury LE at 6.00amMX (6.15MO) arriving Hungerford at 6.14amMX (6.30MO) to work the 7.20 am Hungerford to Paddington.

An hour seems excessive to pull a set of coaches from the siding and prepare it for use even allowing for running round.

 

So given the above timings, is this the shunter to help with the  up and down freights?

 

Similarly the 3.32pm passenger arrival returns at 4.25pm - more shunting?  Contrast this with the 7.09 arrival which returns as ECS at 7.20pm! 

 

Hope the above helps

 

Best regards

Paul

[The Stationmaster]

Hi Phil and Mike and everyone else watching this thread:- 

 

I don't know if this helps as I am without the 1938 WTTs:-

In the Winter 1958 Section A Passenger WTT there is a loco that leaves Newbury LE at 6.00amMX (6.15MO) arriving Hungerford at 6.14amMX (6.30MO) to work the 7.20 am Hungerford to Paddington.

An hour seems excessive to pull a set of coaches from the siding and prepare it for use even allowing for running round.

 

So given the above timings, is this the shunter to help with the  up and down freights?

 

Similarly the 3.32pm passenger arrival returns at 4.25pm - more shunting?  Contrast this with the 7.09 arrival which returns as ECS at 7.20pm! 

 

Hope the above helps

 

Best regards

Paul

 

The post-war working was very different from what had happened before the war.  As far as freight was concerned the Reading - Bristol axis seems to have reduced and a new trip working from Newbury Racecourse had emerged.  Part of the reason for change was a considerable change in GWR marshalling yards during the war with the new yard at Moreton Cutting taking on a lot of Reading's work (although Reading also acquired a fourth yard during the war) and Newbury Racecourse yard being expanded to take on additional marshalling work including more calls by through freights.

 

 

The 1949 freight service serving Hungerford has some similarities to the pre-war service but also reflects the consequences of wartime changes service to marshalling yards.

 

In the Down direction there was a daily 02.15 Class J from Reading to Holt Jcn (i.e. no longer running through to Bristol) calling at Hungerford 04.54 to 05.14

 

This was followed by the 10,05 Class K from Newbury racecourse which terminated at Hungerford having called intermediately at Kintbury (which was not served by the 02.15 Reading although had been served by the previous 02.25)

 

In the evening the 18.05 Class J from Didcot to Westbury called but for traffic purpose only detached traffic if required, at Hungerford 21.05 - 21.20

 

In the Up direction there was still a service through from Bristol East Depot to Reading West Jcn - 0145 MX, 02.00 SO Q - which was at Hungerford 07.55 - 08*40 being held to 08*40 for regulating purposes

 

The Newbury Racecourse Class K trip returned from Hungerford at 14.00 SX (the Saturday working running 25 minutes earlier was suspended in the 1949 STT)

 

PS the mysteries of the time taken to reverse passenger trains or attach engines etc can be down to many things.  I suspect any explanation of the timing of the light engine from Reading/ECS from Newbury Racecourse on some days of the week in later timetables is something long lost in the mists of time - after all it ran in basically the same times for more than 11 years.  And it was of course far quicker to runround and shunt short passenger trains than longer ones.

Edited November 21, 2018 by The Stationmaster

[The Stationmaster]

I have now come across some relevant Marshalling Instructions in respect of some of the above trains.  The marshalling of the 01.45 Reading - Bristol was updatedin April 1946 confirming taht traffic for stations beynd Newbury was marshalled in station order and the same also applied on the Reading - Holt Jcn train.

 

interestingly in 1946 the 18.05 Didcot - Westbury is noted as a feeding train at Hungerford for the 01.45 Reading - West Depot!  The feeding train at reading were from Reading Central, Reading Low level, Brentford Docks, Hayes, and Basingstoke.  the feeding train at newbury Racecourse was the 22.50 Paddington - Weymouth