Coal yard, coal bins and such ...

[spikey]

Whilst trawling the web for pictures of old-style coal yards just now, I came upon this jolly interesting PDF which others might find useful ...

 

SmallCoalMerchants-2.pdf

Edited March 15, 2019 by spikey
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[The Johnster]

Some good general guidlines here.  Certainly most coal yards were completely separate facilities in urban areas, and only at smaller rural locations were they incorporated in the main yard.  In mining areas, they were not a feature at all, as household coal was obtained from land sale facilities at the collieries; in NCB days, much of it was free 'concession' coal as mining villages had an employee in such a large proportion of households.  This led to a major reduction in a perennial problem, pilferage, which re-appeared in post NCB days when the concessions stopped.

 

An urban coal yard could occupy a very small area and be a very useful corner filler.  Fairoak Road yard in Cardiff, on the Rhymney Railway on a small triangular site now occupied by student flats, had 2 roads that could only hold about 3 wagons each, accessed from the up main.  It was serviced twice a day by the Coryton Branch pickup, a 94xx job for some reason and D95xx at the very end.  This was among 5 dedicated coal yards in Cardiff, the GW having a large facility at Pengam on the Newport Road side and another at Canton Sidings, the Rhymney having facilities at Fitzalan Place,, and the Taff Vale at Virgil Street, a 'stub' off it's Penarth North Curve marshalling yard near Ninian Park Halt, and at Mynachdy, later a 'House Coal Concentration' depot.  There were further 'rural goods yard' facilities at Whitchurch on the Cardiff Railway, Llandaff on the TVR and Llanishen on the Rhymney as well.  

 

The pattern, typical of a medium size city, is of facilities being provided to supply local areas, rather than central hubs to supply larger areas, and since they dated back to the days of horse drawn road vehicles this made sense.  The horse drawn vehicles determined the size of the yards between the wagons and the edge, or the next siding, as well, a feature found in general merchandise yards too, as the turning circle of a horse drawn road wagon was reckoned to be 18 feet.  This was designed into the famous Scammell Mechanical Horse, which was capable of the same performance.

 

The Rhymney had a coal siding 'off' it's Salisbury Road goods yard as well, and this is where my family obtained our household coal (although Fairoak Road was nearer).  Father would order from the office in the yard, and the coal would turn up a day or so later in the lane at the back on a flatbed.  The coalmen, the driver and his mate. carried it up the garden path to Father's home made brick built bunker (of which he was very proud) (it fell down after the winter of 1963, precipitating our conversion to oil fired central heating), and tipped it in.  We 'ad medium cobbles mixed with nuts; we wuz too posh for nutty slack, see!

[57xx]

Interesting find, Spikey. I wonder why they said:

 

Quote

Many modellers seem to have copied the coal handling facilities from other models rather than photographs of real locations,

 

and then proceeded to use pictures of models and not include any pic of real locations.

Edited March 15, 2019 by 57xx

[spikey]

1 hour ago, 57xx said:

 I wonder why they ... then proceeded to use pictures of models and not include any pic of real locations.

 

If my Googling is anything to go by, probably because decent snaps of steam-era coal yards are as rare as the proverbial.  Funnily enough I did take some myself in my train-spotting days which would have been very useful now, but alas they went the way of most things donkey's years ago ...

[grandadbob]

Here's a photo I took in the late 60's of the builder's merchant yard in Epsom I worked at. The bins containing sand were originally coal bins and the coal siding was behind where the bricks were stacked. (the rails were still there)  The Pelican loader was I believe used to unload coal wagons.

 

 

Here's a photo of the same yard (at the bottom of the page) showing the the bins from the other side and some others in about 1948/9 scanned from a book called "A century and a quarter"which was a special publication for employees of the company. Not sure about copyright here although some are credited to a Mr. J. McKeown who was possibly an employee of the company.