wales Facing of wagon end doors in valleys

[Darwinian]

I have just read the chapter in "Rails in the Valleys" (James Page) describing the coal workings at the docks. He states that trains of typical end door, PO wagons ran with their doors at the up-valley end to reduce the risk of bursting out coming down the valley from the pit. However I seem to recall reading elsewhere the opposite, with the idea that the end doors were at the correct (seaward) end for the tips at the docks. I have modelled my coal wagons the  later way around but could switch the couplings over (I use Dingham's which are handed).

 

Looking through pictures in various books there seem to be examples of both. In BR days there seems to be a lot more mixing up of facing within the train.

 

As I am modelling the Rhymney in the 1925-35 period does anyone have a view/evidence as to which facing would be likely to be the most common?

[Fat Controller]

I've never heard this one before; in BR days, the orientation of wagons seemed to be random. Coal tips always seemed to have a wagon turntable immediately before the tipping platform, so wagons could be turned to have their end-doors facing the ship. 

[Mark Saunders]

The way the empties came of the hoists would be to my mind the factor in which end the end door was at. I believe  that wagon turntables were also available prior to the hoists to cater for those the wrong way around.

[Fat Controller]

If there were concerns about which end the door should be, it seems rather odd that most privately-owned wagons seemed to have no indication of door/non-door end, unlike the white stripe BR applied. I had a look in my copy of 'Great Western Dock and Marine' which showed that at least some hoists had integral wagon turntables. These served a two-fold purpose; they enabled wagons to be turned as required, but also acted as part of a set of points, sending empty wagons down a separate track. Some harbours had 'grade-separation' between the routes used for loaded and empty wagons.

In the same book, there is a photo of many hundreds of loaded wagons at Tremorfa sidings, Cardiff. Whilst almost all have their end-doors at the same end, there are sufficient with doors at the 'wrong' end to suggest that this wasn't too much of a problem.

[Darwinian]

Thanks for the feedback. I was aware that there were turntables before the hoists and their operation is described by James Page. Yes in the BR era the diagonal white stripe does show a right old mix of orientations. 

Pictures of trains en- route to/ from the docks in GWR days as well as those of sorting sidings such as Pengam show wagons predominately one way around. I can use the excuse that a reversal would turn my sets before they reach the dock

[Darwinian]

Also in the book he talks about sidings arranged so that whole trains of wagons could be turned around when coming from certain valleys. This was with reference to the working at Barry docks.

[The Johnster]

There were two basic varieties of coal loading hoists at the docks, fixed and mobile.  The fixed hoists were fed from 'behind' (assuming the front faces the ship), sometimes from a road on an embankment with a falling gradient, and the empties were taken out on another road, sometimes with the gradient falling away from the hoist.  The turntable, as has been said, could be used as points to achieve this.  Very efficient loading rates and turnarounds could be achieved with this system, but it was wasteful of land use behind the wharf and of the length of wharf available to berth the ships.  Loading chutes gave a little flexibility, but not much.

 

The more modern docks usually had mobile hoists, which could be fed by roads parallel to the wharf side at ground level as well as from behind if there was space.  These could move along the wharf on their own rails like the general cargo dock cranes, and position themselves perfectly to align with an individual ship's hatches, making for efficient loading and maximum use of the wharf's berthing space.  But the option of gravity feeding and removal of wagons was lost, and more shunting, winching, and manual handling of wagons had to take place.

 

The lifting and tipping machinery was hydraulically powered, and when the docks were operating flat out, as they mostly were up until the 1930s when the decline began to bite after the General Strike of 1926 and the effect of worldwide trade recession after the 1929 Wall Street crash, the amount of hydraulic power available to work the hoists at their maximum rate became critical.  Lack of it, which caused delays to both shipping and rail traffic, at Cardiff was one of the factors which led to the massive investment in the 1880s at Barry; Cardiff fought back with new docks equipped with mobile hoists.  In the event, the exponential increase in traffic meant that there was plenty of it for everyone for several decades yet!

 

By the turn of the 20th century, with ships getting bigger, the size of the sea locks became a factor.  Obviously it affected the size of the biggest vessel the port could handle, but also the number of smaller ships that could be locked in or out on any tide.  The tide governs everything at Bristol Channel ports, rising and falling by over 60 feet between high and low at Newport, and nearly 40 even down at Swansea.  

 

Barry Docks had to cope with traffic arriving from the Barry's main line, which arrived at Cadoxton Yard, and traffic from the Vale of Glamorgan line, which was facing the 'other' way.  

[philip-griffiths]

I have James Page's book, never noted the comment about the orientation of the wagon for tipping.  

 

I should have another look through my books, but this famous photo from the 20s showing Burnyeat and Brown, Nixon Navigation, Davis & Sons etc, shows there does not seem to be an order as end doors are facing different ways on these wagons.

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/Z4GU3mPtm8ys5qzk8  

 

regards

[Darwinian]

6 hours ago, philip-griffiths said:

I have James Page's book, never noted the comment about the orientation of the wagon for tipping.  

 

I should have another look through my books, but this famous photo from the 20s showing Burnyeat and Brown, Nixon Navigation, Davis & Sons etc, shows there does not seem to be an order as end doors are facing different ways on these wagons.

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/Z4GU3mPtm8ys5qzk8  

 

regards

Thanks,  not quite as mixed up as in BR days but there does appear to be some variation within each raft of wagons. 

Looks like having wagons both ways around is fine.

[The Johnster]

My memory of workings to the docks, which ceased before my railway career, is that wagons were loaded at the pits with random end door orientation because they could be faced the correct way at the quayside hoists, which would suggest that they came off the hoist all orientated the same way with the doors facing the ship, but I have no recollection of this; they seemed just as random on the empty leg of the working.  One would expect rafts of wagons facing the same way from the same hoist or wharf of hoists, and maybe there were; I just don't remember them.  I can't think offhand of any other type of customer that required end tipping; manual side unloading was the norm for dealers or small industries, and tippling more common for the bigger industrial customers like gasworks.  Coke ovens tippled and coke wagons had bottom doors for unloading if they weren't pure hoppers to start with.

 

This is regarding the way things were done is South Wales; Immingham, Hull, and the northeastern coal ports may have had entirely different systems.  Wagons with bottom discharge doors were the norm on the NER and L&Y, as they served coal drops rather than cells.  Methods of working did not change much with grouping or nationalisation of railway or coal industry; areas had systems of working that suited them and you don't fix something that isn't broken.  There was an enormous export traffic in South Wales until quite late though; I can recall Cardiff's Queen Alexandra Dock lock keeper in a conversation with my dad, a ship pilot, in 1962, saying that the trade was dead because they'd only exported 2 million tons in the previous year, down from of 14 miliion  in 1912.  2 million tons is still a lot of coal in a lot of wagons and a lot of ships!  

 

If you say 3.000 tons of coal average in each ship, that's not far off 2 in and 2 out on each tide, which ties with my memories of being taken to the Queen's lock entrance by mother to pick dad up off an incoming ship.  If trains were average 500 tons of coal (Just over 30 wagons per train, not far off) that's about 11 trains every day 7/365, and I think there were more than that.  This is just into Cardiff docks, via the Roath Branch and the Rhymney connection, and you have to consider Newport, Barry, and Swansea as well, Port Talbot and Llanelli were pretty much out of the game by then.  Trade dropped rapidly after that and has never recovered; lockings are about 2 or 3 a week nowadays.

[Michael Edge]

Much the same at Herculaneum Dock in Liverpool, the cranes could pick the wagons up and tip them either way.

[Fat Controller]

The hoists at Swansea had wagon turntables, so it didn't matter which way wagons were presented. Quite a few 21t minerals had doors at both ends; there were even a few with end doors and no side doors.

[The Johnster]

There was a difference between fixed and mobile hoists though.  Queen Alexandra Dock at Cardiff had mobile hoists on the south wharf, and the wagons had to be shunted underneath them on roads alongside the wharf rather than at a 90 degree angle to it.  Mobile hoists that could move to position themselves next to the ships' hatches were reckoned to enable more efficient use of wharf space, important when the trade was at its height and ships were anchored in Barry Roads waiting for wharf space, and hence cost effective.  They saved a lot of space needed for sidings behind the hoists and freed it up for other uses as. well, but must have made loading slower.  These were side tipplers so had presumably had no bearing on the end door issue.

 

 

[Rivercider]

It possibly depends on the date, and where the wagons came from before they were loaded at the colliery.

By the 1980s I think the MDOs loading for export via Swansea Docks were in an assigned wagon pool, thus when a train of empties were unloaded they all stayed with the same orientation back to the pit for reloading.

Here is a view of the east end holding sidings at Swansea Docks in 1983, we can see the end doors all seem to face west.

Swansea Docks East End holding sidings, with pilot 08259. 9/11/83.

 

Thus if a colliery loaded wagons that had been received from various sources, like coal depots across the network they would presumably be arranged randomly. If the colliery was reloading a rake of wagons just returned from a port presumably they would be the same way around?

 

cheers

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Rivercider
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