GWR Quadrouple Lines.

[Siberian Snooper]

32 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

My memory is confirmed by a check of the signal box diagrams that Lapworth (where the quadrupling started)  to Moor Street was paired by use, not by direction (although some of it might well have been changed when it was rationalised as part of the Saltley resignalling??).

 

Come to think about it when they did the bridge testing with a pair of kings one of them was running wrong line, for the test. I can't remember the location, but it was in that neck of the woods.

 

 

[MidlandRed]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

My memory is confirmed by a check of the signal box diagrams that Lapworth (where the quadrupling started)  to Moor Street was paired by use, not by direction (although some of it might well have been changed when it was rationalised as part of the Saltley resignalling??).

 

Forgive me if I'm being too simplistic here, but would the fact the through lines emerged from Snow Hill tunnel on the north - east side, and Moor St (from which a good proportion of stopping trains started/ terminated) is a terminus located on the South - west side south east of Snow Hill tunnel, have some bearing on this? I guess you could argue that south east of Tyseley, where the North Warwickshire line diverges with Stratford on Avon stopping trains, things could have been swapped around but even so you would still have local trains stopping beyond there calling at Olton, Widney Manor, Solihull, Knowle and Dorridge etc moving south-east towards Leamington. Presumably it made sense keeping local stopping trains clear of the fast lines and not needing to cross over to and fro for Moor Street? 

[melmerby]

50 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

 

Forgive me if I'm being too simplistic here, but would the fact the through lines emerged from Snow Hill tunnel on the north - east side, and Moor St (from which a good proportion of stopping trains started/ terminated) is a terminus located on the South - west side south east of Snow Hill tunnel, have some bearing on this? I guess you could argue that south east of Tyseley, where the North Warwickshire line diverges with Stratford on Avon stopping trains, things could have been swapped around but even so you would still have local trains stopping beyond there calling at Olton, Widney Manor, Solihull, Knowle and Dorridge etc moving south-east towards Leamington. Presumably it made sense keeping local stopping trains clear of the fast lines and not needing to cross over to and fro for Moor Street? 

You have the same situation from Snow Hill to the Hawthorns where the slow lines diverge to Stourbridge while the fast continues to Wolves

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

 

Forgive me if I'm being too simplistic here, but would the fact the through lines emerged from Snow Hill tunnel on the north - east side, and Moor St (from which a good proportion of stopping trains started/ terminated) is a terminus located on the South - west side south east of Snow Hill tunnel, have some bearing on this? I guess you could argue that south east of Tyseley, where the North Warwickshire line diverges with Stratford on Avon stopping trains, things could have been swapped around but even so you would still have local trains stopping beyond there calling at Olton, Widney Manor, Solihull, Knowle and Dorridge etc moving south-east towards Leamington. Presumably it made sense keeping local stopping trains clear of the fast lines and not needing to cross over to and fro for Moor Street? 

I suspect that south of Tyseley (where there were considerable layout alterations at the time of the Banbury route being quadrupled) the giverning factor was availability of land plus design geometry and various engineering factors.  That was v certainly the case  with the London Division quadrupling where the new lines were built on either the north or, in some places the south, side of the original double track although in Sonning Cutting the formation was wideened on both sides so an additional line was added outside the original pair on both sides - but still paired by use.

 

It did of course get more complicated north of Tyseley because effectively from there t Bordesley there were three pairs of running lines, not two and then from Bordesley to Moor St there were 5 running lines because of the additional Down Line all of which meant there were still quite a few conflictions because of the need for trains to get across, or from, the reliefs to the Goods Lines. 

[Clearwater]

There’s quite a bit on the excellent Warwickshire railways site on the quadrupling.  Whitehouse’s Great Western in the West Midlands also has a few pictures of the realignment

 

David

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

 

It did of course get more complicated north of Tyseley because effectively from there t Bordesley there were three pairs of running lines, not two and then from Bordesley to Moor St there were 5 running lines because of the additional Down Line all of which meant there were still quite a few conflictions because of the need for trains to get across, or from, the reliefs to the Goods Lines. 

The Goods lines started from the North Warwickshire line:

From the right the tracks are:

Siding.

Down Goods.

Up Goods

Down Relief

(Signal Box)

Up relief

Down Main

Up Main

Siding.

Both the sidings were used as shunting necks. The one on the left for the up side goods yard.

 

 

 

 

[Rugd1022]

5 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

Come to think about it when they did the bridge testing with a pair of kings one of them was running wrong line, for the test. I can't remember the location, but it was in that neck of the woods.

 

 

 

The bridges you're talking about refer to all of the underbridges between Acocks Green and Lapworth, including the large girder bridge between Olton and Solihull which takes the GW lines over Warwick Road. Happy to say it's still doing the job it was built for and a few years ago was given a fresh lick of dark green paint. There are two photos showing the four Kings on test there in  Bob Pixton's excellent book 'Great Western Steam In Shakespeare Country', published by Kestrel in 2009, the locos used were 6001, 6005, 6014 and 6017, coupled in pairs running side by side at 60mph o na Sunday morning.

 

The book also has a useful track plan of the quadrupling between Acocks Green and Knowle.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Rugd1022

[Methuselah]

12 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

My memory is confirmed by a check of the signal box diagrams that Lapworth (where the quadrupling started)  to Moor Street was paired by use, not by direction (although some of it might well have been changed when it was rationalised as part of the Saltley resignalling??).

My recollection was that the main lines, which were on the east side, remained, whilst most of the goods/relief lines on the west side were removed, and all the remaining trackwork simplified. I think a few stretches of the old slow lines survive in the weeds.

 

[caradoc]

IIRC from the 70s, sections of the former relief lines were retained south of Dorridge and used for storing Cartics.

 

[melmerby]

7 hours ago, Methuselah said:

My recollection was that the main lines, which were on the east side, remained, whilst most of the goods/relief lines on the west side were removed, and all the remaining trackwork simplified. I think a few stretches of the old slow lines survive in the weeds.

 

Still a stretch of both tracks in use at Dorridge as turnback & storage.

 

EDIT the Up Relief Platform (3) is regularly used by trains terminating from the North.

Edited May 5, 2020 by melmerby

[The Johnster]

The 1940s Norton Fitzwarren accident has been mentioned; it has similarities with the Milton derailment in 1955.  GW crews were perhaps more used to pairs of UD mains and UD reliefs, the situation between Ladbroke Grove & Didcot, Dr Days & Filton and Magor & Cardiff East.  The GW seemed to prefer this arrangement to UR/UM/DM/DR, and perhaps the drivers were more conditioned to it.

 

There is a difference between a relief and a goods line; a relief is capable of carrying passenger traffic, so it has absolute block signalling and facing point locks.  A goods has permissive block and no facing point locks are necessary, but speed is limited to 15mph.  The nearest thing I can think of to this situation on the GW was between Margam Moors and Taibach, but this is not really a quadrupled line; the R&SB goods roads run parallel to the SWML but are separated by a drainage ditch.  West of Port Talbot the R&SB paralleled the SWML as far as Court Sart, but was similarly separated and at a distance of a few yards.  The Taff Vale was quadrupled from Roath Jc to Pontypridd, and this was in an UG/DG/UM/DM formation reading left to right looking towards Pontypridd north of Radyr (Up is uphill in South Wales), but UM/DM/UG/DG between Roath Jc and Llandaff; the system remained the same after the grouping.  The Roath Branch was permissive block as well, as were the Rhymney and Taff Vale docks access lines south of Crockherbtown and Queen Street respectively.  

[The Stationmaster]

12 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The 1940s Norton Fitzwarren accident has been mentioned; it has similarities with the Milton derailment in 1955.  GW crews were perhaps more used to pairs of UD mains and UD reliefs, the situation between Ladbroke Grove & Didcot, Dr Days & Filton and Magor & Cardiff East.  The GW seemed to prefer this arrangement to UR/UM/DM/DR, and perhaps the drivers were more conditioned to it.

 

There is a difference between a relief and a goods line; a relief is capable of carrying passenger traffic, so it has absolute block signalling and facing point locks.  A goods has permissive block and no facing point locks are necessary, but speed is limited to 15mph.  The nearest thing I can think of to this situation on the GW was between Margam Moors and Taibach, but this is not really a quadrupled line; the R&SB goods roads run parallel to the SWML but are separated by a drainage ditch.  West of Port Talbot the R&SB paralleled the SWML as far as Court Sart, but was similarly separated and at a distance of a few yards.  The Taff Vale was quadrupled from Roath Jc to Pontypridd, and this was in an UG/DG/UM/DM formation reading left to right looking towards Pontypridd north of Radyr (Up is uphill in South Wales), but UM/DM/UG/DG between Roath Jc and Llandaff; the system remained the same after the grouping.  The Roath Branch was permissive block as well, as were the Rhymney and Taff Vale docks access lines south of Crockherbtown and Queen Street respectively.  

Alas not necessarily right regarding line classification.  While GWR/WR Goods Lines were usually Permissive. (some ceased to be Permissive following the introduction of MAS in the 1960s) there was no particular situation in respect of Relief Lines.  The Relief Lines in the Cardiff Valleys were largely Permissive only - such as north of Cardiff Queen Street on both the Rhymney and Taff sides.  Later some of the Relief Lines were re-titled Goods Lines but that seems to have been a relatively modern thing.

 

Thus, for example between Radyr Jcn and Walnut Tree Jcn the names changed over the years - originally they were titled Passenger and Mineral Lines, they then became, respectively, Main and Relief Lines (with Permissive Block on the Reliefs) and in 1971 the Relief Lines seem to have been retitled Goods Lines although that was not reflected on on the signal box diagrams or labelling of the block instruments!   In fact Permissive Block was not unusual on some GEWR Relief Lines although it mainly occurred only where they were normally used by freight trains and, of course, at some stations.

 

One oddity was the additional lines between Maindee East and Severn Tunne Jcn West which are described by one source as 'Goods Running Loops' although they were in fact continuous between those two signal boxes.  they of course changed completely in April 1961 when between Maindee East and Bishton the Up Goods Running Loop became the new Up Main, the  former Up Main became the new Down Main, the former Down Main became the new Up Relief, and the former Down Goods Running Loop became the new Down Relief.  At Bishton Flyover the pairing of course changes and the former Up Goods Loop was renamed Up Relief while the former Down Goods Running Loop was renamed Down Relief.  That scheme was, I think, the biggest changeover of pairing on the WR.