Jump to content
 

Small Parcels Vans & Trains


Binky
 Share

Recommended Posts

I'd like to build a small layout representing parcels operations but am limited for space so am thinking of limiting my stock to smaller vans such as SPVs, Vanfits and perhaps some of the smaller SR or LNER parcels vans, and modelling a small bay platform or depot. I might be able to use longer bogie stock but probably only handling one at a time.

 

Were there any prototypical scenarios where only smaller vans/single vans were used for parcels services? I've read that SPVs were often used at Aylesbury for printed catalogues, are there any photos of where these were loaded?

 

Any suggestions or information would be appreciated. Thanks

Link to post
Share on other sites

I can remember from the last days of Somers Town Goods Depot (St. Pancras) the old covered Milk Dock at the north end of the Depot being used by the GPO to unload/load Bulk Letter Mail and Parcels. The vans in use were almost entirely of the Vanfit/SPV variety. They would arrive in the early morning to be unloaded, as only about 8 vans would fit either side of the platform the 08 shunter would make several trips to unload everything. In the evening the Vans would be loaded up with outgoing mail and Parcels before being shunted into a longer outgoing train. You could see the operations going on from the back windows of the old St. Pancras Box.

Vanfits and SPVs were still being used into the late 1970s for Post Office Mail and Parcels traffic between Hemel Hempstead and Euston, although more often than not there were some long wheelbase vans and bogie vehicles mixed in with them by this time.

  • Like 3
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks @anroar53, this was just the kind of information I was hoping for, an 08 shunter shuffling vans around will be ideal. Was the mail transfered straight into road vehicles within view of the platform or was it taken into a depot or building? I'm thinking about what scenery and buildings I could add to give an indication of the mail movement process.

 

I also found this post on another thread which is useful.

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/66383-modelling-a-traditional-parcels-train/&do=findComment&comment=3883266

Edited by Binky
Adding link
Link to post
Share on other sites

I can remember a two-part article on parcels trains in Model Rail some years ago, which included a photie of a Fairburn tank sitting at Wakefield Westgate one night with just a single MK1BG, which was reckoned to be the parcels service to Leeds or somewhere thereabouts

  • Like 2
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Binky said:

Thanks @anroar53, this was just the kind of information I was hoping for, an 08 shunter shuffling vans around will be ideal. Was the mail transfered straight into road vehicles within view of the platform or was it taken into a depot or building? I'm thinking about what scenery and buildings I could add to give an indication of the mail movement process.

 

I also found this post on another thread which is useful.

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/66383-modelling-a-traditional-parcels-train/&do=findComment&comment=3883266

 

As to transfers its going to depend on the size of the operation. That single BG was just sitting in a bay platform.

 

If you're talking about 350hp shunters, then the easy way to "indicate" what's going on is to assemble a big cluster of BRUTE trolleys

  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Binky said:

Thanks @anroar53, this was just the kind of information I was hoping for, an 08 shunter shuffling vans around will be ideal. Was the mail transfered straight into road vehicles within view of the platform or was it taken into a depot or building? I'm thinking about what scenery and buildings I could add to give an indication of the mail movement process.

 

The former Milk Dock at Somers Town was a short dead end island platform arrangement, and the Road vehicles would drive onto the platform and unload/load direct into the rail vans. There were several locations which had largish former Goods Sheds which were taken over for a time to deal with Mail/Parcels traffic, where road vehicles would back up to the shed for the mail/parcels to be transhipped from the rail vans. A few red Post Office Trucks and Vans nearby would add to the effect ?

 

  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

Prior to the early 90s when the 'York' containers began to appear, the Post Office used BRUTEs and traditional type trolleys, which were slatted rather than solid floored and painted Post Office red.  Mailbags were stacked as follows on these; 3 were laid side by side lengthways on the trolley which left room for 2 more which were laid at the end crossways.   The next level was built up with the lengthways bags laid over the top of the 2 crossways bags, so that the bags interlocked; a skilled stacker could load the trolley up to cantrail height and the load would be perfectly stable, if bl**dy heavy to pull!

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

You need to think carefully about exactly what you want to portray traffic wise.   There were basically three categories of traffic dealt with at stations and at some parcels depots/bay platforms - railway parcels (of all shapes and sizes, Post Office Letter Mails, and Parcel Post.  Railway parcels traffic is in some respects the easiest to understand as it came via parcels offices or something of that sort, was handled almost wholly by railway staff and was moved with minimal security.

 

Royal Mail traffic fell into two very different categories - Letter Mails and Parcel Post and they not only looked different but were handled in completely different ways.  Parcel Post is relatively straightforward because once it had been delivered to a railway station or parcels depot it was handled by railway staff using railway trolleys  (of whatever type was around but in the period you are modelling if you are talking SPV days on parcels trains then it would have been Brutes - railway owned ones painted blue).  Parcel Post was accorded no greater security than ordinary railway parcels traffic and its loading to trains was scheduled jointly by the Post Office and BR - yes all mail traffic moved by rail was scheduled.

 

Letter Mail was very different.  It was officially only handled by Post Office staff using Post Office equipment and the trolleys used varied - some were older traditional small timber trolleys but the also used large metal trolleys with pneumatic tyres which were permitted to run on public road over short distances.  In later years, such as  you are modelling the PO made increasing use of Brutes (which they owned, painted red) for the larger flows of Letter Mail and in any case by the 'red Brute' era the POs was increasingly concentrating Letter Mails onto larger sorting offices and moving it to/from thise offices by OMV (Own Motor Vehicle).  the 1928 Letter Mail contract, still applicable in the 1970s permitted the PO to send Letter Mail by any passenger train and certain other nominated trains (which were listed in the contract) and the Mail was scheduled solely by the PO.  Some definitely went in parcels trains BUT it was loaded completely separately from all other traffic (including Parcel Post) for security reasons - obviously it wasn't always practicable to segregate it on passenger trains but in such circumstances van areas had to be kept locked if Letter Mails were being carried.

 

Occasionally railway staff might help out with Letter mail, if say a Postman hadn't arrived but any Letter Mail they happened to unload from a train had to be kept in secure conditions until the Post Office collected it.  For security reasons the Post Office weren't keen on Letter Mail passing through large parcels depots although it definitely used parcels platforms at many stations where it was dealt with by Postmen.  tThere is an interesting and useful little article on the 'net which shows many interesting little facets of mail traffic 

http://www.tracksthroughgrantham.uk/railway-life-at-grantham/station-staff/mailbag-memories/

 

In the top picture there is a 2 wheel barrow loaded with Letter Mail and a Postman can be seen bending towards the camera handling a Letter Mail bag while there's another on the ground in front of him.  Railway staff are at the same time dealing with general parcels traffic and there is no sign of any Parcel Post.  Obviously there was sufficient traffic here for the Post Office to have its own barrows and trolleys and the colour photo further down the page shows a couple of Post Office 4-wheeler trolleys (in their other common usage ;) ).

 

Going a little further down the page we see a Postman pushing a Post Office barrow loaded with several bags of Letter Mail.   As this and the other pictures show the contents of Letter Mail bags varied considerably. The amount of contents could reflect the time of day and, far more so, the busiest routes for Letter Mail hence one very full bag on the barrow.  Continuing down to the next colour picture you can see a fairly well loaded trolley of Letter Mail waiting for a southbound train and hopefully ready positioned for the relevant van.   While not exactly what you might be interested in it's a very useful article about the handling of Letter Mail at a passenger station and explains quite alot about it - well worth a read.  Incidentally the trolleys are basically the standard pattern used on the ER in those days but in PO ownership and use.

 

So to get back to your scenario if there are any Letter Mails involved there will be Postmen handling them and they will be moved straight from rail vehicle to road vehicle or  vice versa, ideally with the road vehicle at trainside or pretty close for security reasons.  If Parcel post is being handled it will be railway staff and trolleys involved and it will placed at a suitable location for the Post Office to collect it.  A quick check on the 'net reveals very few models of mail bags available and although some of them are very well stuffed and quite large they are actually all Letter Mail bags; I can't find any commercially available models of Parcel Post bags. (presumably the manufacturers didn't know that the two types of bag are different)..

 

 

  • Like 3
  • Informative/Useful 6
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

Trolleys would always be parked with the brake on (even when it didn't work) parallel to the edge of the platform for obvious reasons, and the folk memory of a bad accident at Tamworth in the early days when an express hit a mail trolley that had fallen off a platform into it's path.

 

Mail bags for letter post are a standard size, the traditional canvas ones made in prisons being replaced from the 80s onward by grey nylon bags.  A bag would be despatched at the appropriate time from the sorting office even if there was only one letter in it, and a 'final' bag, labelled with the total number for a destination on that despatch so that all the bags could be accounted for at arrival, was sent even if it was empty.  Railway police and Royal Mail Investigation Branch officers kept a discreet eye; it was said that the clock tower on top of Cardiff Central's booking hall, which is 4 sided but has 3 clocks and once had a louvred panel on the railway facing side, now boxed in, which was said to be a lookout post for them; all the positions used for parking loaded trolleys or BRUTES could apparently be observed from this point.  Probably true, there is certainly a back staircase giving access to it.

 

Modelling mail bags from scratch is probably easy enough; light brown for prison canvas and grey for nylon, some stuffed full, some with odd shaped packets sticking up, but not out, and some half or completely empty. 

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for all the information. Plenty there for me to be thinking about.

 

I've also discovered photos and info on Wolverhampton Low Level station which closed to passengers and continued handling parcels (after some alterations) until 1981. A similar layout of 2 platforms with 4 tracks in between should be fairly simple to model and would give enough scope for interesting operations.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Kings Cross rarely used an 08 as station pilot, 1S and 2S as they were known were usually a class 31. that way the 31 could be used incase of a main line loco failure.

 

The first train I ever worked as a secondman at Rugby in December 1974 was an 81 with a single SR CCT from Rugby to Crewe. 3300hp for a 20 ton van!

 

The canvas post office bags were notorious for being flea-ridden. I speak from personal experience when we had to travel back pass from Doncaster to KX, my driver reckoned it would be an idea to kip on the mail bags. We were both itching for days after.

 

 

Edited by roythebus
  • Like 4
  • Funny 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Binky said:

Thanks for all the information. Plenty there for me to be thinking about.

 

I've also discovered photos and info on Wolverhampton Low Level station which closed to passengers and continued handling parcels (after some alterations) until 1981. A similar layout of 2 platforms with 4 tracks in between should be fairly simple to model and would give enough scope for interesting operations.

 

Interestingly, the WR lines in the West Midlands had some parcels services (seemingly a network of them) operated by the four Tyseley allocated class 128 DMUs W55993-6 from new,  often with tail loads of a couple of wagons and would be regular visitors to Bham Snow Hill and Wolverhampton LL. These continued well after transfer of the lines and units (and Tyseley DMU depot) to the LM and after closure of the B'ham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton LL section. 

 

The Cravens class 129 parcels units also operated on the corresponding LM lines in the area in the late 50s/early 60s. 

 

 

 

Edited by MidlandRed
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

The WR often had parcel trains of one or two vans, depending on the load.   This very poor shot is of the Uxbridge to Paddington return trip sometime in the early '60s passing Hayes. Was unusual to use a 43xx, usually a 61xx or pannier.

 

  Two vans, (GUV + Mk 1) but I've a few pictures of a one van working with a Hawkesworth full brake..  Just depended on the load they had to take. 

IMG_3722.jpg.3625c0d6db4013f806a597a6b3794113.jpg

  • Like 8
Link to post
Share on other sites

In another DMU 'parcels' working, the set off the last Newcastle - Carlisle passenger returned as a postal at around 02:50, the seats as well as the van full of mail bags. Clearly letter mail, Stationmaster Mike has already mentioned security for this, the crew consisted of Driver, Guard, and Postman.

It was actually hence this working, I had the incident which I mentioned in another thread recently when I encountered a cow with a 101 at 3am - that's what a DMU was doing out at that time in the morning!

The consequence of this, the train had to be hauled back into Carlisle and terminated there, and with the usual disdain then of LM Control for train crew (or at least NE men), following this incident we were then just left to sit and wait of the first passenger back next morning, getting back with well over 12 hours in

  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
On 13/08/2020 at 01:05, MidlandRed said:

 

Interestingly, the WR lines in the West Midlands had some parcels services (seemingly a network of them) operated by the four Tyseley allocated class 128 DMUs W55993-6 from new,  often with tail loads of a couple of wagons and would be regular visitors to Bham Snow Hill and Wolverhampton LL. These continued well after transfer of the lines and units (and Tyseley DMU depot) to the LM and after closure of the B'ham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton LL section. 

 

The Cravens class 129 parcels units also operated on the corresponding LM lines in the area in the late 50s/early 60s. 

 

 

 

The Class 128 services around the Black Country had some interesring tail loads. Spotting at Snow Hill we called the early afternoon arrival from Wolverhampton 'The Dustbin' as it used to pick up a lot of traffic from the Beldray factory at Bilston. This was largely direct deliveries for the mail order trade consisting of ironing boards, garden incinerators and of course galvanised dustbins. If a 128 was not available the replacement was a Prairie tank with a BG and one other bogie van.  I posted a picture on the Traditional Parcels Train thread of 4555 in full Great Western livery working this train at Snow Hill during its sale for preservation.

There was a 128 working from Wolverhampton to Dudley which took the Palethorpes six-wheeler on the Cardiff circuit back to Dudley in one timetable.

The LMR services on the Coverntry, New Street, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Dudley runs which included Class 129 workings also had loco hauled trains often up to about three bogie vans or equivalent. Motive power over the years I saw them varied from Stanier 3P tanks, Fairburn and Stanier 4MT tanks, Ivatt tanks and Ivatt 2MT tender locos. 

Vans used included almost anything from any Big Four company to BR with 4, 6 or 8 wheels and vacuum brakes. In cold weather a goods brake was included so the guard could keep warm.

  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
12 hours ago, Ken.W said:

In another DMU 'parcels' working, the set off the last Newcastle - Carlisle passenger returned as a postal at around 02:50, the seats as well as the van full of mail bags. Clearly letter mail, Stationmaster Mike has already mentioned security for this, the crew consisted of Driver, Guard, and Postman.

It was actually hence this working, I had the incident which I mentioned in another thread recently when I encountered a cow with a 101 at 3am - that's what a DMU was doing out at that time in the morning!

The consequence of this, the train had to be hauled back into Carlisle and terminated there, and with the usual disdain then of LM Control for train crew (or at least NE men), following this incident we were then just left to sit and wait of the first passenger back next morning, getting back with well over 12 hours in

The final words convinced me to click 'Like' ;)   And LM Controls were like that for just about everybody I think - except their 'favourite' depots on the Region.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The final words convinced me to click 'Like' ;)   And LM Controls were like that for just about everybody I think - except their 'favourite' depots on the Region.

 

Oh yes, and the LM Control was equally detested by us! That sort of thing was, unfortunately, far from unusual...

 

Up until the time of Penmanshiel we had a regular booked turn with a freightliner that was booked via Carlisle as it conveyed 8'6" boxes.

Our working was light engine Gateshead to Darlington to pick up the train, work through to Carlisle Kingmoor where a pair of electrics took over, and then back home LE (there was also a similar working the other way).

Of course, the LM Control would very often nick the loco, their excuses being it was one of their LM engines and theyre not in the business of running light engines...

Regardless that it left us sitting in Carlisle all night waiting for the first passenger back, and again, finishing with well over 12 hours in.

Oh yeah, and although it was a LM loco, it was booked back to Gateshead to work...

a Newcastle - Liverpool (LMR) that morning, which Gateshead was then left short of the loco for and had to find a replacement.

 

Eventually Gateshead fettled them though...

Started putting one of their own locos on the turn that was a stopper... booked for exam or repair, meaning the LM **** had no choice but to let it come back

Then after Penmanshiel re-opened the train could go mainline instead

Edited by Ken.W
  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Some great info here. Thanks everyone.

 

So far I've got myself 3x SPVs, a Vanfit and an ex-SR CCT. Can anyone suggest other small parcels stock that wouldn't look out of place on a blue era layout?

Edited by Binky
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
3 hours ago, Binky said:

So far I've got myself 3x SPVs, a Vanfit and an ex-SR CCT. Can anyone suggest other small parcels stock that wouldn't look out of place on a blue era layout?

I'm not sure whether a Vanfit (12T 10' WB I assume) would be seen in parcels use by the BR Blue era due to the limited speed these were supposed to travel at. The smallest vehicle in the LMR 1969 marshalling book is the SPV.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

There were other similar traffics handled by BR:

 

Catalogue Stores shipped by rail even into the 1990s (Bolton was a big hub)

 

Newsprint (paper & magazines) Was big business by Rail until the 1980s and the move to smaller regional printing presses.

 

Dart Casting make very nice mail bags and stacks of newspapers. There are also 3D print and cast resin versions out there too.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

A lot of Royal Mail contract distribution of this sort from the smaller regional printing firms was sent by rail as well, up until the end of Royal Mails' railway contract, though as it was sorted into mailbags one might not be aware of it in a visual sense.  The bags were notoriously heavy and lumpy, what we called 'b*ll*ckers' as warning to the next man in a bag chain.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
17 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

I'm not sure whether a Vanfit (12T 10' WB I assume) would be seen in parcels use by the BR Blue era due to the limited speed these were supposed to travel at. The smallest vehicle in the LMR 1969 marshalling book is the SPV.

The LM were still making considerable use of them in Parcels trains as late as 1969/70 because of their self-inflicted shortage of large (i.e. bogie) vans.  Any resemblance between the actual and booked formations of some Parcels trains coming off the LMR at that time was a matter of amazement and an occasion for rejoicing because they had finally managed to get something right.  The Blisworth - Redhill parcels was a regular in that category -  much to the chagrin of the Post Office because it conveyed Letter Mails.  Another was the 19.53 L Kidderminster - Paddington which managed to end up with at least one Vanfit, often more especially when there were multiple consignments of. mail order traffic from Kidderminster

  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...