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Prototype practice in Lampeter


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  • RMweb Gold
On 14/06/2021 at 16:13, The Stationmaster said:

According to all the STTs/WTTs I've looked at the Aberayron branch trip originated from and returned to Carmarthen although it spent time at Lampeter.

Thanks for all this information, and for your patience with idiotic questions! As the Lampeter to Aberaeron timetable is separate from the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth one, how could I identify that the train originated in Carmarthen? 

 

On a separate issue, there is a reference to 'Station trucks' - would these look any different to a normal van? 

 

Thanks. 

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On 02/06/2021 at 10:48, Nevermakeit said:

There is some fascinating footage of the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line and its branches at http://Peoplescollection.wales/items/1400701

 

Great find!


Aberystwyth station had changed somewhat by the time I went to university there in the 80s! I did follow that track on foot and with my (racing) bike for a bit from Aberystwyth, including throwing my rucksack over a stream but then then having second thoughts about jumping over myself (but I had already committed by throwing the bag, and it wasn't actually too difficult).

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4 hours ago, Nevermakeit said:

Thanks for all this information, and for your patience with idiotic questions! As the Lampeter to Aberaeron timetable is separate from the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth one, how could I identify that the train originated in Carmarthen? 

 

On a separate issue, there is a reference to 'Station trucks' - would these look any different to a normal van? 

 

Thanks. 

Don''t worry about asking if diotic questions - simple (not idiotic - and yours aren't idiotic) questions can be one of the best ways to find out about things so never be afraid to ask.

 

If you look in the two tables athe top of them you will see a description of the train.  this the Cr armarthen  - aberystwyth table shows a freight train which 'disappears' at Aberayron Jcn and in the head of the col;umn it tells you where it is going.  In the branch table it will tell uyou where it has come from.  All the opposite way round of course for the up train,

 

Station Trucks were specific wagons - normally covered goods vans - which ran to a specific schedule and they are ussually listed somewhere in the older timetables.  if you look in the 1911 timetable you will find them right at the end on pages 138 -140.  they were the original way of consigning goods smalls traffic running, usually, from a major goods station where they had been loaded with goods coming in from various routes.  they then worked to a specified destination normally on clearly specified trans and often conveying traffic for intermediate stations on the route where it was unloaded at thh station platform.

 

I'm not sure without checking when they finally finshed but probably the 1930s when they were basically replaced with vehicles loaded to specific stations instead of serving more than one station although oin many places they were replaced by the road based 'Zonal Delivery' service.   What that meant was that a orry, instead ofa. wagon on a train, carried out the final leg of the journey. 

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  • RMweb Gold
On 16/06/2021 at 15:58, The Stationmaster said:

If you look in the two tables athe top of them you will see a description of the train.  this the Cr armarthen  - aberystwyth table shows a freight train which 'disappears' at Aberayron Jcn and in the head of the col;umn it tells you where it is going.  In the branch table it will tell uyou where it has come from.  All the opposite way round of course for the up train,

 

Station Trucks were specific wagons - normally covered goods vans - which ran to a specific schedule and they are ussually listed somewhere in the older timetables.  if you look in the 1911 timetable you will find them right at the end on pages 138 -140.  they were the original way of consigning goods smalls traffic running, usually, from a major goods station where they had been loaded with goods coming in from various routes.  they then worked to a specified destination normally on clearly specified trans and often conveying traffic for intermediate stations on the route where it was unloaded at thh station platform.

 

I'm not sure without checking when they finally finshed but probably the 1930s when they were basically replaced with vehicles loaded to specific stations instead of serving more than one station although oin many places they were replaced by the road based 'Zonal Delivery' service.   What that meant was that a orry, instead ofa. wagon on a train, carried out the final leg of the journey. 

Thanks very much for this - should have looked a bit closer at the info provided!

 

I have created the layout below in AnyRail, which seems quite simple to use.  For the purposes of operating, would it be fair to assume that sidings 1 and 2 (numbering from the bottom) are mileage sidings?  Would this still be true after a provender store was built alongside siding 1?  I have seen photos that suggest siding 3 may have been a coal siding, and there seemed to be some sort of crossing on it to allow access to the Goods Shed (siding 4).  I have also seen photos of a mobile crane and some hoppers on siding 5, but may this also have been used to put together wagons for picking up to Aberystwyth?  Siding 6 (at the top) has been suggested as where miltas for Carmarthen would wait for the next passenger train, but a platform alongside it has also been suggested as a possible cattle dock. 

 

Any assistance in suggesting how wagons would arrive, enter the goods yard, move about the goods yard (would this happen?) and leave the goods yard (for both directions) would be gratefully received.  Thanks.

Lampeter Plan.JPG

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  • RMweb Gold

The sidings you numbered 1& 2 would most likely be mileage sidings (wagons of fertiliser would be mileage traffic of destined for a trader's warehouse).  Don't forget there was a fixed site crane somewhere in the yard.  The siding nearest the Down Loop was probably used, asI mentioned, to stand wagons aside while others were positioned and for any exchange traffic going north (which I expect was very limited by the 1960s if not earlier).

 

The Aberayron trip would probably bring the bulk of Lampeter traffic but some would definitely come off later trains if it was longer distance traffic and didn't reach Caramarthen until after the trip had left.   Easy to deal with traffic off Down trains as it would be a simple shunt but it is of course quite possible that traffic came off Up trains as well although i suspect it was more limited and shunting that would have needed the engine to run round then shunt the wagons off the back of the train - that would take time although it might have been put off in the Up Siding.  Studying the timetables will show how long trains had for shunting work.

 

There was a small cattle dock on the loading bank of the Up Siding and at one time there would definitely have been some cattle traffic from/to that sort of area but I would think it had virtually vanished by the mid 1950s.

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1 hour ago, Nevermakeit said:

Thanks very much for this - should have looked a bit closer at the info provided!

 

I have created the layout below in AnyRail, which seems quite simple to use.  For the purposes of operating, would it be fair to assume that sidings 1 and 2 (numbering from the bottom) are mileage sidings?  Would this still be true after a provender store was built alongside siding 1?  I have seen photos that suggest siding 3 may have been a coal siding, and there seemed to be some sort of crossing on it to allow access to the Goods Shed (siding 4).  I have also seen photos of a mobile crane and some hoppers on siding 5, but may this also have been used to put together wagons for picking up to Aberystwyth?  Siding 6 (at the top) has been suggested as where miltas for Carmarthen would wait for the next passenger train, but a platform alongside it has also been suggested as a possible cattle dock. 

 

Any assistance in suggesting how wagons would arrive, enter the goods yard, move about the goods yard (would this happen?) and leave the goods yard (for both directions) would be gratefully received.  Thanks.

Lampeter Plan.JPG

They probably would have been mileage and the 6 ton yard crane was roughly alongside the centre of the first siding.  Clark (Great Western Stations vol. 1)  shows fairly small cattle docks on  a longer narrow platform marked along the up half of the up siding (siding 6) I'm a bit dubious as, though there was an open area behind the buffer end of that siding, the only access was via  a narrow crossing without level crossing gates that crossed the loops and the first set of points in the goods yard but was accessed from a gate outside the railway fence. It looks more like a private crossing for a quarry in the hills behind the station and that area on the up side of the station. 

Lampeter had quite large livestock fairs so I suspect livestock would have been handled in the main goods yard on those occasions. Clark shows no coal staithes but a market town like Lampeter with some industry would certainly have imported quite a lot of coal  so I'd guess that the back sidings may have been mainly for coal and possibly livestock with the siding facing the goods shed the general mileage siding but it could be the other way round. I'll PM you the diagrams from Great Western Stations.

Working the main goods yard from an up goods train would have involved quite a lot of running round and shunting so I'd hazard a guess that it was mainly worked by down trains for which dropping and picking up wagons would have been a simple set of backing moves, possibly using the fifth siding. Ordinary goods from Lampeter would have been routed via Aberystwyth but more urgent movements like milk  or horses would have needed a more direct routing via Carmarthen which may be where the up siding comes in. I assume milk from Lampeter would be heading for Cardiff and other major cities (London?) rather than Aberystwyth.

 

Mike will certainly have better insights on this than I can offer.  

(he has while I was composing this!)

Edited by Pacific231G
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30 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Clark shows no coal staithes


Coal staithes were no where near as common as they appear to be on model railways.  Most coal merchants would either have a pile in the good yard or would take the coal to their yard elsewhere.

 

 

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7 hours ago, Aire Head said:


Coal staithes were no where near as common as they appear to be on model railways.  Most coal merchants would either have a pile in the good yard or would take the coal to their yard elsewhere.

 

 

Indeed so (though coal drops seems to have been widely used in the North East), and in photos you can often see the area of the goods yard used by coal merchants often with their huts/offices alongside piles of coal. I assume they rented the area they used for this from the railway companies  These "coal stacking areas" seem to have generally (invariably?)  been at the back edge of the goods yard, sometimes well back from the back siding,  which was why I thought the back siding at Lampeter was the likely candidate there. Station goods yards often continued  to be used by the local coal merchants long after stations and even their railways closed, though the bulk coal now arrived on large lorries.

Actual coal pens seem to have been more common where quite a lot of coal was being handled in a fairly restricted space, such as in an urban area. There was a particularly good example at Richmond upon Thames whcih can be seen in image EPW022843 in Brtiain from Above. Country stations, like Lampeter, could usually spread out more relative to the traffic so there was less need for them.

 

What I am wondering about with a livestock market town like Lampeter (which had four major fairs each year including a horse fair and still has an annual agricultural show) is what happened when they had to handle far more livestock than they did on a daily basis. Did they use temporary pens in the goods yard to handle the extra traffic or were the regular pens - such as those alongside the up siding at Lampeter- enough? 

 

 

Edited by Pacific231G
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18 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

 

 

What I am wondering about with a livestock market town like Lampeter (which had four major fairs each year including a horse fair and still has an annual agricultural show) is what happened when they had to handle far more livestock than they did on a daily basis. Did they use temporary pens in the goods yard to handle the extra traffic or were the regular pens - such as those alongside the up siding at Lampeter- enough? 

 

 

Well we already know what happened with the traffic to/from the horse fairs - it was dealt with at the Down platform.  It is therefore not unlikely that if similar volumes of animals passed through the cattle fairs they too would have been dealt with at the Down platform.  However the strange thing is that while it is fairly easy to find photos, and even film, of the horse fairs at Lampeter I can find absolutely nothing online about cattle fairs or markets there so maybe they were much smaller affairs than the big horse fair?

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Below is a fairly heavily blown-up scan of part of the 1949 aerial photo of Lampeter which appears in Holden's The Manchester and Milford Railway, cropped to show just the goods sidings:

 

914425186_LampeterGoodsFacilities1949.png.2c0fafdb9bfa8acf78bcd0ebfed9b120.png

 

(Note that you can view the scan at its original blown-up size by right-clicking on the photo and viewing it in a new tab.  I believe this use of the photo is OK under fair use/research rules, but if anyone disagrees please let me know.)

 

My observations - feel free to correct/expand as you see fit:

1) There are fairly clearly a number of cattle wagons in the up siding.  (Possibly also a brake van peeking out from behind the goods shed?)

2) There seem to be a couple of grounded coach bodies alongside "number 1 siding".  I think the 6-ton crane shown on Clark's plan would be sited in between them - there does seems to be something there but it's pretty much impossible to discern what it might actually be.

3) Number 1 siding itself seems to be fairly empty - maybe a couple of vans and a tanker of some kind near the buffers?

4) Number 2 siding seems to be pretty full with what look like coal wagons.  The ground beyond number 2 siding looks pretty dark, and I think I can even see what looks like heaps of loose coal there.

5) A fair few vans and opens are sitting on siding 3.  In fact it almost looks as if that siding runs under the canopy of the goods shed, but I think that's a trick of perspective since Clark's plan clearly shows that siding 4 runs through the goods shed.  I therefore conclude that the canopy provides cover for the goods shed's road vehicle dock.

6) Given how far siding 3 seems to extend, I reckon road access to the goods shed ran past the southern elevation of the large building at the south end of the goods yard (the one with what looks like a row of lean-to buildings on its western elevation), then turned left past that building's east elevation.  That building doesn't appear on Clark's plan so I'd presume that it somewhat post-dated the hypothesised GWR remodelling of the station.

7) There seem to be a few vans and opens near the buffers on sidings 4 and 5.

 

I hope this is helpful to those trying to work out the operations at Lampeter.

Edited by ejstubbs
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10 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

Below is a fairly heavily blown-up scan of part of the 1949 aerial photo of Lampeter which appears in Holden's The Manchester and Milford Railway, cropped to show just the goods sidings:

 

914425186_LampeterGoodsFacilities1949.png.2c0fafdb9bfa8acf78bcd0ebfed9b120.png

 

I hope this is helpful to those trying to work out the operations at Lampeter.

Thanks very much for this. It is fascinating. The yard looks a lot busier in terms of both vehicles and buildings than I anticipated - I may need to revise my AnyRail plan to fit the buildings in! Shame they didn't have high resolution photography then (although I assume it was fairly cutting edge for the time) 

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3 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

Below is a fairly heavily blown-up scan of part of the 1949 aerial photo of Lampeter which appears in Holden's The Manchester and Milford Railway, cropped to show just the goods sidings:

 

914425186_LampeterGoodsFacilities1949.png.2c0fafdb9bfa8acf78bcd0ebfed9b120.png

 

(Note that you can view the scan at its original blown-up size by right-clicking on the photo and viewing it in a new tab.  I believe this use of the photo is OK under fair use/research rules, but if anyone disagrees please let me know.)

 

My observations - feel free to correct/expand as you see fit:

1) There are fairly clearly a number of cattle wagons in the up siding.  (Possibly also a brake van peeking out from behind the goods shed?)

2) There seem to be a couple of grounded coach bodies alongside "number 1 siding".  I think the 6-ton crane shown on Clark's plan would be sited in between them - there does seems to be something there but it's pretty much impossible to discern what it might actually be.

3) Number 1 siding itself seems to be fairly empty - maybe a couple of vans and a tanker of some kind near the buffers?

4) Number 2 siding seems to be pretty full with what look like coal wagons.  The ground beyond number 2 siding looks pretty dark, and I think I can even see what looks like heaps of loose coal there.

5) A fair few vans and opens are sitting on siding 3.  In fact it almost looks as if that siding runs under the canopy of the goods shed, but I think that's a trick of perspective since Clark's plan clearly shows that siding 4 runs through the goods shed.  I therefore conclude that the canopy provides cover for the goods shed's road vehicle dock.

6) Given how far siding 3 seems to extend, I reckon road access to the goods shed ran past the southern elevation of the large building at the south end of the goods yard (the one with what looks like a row of lean-to buildings on its western elevation), then turned left past that building's east elevation.  That building doesn't appear on Clark's plan so I'd presume that it somewhat post-dated the hypothesised GWR remodelling of the station.

7) There seem to be a few vans and opens near the buffers on sidings 4 and 5.

 

I hope this is helpful to those trying to work out the operations at Lampeter.

That's a fascinating and very informative find.

I did wonder whether the grounded(?)  coaches (the far one looks to be a clerestory) could possibly have been camping coaches (some of wihch were grounded)  The GWR certainly had one of those at Aberayron but Lampeter doesn't appear on the list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camping_coach Accordign to this, there weren't any camping copaches as such on the WR in 1949 though they were re-introduced in 1952 but they had been used during the war, and no doubt for several years after, for railway staff made homeless by enemy action or as lodgings for those transferred away from home. There was a massive housing crisis after the war and what appear to be fence posts around the coach bodies do suggest a residential use. It doesn't appear from the aerial shot that,at that end of the yard, the area between siding one and the railway fence was being much used,

It is clear that Clark was right about the cattle pens beside the up siding, they're very clearly visible. The feature that is intriguing is the road crossing just beyond the end of the up siding. It's clearly not a properly gated level crossing (and doesn't appear as such on the signalling diagram) but it's access on the Lampeter side is not from the goods yard. I assume therefore that it was a private crossing to access the cattle pens, the railway cottages, and the quarry at the top of the roadway  leading off. Could the output from that quarry and posibly that from the sawmills have been what siding 1 and possibly 2 had mostly been used for ? 

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8 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

That's a fascinating and very informative find.

I did wonder whether the grounded(?)  coaches (the far one looks to be a clerestory) could possibly have been camping coaches (some of wihch were grounded)  The GWR certainly had one of those at Aberayron but Lampeter doesn't appear on the list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camping_coach Accordign to this, there weren't any camping copaches as such on the WR in 1949 though they were re-introduced in 1952 but they had been used during the war, and no doubt for several years after, for railway staff made homeless by enemy action or as lodgings for those transferred away from home. There was a massive housing crisis after the war and what appear to be fence posts around the coach bodies do suggest a residential use. It doesn't appear from the aerial shot that,at that end of the yard, the area between siding one and the railway fence was being much used,

It is clear that Clark was right about the cattle pens beside the up siding, they're very clearly visible. The feature that is intriguing is the road crossing just beyond the end of the up siding. It's clearly not a properly gated level crossing (and doesn't appear as such on the signalling diagram) but it's access on the Lampeter side is not from the goods yard. I assume therefore that it was a private crossing to access the cattle pens, the railway cottages, and the quarry at the top of the roadway  leading off. Could the output from that quarry and posibly that from the sawmills have been what siding 1 and possibly 2 had mostly been used for ? 

The multiple conical(?) supports suggest that whatever those bodies were , they are being used as provender stores at the time of the photograph.

Edited by Harlequin
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6 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

There are fairly clearly a number of cattle wagons in the up siding.  (Possibly also a brake van peeking out from behind the goods shed?)


That looks like 3 cattle vans and 2 Horseboxes to my eyes.

 

 

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13 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Well we already know what happened with the traffic to/from the horse fairs - it was dealt with at the Down platform.  It is therefore not unlikely that if similar volumes of animals passed through the cattle fairs they too would have been dealt with at the Down platform.  However the strange thing is that while it is fairly easy to find photos, and even film, of the horse fairs at Lampeter I can find absolutely nothing online about cattle fairs or markets there so maybe they were much smaller affairs than the big horse fair?

I'd have though though that leading horses across the down platform would be a lot easier than herding sheep or cattle.  The BFI have a very good seven minute film from 1914 of the Dalis fair here

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-great-dalis-horse-fair-lampeter-may-1914-1914-online

It starts with a long panning shot of the station and the town from the hill beind the station. It also shows horses being led across the down platform to both cattle wagons and horse boxes (presumably depending on the value of the horses)  as well as a shot of a train of horses leaving in the up direction. Sad to think  how many of those horses - and the men leading them- likely ended up on the Western Front and never came back.

 

The Dalis horse fair was and is the best known and certainly the largest of the fairs in Lampeter though it didn't move there (from Dihewyd) until after the coming of the railway. There were other fairs in Lampeter at various times, up to eight according to one source, as it was a traditional centre for droving. but whether any of the others lasted into the railway age I've not been able to determine. There was also a weekly market but that's normal for market towns. The other big event was and is the annual agricultural show and that was important enough for the GWR to run excursion trains to it. just as they ran special trains for the Dalis fair.  I don't know whether the agricultural show would have required rail transport for as many beasts as the horse fair and it may have drawn entries from a more local area.

According to the local history site the Dalis fair ended in 1939

 

BTWI found some interesting comments about Lampeter on a farming forum (imaginatively titled "The Farming Forum") Some of them may be interesting in terms of the traffic  worked there

 

"I used to visit that station every week with dad to pick up feed from the wagons there in the 60s"

 

"One of my hay barns is the old station store which we bought and pulled down when the station closed"

 

"I can remember collecting horses from railway wagons - they came with a lovely leather halter marked with the railway logo. You were supposed to swap on the station, but not many did and the halters were seen around for quite a while!"

 

"I did not realise Lampeter station closed in 1965, remember going there with dad to collect beet pulp out of the trucks"

"Beet Pulp IN those Hessian Sacks . Dragging them out of Goods Trains in Lampeter Station yard"

 

"Rhythwyn’s younger son lives up my lane but he has lived near Lampeter on a farm where the railway used to run, all his life nearly. He was telling me, about ten years ago, that he remembers my grandfather, being the guard on the train. He used to stop the train at various points to set snares for rabbits and stop again when passing to check them. A story once confirmed by the late Delme Vaughan, the AI man during the 60’s and early 70’s.
My grandfather died in 1958, when I was about six months old."

 

"Felin Fach Creamery was opened on 10 May 1951 by the Milk Marketing Board, as a development of the milk factory at Pont Llanio (nprn 91430). It received milk daily from up to 2,000 local farms. The creamery was served by rail (the former Lampeter, Aberayron & New Quay Light Railway, nprn 419330), which was used to transport the milk mainly to London, until the railway closed in 1973. Bulk milk distribution, milk powder and butter manufacture were carried out at the creamery; there was also a cattle-breeding centre providing an AI (artificial insemination) service, a laboratory, staff cottages and a transport depot."


"In 1951 a new creamery was opened at Green Grove, near Felinfach, by the Milk Marketing Board. It started operation on 10 May 1951 as a single siding and as well as processing milk it served as a concentration point for conveyance of liquid milk to London and other large population centres. Milk trains ran seven days a week to Lampeter, the milk continuing from there to Carmarthen attached to passenger trains from Aberystwyth before attaching to other milk trains from other lcoations in West Wales (such as from Whitland and Carmarthen creameries).
After closure of the line to passengers in 1951 and later freight in 1963, Green Grove siding continued to be used with the track lifted beyond this to Aberayron. Milk traffic continued with diesel-hydraulic Class 35 locomotives taking over followed by Class 37s before final closure in 1973"

 

Lampeter can't have been the only relatively small station that had occasional large livestock movements so there must  have been ways of facilitating those with temporary pens and ramps over and above the permanent pens that most such stations (including Lampter) had. I've heard that at Ashburton there could be so many livestock wagons on certain days that the passenger trains had to be replaced with a bus.

Edited by Pacific231G
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12 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

The feature that is intriguing is the road crossing just beyond the end of the up siding. It's clearly not a properly gated level crossing (and doesn't appear as such on the signalling diagram) but it's access on the Lampeter side is not from the goods yard. I assume therefore that it was a private crossing to access the cattle pens, the railway cottages, and the quarry at the top of the roadway  leading off.

 

This snippet of the 1973 OS 1:2,500 plan of Lampeter from old-maps.co.uk shows a bit more detail of the yard layout and the road access:

 

1868056798_Screenshot2021-06-21at08_58_20.png.4a53c1d763dbc8e73a50bb314c0355a2.png


The road you refer to also served a property called Cwm-Rhŷs, which is still extant.  By 1973 the quarry was defunct and being used as a refuse tip.  The 1889 map has a track marked linking Cwm-Rhŷs to Mount Pleasant Farm to the north, although that doesn't appear on the modern OS maps.  In any case, the main access to Mount Pleasant Farm looks to be by a larger lane which passed under the railway a furlong or so north of the road crossing at the goods yard throat.

 

The plan above does show the large building at the south end of the goods yard which is visible in the aerial photo.  It also seems to support the impression I got from the photo that siding 3 actually passed quite close the goods shed's road vehicle loading bay.  I wonder if perhaps larger road vehicles had to turn in the space to the north of the goods shed?

 

Although the station is marked as 'disused' on the 1973 plan, it's lucky that most of the railway infrastructure seems to have been still in place when the survey for the plan was carried out.

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On 19/06/2021 at 15:47, Nevermakeit said:

Thanks very much for this - should have looked a bit closer at the info provided!

 

I have created the layout below in AnyRail, which seems quite simple to use.  For the purposes of operating, would it be fair to assume that sidings 1 and 2 (numbering from the bottom) are mileage sidings?  Would this still be true after a provender store was built alongside siding 1?  I have seen photos that suggest siding 3 may have been a coal siding, and there seemed to be some sort of crossing on it to allow access to the Goods Shed (siding 4).  I have also seen photos of a mobile crane and some hoppers on siding 5, but may this also have been used to put together wagons for picking up to Aberystwyth?  Siding 6 (at the top) has been suggested as where miltas for Carmarthen would wait for the next passenger train, but a platform alongside it has also been suggested as a possible cattle dock. 

 

Any assistance in suggesting how wagons would arrive, enter the goods yard, move about the goods yard (would this happen?) and leave the goods yard (for both directions) would be gratefully received.  Thanks.

Lampeter Plan.JPG

 

There are various ways to get decent length sidings in a model where space is more restricted than the prototype - but the compromises are that the model is not then a faithful copy of the real thing. (And that has to include somewhere for trains to come from and go to, of course!)

 

You could run the goods yard behind the platforms but then you'd need to re-arrange passenger access - possibly even moving it to the other side of the mainline.

 

Another possibility is to curve the mainline to maximise the length of the whole station complex.

 

And when the mainline curves it opens the possibility for the yard to be angled behind the passenger platforms so that a triangle opens up between them to fit in the station building and passenger access. Something like this (a modified version of Wiveliscombe but you can see the similarity to Lampeter):

 749377801_Standby4.png.7155ba1f8d3078a917ba39e2242f4bdc.png

Edited by Harlequin
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14 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

That's a fascinating and very informative find.

I did wonder whether the grounded(?)  coaches (the far one looks to be a clerestory) could possibly have been camping coaches (some of wihch were grounded)  The GWR certainly had one of those at Aberayron but Lampeter doesn't appear on the list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camping_coach Accordign to this, there weren't any camping copaches as such on the WR in 1949 though they were re-introduced in 1952 but they had been used during the war, and no doubt for several years after, for railway staff made homeless by enemy action or as lodgings for those transferred away from home. There was a massive housing crisis after the war and what appear to be fence posts around the coach bodies do suggest a residential use. It doesn't appear from the aerial shot that,at that end of the yard, the area between siding one and the railway fence was being much used,

It is clear that Clark was right about the cattle pens beside the up siding, they're very clearly visible. The feature that is intriguing is the road crossing just beyond the end of the up siding. It's clearly not a properly gated level crossing (and doesn't appear as such on the signalling diagram) but it's access on the Lampeter side is not from the goods yard. I assume therefore that it was a private crossing to access the cattle pens, the railway cottages, and the quarry at the top of the roadway  leading off. Could the output from that quarry and posibly that from the sawmills have been what siding 1 and possibly 2 had mostly been used for ? 

The cattle pens have been visible in photos linked previously in this thread, and were also clearly visible in the video linked in the OP  so there has never been any doubt  in this thread, and discussion, That they were there.  The crossing similarly has been previously discussed and was presumably either an accommodation or occupation crossing although it probably had railway usage as well.

 

As the quarry was on the Up side the logical place to load any of its output to rail would have been the Up Siding which had the loading bank - daft to take stuff round to the Down side and have to lift it further to load a wagon!   However we don't know if the quarry sent away any of its output or whether it was solely supplying local use.

 

Sidings 1 & 2 were clearly mileage sidings and would be used for whatever traffic was on offer although it was the usual practice to restrict coal traffic to one place because of the dust and dirt it could create and to make things convenient for local merchants.  Some merchants would put coal to ground at the station and some - for various reasons (which changed over the years) didn't put coal to ground at their receiving station.  On our local branch with three stations what happened varied between them and changed over the years - for example at the terminus the two merchants latterly in the coal business vdidn't put coal to ground at the station but at the main intermediate station - which had not seen any freight traffic for some years - a new coal merchant arrived in the early 1960s and built cells to store coal, something the station hadn't previously had at any time in the 20th century if photos are to be believed.  

 

Incidentally judging by photos mos, if not all,  of the vehicles used for staff accommodation after the war (in most cases until hostels were built) were ordinary coaching stock and had no catering etc area.  For example the vehicles based at Westbury were entirely ordinary caching stock.

 

9 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I'd have though though that leading horses across the down platform would be a lot easier than herding sheep or cattle.  The BFI have a very good seven minute film from 1914 of the Dalis fair here

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-great-dalis-horse-fair-lampeter-may-1914-1914-online

It starts with a long panning shot of the station and the town from the hill beind the station. It also shows horses being led across the down platform to both cattle wagons and horse boxes (presumably depending on the value of the horses)  as well as a shot of a train of horses leaving in the up direction. Sad to think  how many of those horses - and the men leading them- likely ended up on the Western Front and never came back.

 

The Dalis horse fair was and is the best known and certainly the largest of the fairs in Lampeter though it didn't move there (from Dihewyd) until after the coming of the railway. There were other fairs in Lampeter at various times, up to eight according to one source, as it was a traditional centre for droving. but whether any of the others lasted into the railway age I've not been able to determine. There was also a weekly market but that's normal for market towns. The other big event was and is the annual agricultural show and that was important enough for the GWR to run excursion trains to it. just as they ran special trains for the Dalis fair.  I don't know whether the agricultural show would have required rail transport for as many beasts as the horse fair and it may have drawn entries from a more local area.

According to the local history site the Dalis fair ended in 1939


After closure of the line to passengers in 1951 and later freight in 1963, Green Grove siding continued to be used with the track lifted beyond this to Aberayron. Milk traffic continued with diesel-hydraulic Class 35 locomotives taking over followed by Class 37s before final closure in 1973"

 

Lampeter can't have been the only relatively small station that had occasional large livestock movements so there must  have been ways of facilitating those with temporary pens and ramps over and above the permanent pens that most such stations (including Lampter) had. I've heard that at Ashburton there could be so many livestock wagons on certain days that the passenger trains had to be replaced with a bus.

I'm sorry but we're retreading old ground once again - I linked the horse fair film, with comments on it, a long way back in this thread.  Cattle and sheep aren't really any more difficult to deal with than horses if it is done in the right way  (were there any sheep fairs at Lampeter?).   The obvious fact is that cattle in large numbers could not be dealt with at the cattle pens - access over the railway was poor and would have needed far more people to man it for a cattle movement (unless they were in vehicles) than would be needed using using the Down platform.

 

I'm certain that Lampeter wasn't the only relatively small station that at times dealt with large numbers of livestock and of course it wasn't the only place where they were dealt with at the station platform.  Cattle pens at smaller stations could only deal with relatively small numbers of animals and from the 1920s onwards were in fact an extra cost burden on the railway because of the cleaning and disinfection requirements (which didn't apply if animals were, say,  unloaded and immediately moved off railway premises).

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2 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

The plan above does show the large building at the south end of the goods yard which is visible in the aerial photo.

Thank you for this. Is it the building that is labelled WB, or is it something else? Do we know what WB stands for, please? 

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1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

 

There are various ways to get decent length sidings in a model where space is more restricted than the prototype - but the compromises are that the model is not then a faithful copy of the real thing. (And that has to include somewhere for trains to come from and go to, of course!)

 

You could run the goods yard behind the platforms but then you'd need to re-arrange passenger access - possibly even moving it to the other side of the mainline.

 

Another possibility is to curve the mainline to maximise the length of the whole station complex.

 

And when the mainline curves it opens the possibility for the yard to be angled behind the passenger platforms so that a triangle opens up between them to fit in the station building and passenger access. Something like this (a modified version of Wiveliscombe but you can see the similarity to Lampeter):

 1279952556_Standby4.png.da8a530b6feba50a974f31865f3492bf.png

That does look very similar to Lampeter. Was there a set of standard layouts for stations or was it just coincidence? 

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3 minutes ago, Nevermakeit said:

Thank you for this. Is it the building that is labelled WB, or is it something else? Do we know what WB stands for, please? 

The large building is not 'WB' - that will apply to the msall rectangle in lighter type opposite that building.  WB means weighbridge and was where road vehicles coming into or out of the yard would be weighed in order to assess the weight of the load.  The weighbridge probably also functioned as a public weighbridge - for which the railway charged any users,.

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2 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

One thing to remember about railway C&D road vehicles working at the goods shed would be that they loaded and unloaded over the tailboard so had to stand at a right angle to the goods shed loading bay.

Which would explain why there was some sort of crossing or in-fill on siding 3?

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1 minute ago, Nevermakeit said:

That does look very similar to Lampeter. Was there a set of standard layouts for stations or was it just coincidence? 

Very much driven by the site but there would be various fairly common features such as minimising the number of facing points and providing a trailing entry to sidings in order that they could be shunted.  The main impact of available land and its price would be where any freight sidings were in relation to the passenger station - next to it on a broader site, before or beyond it on a narrow site.

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16 hours ago, Harlequin said:

The multiple conical(?) supports suggest that whatever those bodies were , they are being used as provender stores at the time of the photograph.

Going back to my unhealthy obsession with wagon movements, if a vehicle with a load for the provender store arrived, would it be unloaded fairly quickly, and moved elsewhere to await collection, or would it sit on the mileage siding until picked up? If it sat there, and further wagons for that siding arrived, what would be the most likely movement for it? I assume that wagons would be in and out of the goods shed fairly promptly? Or was it all a bit more ad hoc than I would like to think? Thanks. 

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