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Fruit vans and pick up goods


MDP78
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This may be a daft question but would fruit vans have ever been found in pick up goods workings?

 

I know fruit was transported from stations on the Bewdley to Tenbury Wells line - I have a DVD showing a Bewdley bound freight in the early 60's picking up a van containing what the commentator as a consignment of plums. Would this have been a fruit van or a regular ventilated van? 

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If the expected load justified it, a Fruit Van would have been dropped off for loading one day and picked up the next. The only other possible use for them would have been for block trains - and fruit doesn't usually ripen conveniently for that !

 

Smaller consignments might be handled by passenger train - which would be quicker !

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Soft fruit doesn't survive very well if kept hanging about on the way from plant/bush/tree to consumer, and it tends to have quite short picking seasons, so in areas that produced large volumes there were often special arrangements for vehicles, or for entire trains, to depart late afternoon/early-evening to get to wholesale markets or agents in big cities in the early hours, then on to the shops and barrows for opening time.

 

The LSWR served prime strawberry country in Hampshire, and some stations sent out entire trains, made up of passenger-rated vans from multiple railway companies, which served markets as far away as Glasgow and Edinburgh. Other places in the S/SE that produced strawberries also sent out shorter train to London, also using passenger-rated stock, or individual vans were attached to passenger trains.

 

Soft fruit also went from some areas in fitted goods vans, with a fast goods train sweeping-up vehicles from several stations or an entire area (The Wisbech & Upwell sent out huge trains of fitted vans).

 

Hard fruits are less time-sensitive, but take up lots of space if stored, so they too went out as quickly as feasible, again by fitted goods in many cases.

 

From what I can work out, fruit vans were used for soft fruits by preference (whether that be passenger rated ones or goods ones), rather than ordinary ventilated vans, because they were provided with drop-down shelves, on which the baskets, or trays of punnets, could easily be loaded, then the floor covered with baskets/trays. I'm less certain about hard fruits, in that they were sometimes consigned in barrels, or large baskets, which would surely have been too heavy and cumbersome to go on shelves.

 

There was a lot of back-carrying of empty baskets, trugs, trays, barrels etc too, because they were all re-usable, and marked with the name of the station of owning farm.

 

Long way of answering your question, but I reckon your plums would ideally have gone in a fruit van, probably in 2lb baskets or at a later date 2lb cardboard trugs, the latter maybe packed in trays. In an ordinary ventilated van, it would be much more of a fiddle, probably involving the stacking of trays, to get more than one layer on the floor. Plums bruise quite easily.

 

I'm just too young to remember any of this being done by rail, but spent a lot of my later childhood and early teens fruit picking and helping get the lorry loaded to go to Covent Garden overnight, all timed very exactly, so that the lorry was used to take many pickers home (benches in the back), then was loaded and on the road by mid-evening, back by about five in the morning, out to collect pickers at about six thirty, start picking at about eight. During the day the lorry did runs to local greengrocers etc with small orders, although some of that was also done while collecting the pickers. There were two drivers working twelve hour shifts six days a week from about mid-May and into the Autumn (potatoes mainly by then), the man on days driving the tractor and trailer round the fields to collect loads too.

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In Kevin Robertson's Somerset & Avon Railways in Old Photographs, there is a photo of Axbridge station with a train of at least seven assorted vans, including two or more Siphons, being loaded with fruit in wooden chip baskets. On the flat porters' trollies some are stacked three high, with the bases resting on the handles of the ones below. It is from Lens of Sutton, from about the 1920s I would guess from the clothing.

Chip baskets were larger than punnets and were made of thin strips of wooden woven together, with a handle initially made of the same thin wood and later made of tinplate.

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11 hours ago, MDP78 said:

Would this have been a fruit van or a regular ventilated van? 

Can you see the wagon clearly in the film? Specific fruit vans often had ventilation slats compared to the plainer standard version, certainly in the GWR and LNER types and BR had a banana van with extra air vents on the sides. I think cattle wagons were used for broccoli on the Helston line but dont know if plums and cow pats mix quite as well!

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A bit off topic but a similar freight,  fresh cut flowers, were sent by rail from the nurseries around  Cowley Middlesex to the London markets via the Metropolitan at Uxbridge, mostly in the evenings for the next morning markets. This was pre-1939.

Can't find the source for this at the moment of course, but will keep looking....

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1 hour ago, Hal Nail said:

BR had a banana van with extra air vents on the sides

 

Are you sure you aren't getting confused with a meat van? Here's one of those http://www.ws.rhrp.org.uk/ws/WagonInfo.asp?Ref=7879

 

Banana vans usually had continuous brakes, insulation, steam heating, and controllable ventilation at the ends, although I'm not totally sure how/whether the BR standard version was ventilated. internally that had bars/racks on which the fruit was hung in big bunches. Here's one http://www.ws.rhrp.org.uk/ws/WagonInfo.asp?Ref=8862 . The idea was to keep the fruit at c11 degreesC, winter and summer.

 

They were quite distinct from the fruit vans used for domestic crops, which were freely ventilated to a lesser of greater degree (some had ventilation through deliberate gaps between floor planks), and fitted with drop-down shelves. Quite a few pre-grouping railways designated the passenger-rated ones "milk and fruit", using them with the shelves folded to carry churns.

 

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1 hour ago, jointline said:

A bit off topic but a similar freight,  fresh cut flowers, were sent by rail from the nurseries around  Cowley Middlesex to the London markets via the Metropolitan at Uxbridge, mostly in the evenings for the next morning markets. This was pre-1939.

Can't find the source for this at the moment of course, but will keep looking....

There was a flow of fresh flowers from Penzance to London into the 1970s; I've seen a photo of a blue Siphon G being loaded in Penzance. The BR-built Diagrams had extra vents in the lower part of the sides, along with folding shelves, especially for this sort of load.

 

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2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Are you sure you aren't getting confused with a meat van? Here's one of those http://www.ws.rhrp.org.uk/ws/WagonInfo.asp?Ref=7879

 

Banana vans usually had continuous brakes, insulation, steam heating, and controllable ventilation at the ends, although I'm not totally sure how/whether the BR standard version was ventilated. internally that had bars/racks on which the fruit was hung in big bunches. Here's one http://www.ws.rhrp.org.uk/ws/WagonInfo.asp?Ref=8862 . The idea was to keep the fruit at c11 degreesC, winter and summer.

 

They were quite distinct from the fruit vans used for domestic crops, which were freely ventilated to a lesser of greater degree (some had ventilation through deliberate gaps between floor planks), and fitted with drop-down shelves. Quite a few pre-grouping railways designated the passenger-rated ones "milk and fruit", using them with the shelves folded to carry churns.

 

The last couple of Lots of the vertically-planked (LMS Designed) BR Banana Vans, along with the BR Standard ones,  were not fitted with steam heating nor any form of ventilation. A feature of most Banana vans, no matter their origin, was the presence of three hinges on each door, presumably to reduce any 'twist' on the doors, thereby maintaining the seal. This third hinge makes it relatively easy to identify Banana vans in shots of trains when the photographer was paying more attention to the loco than the train.

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4 minutes ago, Aire Head said:

 

To my knowledge yes they did however seasons do last surprisingly long so they were kept quite busy.

There were lines of them to be seen at various East Anglian yards out-of-season, but that didn't stop them being used for cement, animal feed and fertiliser, as well as Christmas parcels traffic.

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Have a look at Evesham goods yard on the Warwickshire Railways (yes I know …. It’s in Worcestershire!) for some commentary on loading and transport of fruit.

 

There was an afternoon fitted freight from Evesham to Crewe known as the ‘sparagrass for self explanatory reasons…

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8 hours ago, jointline said:

A bit off topic but a similar freight,  fresh cut flowers, were sent by rail from the nurseries around  Cowley Middlesex to the London markets via the Metropolitan at Uxbridge, mostly in the evenings for the next morning markets. This was pre-1939.

Can't find the source for this at the moment of course, but will keep looking....

Cut flowers were normally Passenger Rated traffic so wuld usually have passed in NPCCS or passenger train vans or in specials if the volume justifed.   I am old enough to remember that even in 1966  LL6 (Ledger Label 6) labelling was used for cut flowers and they were listed in their own column in the daily parcels balance sheet and they also still had to be invoiced.  I'm fairly sure that by the back half of 1966 they were just about the only regular mainland Passenger Rated traffic that still had to be invoiced from the sending station to the receiving station - different world.

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20 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Soft fruit doesn't survive very well if kept hanging about on the way from plant/bush/tree to consumer, and it tends to have quite short picking seasons, so in areas that produced large volumes there were often special arrangements for vehicles, or for entire trains, to depart late afternoon/early-evening to get to wholesale markets or agents in big cities in the early hours, then on to the shops and barrows for opening time.

 

The LSWR served prime strawberry country in Hampshire, and some stations sent out entire trains, made up of passenger-rated vans from multiple railway companies, which served markets as far away as Glasgow and Edinburgh. Other places in the S/SE that produced strawberries also sent out shorter train to London, also using passenger-rated stock, or individual vans were attached to passenger trains.

 

Soft fruit also went from some areas in fitted goods vans, with a fast goods train sweeping-up vehicles from several stations or an entire area (The Wisbech & Upwell sent out huge trains of fitted vans).

 

Hard fruits are less time-sensitive, but take up lots of space if stored, so they too went out as quickly as feasible, again by fitted goods in many cases.

 

From what I can work out, fruit vans were used for soft fruits by preference (whether that be passenger rated ones or goods ones), rather than ordinary ventilated vans, because they were provided with drop-down shelves, on which the baskets, or trays of punnets, could easily be loaded, then the floor covered with baskets/trays. I'm less certain about hard fruits, in that they were sometimes consigned in barrels, or large baskets, which would surely have been too heavy and cumbersome to go on shelves.

 

There was a lot of back-carrying of empty baskets, trugs, trays, barrels etc too, because they were all re-usable, and marked with the name of the station of owning farm.

 

Long way of answering your question, but I reckon your plums would ideally have gone in a fruit van, probably in 2lb baskets or at a later date 2lb cardboard trugs, the latter maybe packed in trays. In an ordinary ventilated van, it would be much more of a fiddle, probably involving the stacking of trays, to get more than one layer on the floor. Plums bruise quite easily.

 

I'm just too young to remember any of this being done by rail, but spent a lot of my later childhood and early teens fruit picking and helping get the lorry loaded to go to Covent Garden overnight, all timed very exactly, so that the lorry was used to take many pickers home (benches in the back), then was loaded and on the road by mid-evening, back by about five in the morning, out to collect pickers at about six thirty, start picking at about eight. During the day the lorry did runs to local greengrocers etc with small orders, although some of that was also done while collecting the pickers. There were two drivers working twelve hour shifts six days a week from about mid-May and into the Autumn (potatoes mainly by then), the man on days driving the tractor and trailer round the fields to collect loads too.

In the 1950s - pre-plastic - much horticultural and orchard product was shipped in 'chip' baskets. These were 'flolded' from thin strips of wood and were fitted with a metal handle. I believe numbers of such baskets could be carried by inserting a wooden carrying pole through the handles?

https://www.basketryandbeyond.org.uk/farmingtamar-valley-chip-baskets-2/

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One thing springs to mind, it could be difficult finding places to unload these vans in the London markets. the vans were usually long wheelbase, the goods yards and depots in London had a propensity of wagon turntables designed for 10' wheelbase. Herein lies the problem! 

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15 hours ago, JimC said:

Would fruit vans also have been used for more general merchandise outside the fruit seasons? 

Yes, the BR records have clear calls for the return of the fruit vans from general merchandise use by certain dates to their big collection yards such as Whitemoor for East Anglia. 

 

And never seen a banana van with side vents - side vents are what BR and LMS fruit vans have. What often gives away a fruit van is additional roof ventilators because some - such as the LNER fruit vans are difficult to distinguish when the specialised end venting is hidden. 

 

Paul

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13 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

Have a look at Evesham goods yard on the Warwickshire Railways (yes I know …. It’s in Worcestershire!) for some commentary on loading and transport of fruit.

RJ Essery's "Illustrated History of the Ashchurch to Barnt Green Line - The Evesham Route" is also a useful source for this.

 

From a quick skim:

1. The season for produce ran from March to Christmas.

2. Even in the 50's when he fired on this line some produce traveled in sheeted open wagons.

3. The peak of the season was for plums, when the Midland had recorded shifting 1,000 tons in a week, which he estimates at 33 vehicles a day if you could pack 6 tons in each. Also the GWR was competing for this traffic, so the overall tonnage would have been higher; but the transport rates were consequently lower than in other areas.

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