North Devon line services in 1980s

[Pugsley]

T'other problem with Tigers, Polybulks, Cargowagons - they're so bloomin' LONG.....

I suspect that the length of them was the problem, rather than the weight, on the Meeth line, but I can't say for sure.

 

Heathfield is definitely ball clay and I'd be surprised if CDAs were used to take china clay to the tile factory, as there are no discharge facilities. The modern tile factory only dates from 1999/2000, when I was there in September 2000 the production lines were still being bedded in and they were making more scrap than tiles! Before that the works was a much smaller affair.

 

Perhaps the CDAs were being trialled for ball clay? I must admit I didn't think they ever escaped from Cornwall.

[TomJ]

As Glorious NSE says you can get away with far fewer of the modern wagons, even as complete trains. I have loads of photos of trains of just two Tigers, one cargowagon, couple of vans etc whilst the shortest hoods seem to be about eight wagons (hauled by an 08 to Wenford).

 

As a comparison a 37 could haul 22 hoods from Moorswater but only 8 CDAs which is a much shorter rake - even allowing for the slightly longer length of the wagons. So I think you can get away with the air braked wagons!

[Fat Controller]

Another thing comes to mind. The CIBA-Geigy resin traffic was for a factory making chipboard somewhere nearby. I have a recollection that EWS took finished product from this factory for a while- would it be credible to suggest that this had happened previously?

[TomJ]

Pugsley - I'm sure the CDAs definitely left the Duchy going to Marsh Mills near Plymouth. There's a photo in 'An Illustrated History of West Country Clay Trains' of a train of CDAs crossing a viaduct in East Cornwall which is captioned as from Heathfield. Who am I to disagree with the great John Vaughan!

[Adam]

Clay Tigers have/had a capacity of 57 tonnes, with a tare in the region of 23 tonnes, giving a laden weight of 80 tonnes. Is it possible that the reason they didn't make it to the Torrington dries is that the fleet was initially exclusively for the use of ECC, and that the North Devon dries belonged to someone else?

 

A few points arise from this. First, is that the Meeth company became an ECC subsidiary some time in, I think, the 1960s so that isn't an issue. The North Devon Clay Company at Marland went, at about the same time, to an outfit called Watts Blake Bearne Ltd (from south Devon - I suspect that they were involved at Heathfield). Second is that of terminology; the clay works were south of Torrington and since they were concerned with the production of Ball Clay (as opposed to China Clay - this is not quite the same thing), there were no dries as the production process - and nature of the product - is rather different. So much for the pedantry. Sorry Brian.

 

The third and most fundamental issue would be the bridge over the Torridge immediately south of Torrington station which had been subject to a 10mph speed limit since it was built - it's on a curve rather than particularly shoddily constructed. This part of the system, built as the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway (on the formation, in part, of an earlier 3' gauge railway!), was, as the handle suggests, a light railway, or, to be exact, the last light railway 'proper' in these islands which wasn't actually opened until after the grouping. Perhaps the civils weren't quite up to it?

 

Pugsley: The 9 chain reverse curves between Yarde Summit and (the delightfully named) Bugbear [source, M.J. Messenger, North Devon Clay - the original 30 year-old edition rather than the more recent reissue, which probably does have detail on the closure. About the best railway book I own] doesn't seem a credible problem since bogie passenger stock routinely operated over the line from the day it was built without restriction (apart from speed). The axle-loading might have been an issue, but I would be surprised if the scale of traffic (100,000 tons per annum in 1980) really warranted anything of that size regularly in any event.

 

Adam

[Ramblin Rich]

Thanks again for further information - seems I've sparked an interesting subject!

@Paul (Bartlett) - thanks for the wagon info, good of you to link your new gallery, saves some digging around! Hopefully the Ciba-Giegy tanks should be a straightforward mod of some TTAs - and I'm kind of impressed that I've shown you a traffic flow you didn't know about! Thanks for confirming the OCA "big bag" theory too, but puzzled what they were doing in Barnie yard. Do I take it that the XXAs are the TRESTROLS? I can't find them on your new site yet & I still don't know what the ferry van was for either... PS big vote of thanks for re-instating your site - must have been a big task for something we all know & assumed was always going to be available

@Brian (FC) - I knew about the chipboard factory, interesting that EWS moved some product from there - do you know where it was loaded? My grasshopper mind thinks an EWS/ Wessex era alternative running session would be nice, I thought of keeping the Barnstaple cement traffic for interest (a la Moorswater) but additional traffic would be a bonus.

@various others - the Heathfield traffic still puzzles, I also am not sure if CDAs got there & maybe a mis-caption in the John Vaughan book. But I've seen pics of Clay Tigers at Heathfield (a train of 2 Tigers with a 31 or 50 - nice!) and if they loaded ball clay into them there, then could have happened at Meeth too. As said, the cost of leasing may have baulked the company at that time and as Adam points out, the traffic amounts were quite light (but Carbis Wharf only took 1 Tiger every few weeks!)

PS - I've tried "voting up" everyones responses but I'm now getting an error message saying I've used my daily quota of positive votes - so apologies for those I've not voted for! Doesn't say how many negative votes I've got tho'....

Edited February 22, 2012 by Ramblin Rich

[Pugsley]

Another thing comes to mind. The CIBA-Geigy resin traffic was for a factory making chipboard somewhere nearby. I have a recollection that EWS took finished product from this factory for a while- would it be credible to suggest that this had happened previously?

The chipboard is made at South Molton. Now known as Norbord, previously known as Nexfor, Caberboard and probably something that I can't remember before that! I didn't realise that EWS had ever taken anything out of there, it must have been transhipped from road haulage somewhere, possibly Lapford again?

[Pugsley]

Pugsley - I'm sure the CDAs definitely left the Duchy going to Marsh Mills near Plymouth. There's a photo in 'An Illustrated History of West Country Clay Trains' of a train of CDAs crossing a viaduct in East Cornwall which is captioned as from Heathfield. Who am I to disagree with the great John Vaughan!

Ah, now you mention it CDAs to Marsh Mills rings a bell, I guess for product from Lee Moor. I still don't think they ever got as far up as Heathfield though, or if they did it was very very rare.

 

Adam - Thanks for clearing up the Meeth line length thing, it was pure supposition on my part and clearly wrong!

 

WBB Minerals, as they're now known, are still active in the Heathfield area.

[TomJ]

All this interest just goes to show we need a 'West Country Clay' forum!!!!

Suspect it would lead to me doing even more daydreaming and less modelling

[TomJ]

PS - quick minor hijack:

Can anyone tell me what livery the exGWR Fruit D vans were in by the late 70s early 80s? Would it be bauxite or BR blue? I've got a couple of kits for my steam era project and a repainted one would make a nice change

Many thanks, back to Rich's daydreaming

[Adam]

PS - quick minor hijack:

Can anyone tell me what livery the exGWR Fruit D vans were in by the late 70s early 80s? Would it be bauxite or BR blue? I've got a couple of kits for my steam era project and a repainted one would make a nice change

Many thanks, back to Rich's daydreaming

 

Rail Blue as befitted their NPCCS status. Well, somewhere under the muck they would have been at any rate. This is the point I'd normally link to Paul Bartlett's site, but I don't think that he's put those back up yet.

 

Adam

[Pennine MC]

Rail Blue as befitted their NPCCS status. Well, somewhere under the muck they would have been at any rate. This is the point I'd normally link to Paul Bartlett's site, but I don't think that he's put those back up yet.

 

 

I dont know if Paul has pics of those particular ones, but the Fruit Ds I saw used to Barnstaple in the late 70s were TDB-numbered but with a 'traffic' TOPS code

 

A bit earlier, around 1975, I saw about 20(!) TRESTROLs in Barnstaple yard (steel for Appledore shipyard), which shows that some country branchlines could see some interesting special traffic wagons.

 

I've always thought the North Devon line was in a class of its own as regards freight interest. The pics on Ken Baker's site (sadly not currently available, as mentioned earlier) are nothing short of fantastic, revealing amongst other things that Barnstaple still warranted an 08 pilot until at least 1970

I *think* you could only serve Lapford headed towards Barnstaple, so that would imply there was fertiliser traffic to Barnstaple as well....or maybe something went wrong that day!

 

I can never definitively remember this despite having operated both of Ken's renditions of the place, but I think it is indeed that way round. I will make a point of checking with him.

[Ramblin Rich]

The need to travel from Lapford to Barnstaple to run round is confirmed on this page of cyberheritage - see caption 5th from bottom of list.

I've just found this page on North Devon Railways with a difficult-to-read scan of a document regarding the withdrawal of Meeth freight (frustratingly only 1st page) - implies there would only have been around 1 modern wagon per day of traffic!

[Glorious NSE]

implies there would only have been around 1 modern wagon per day of traffic!

 

Doesn't sound much, but it's comparable to some other traffic sources which run today. For example the scrapyard at Alphington in Exeter normally loads a rake of 16 MBAs on a visit and it normally runs every other week, so 16 wagons in 14 days - not much more...

 

Okay that one doesn't need miles of rural railway line maintaining to run it, but if you're assuming that's not the only traffic then maybe not such a stretch?

[TomJ]

I suspect that it is the maintaining miles of railway that's the problem. At the end of the day one Tiger a week is probably the same as two lorries, so not even a huge environmental or traffic benefit. I'm sure there would have to be some other traffic (freight or passenger) or increased volumes of clay to justify retention - all good for the modeller. As an aside the Carbis Wharf branch survived till 1988 with just one wagon a month, but that was just a mile long and again it was the need to replace worn out track that helped kill it off

 

The more I read about the North Devon line the more it reminds me of a Southern version of some of the lines in the Scottish Highlands, and equally attractive to model

[Glorious NSE]

7 tigers a week, but yes I do agree with your point.

[DavidB-AU]

The more I read about the North Devon line the more it reminds me of a Southern version of some of the lines in the Scottish Highlands, and equally attractive to model

In more ways than one. Barnstaple and Mallaig were the last two lines to have mixed trains.

 

Cheers

David

[Fat Controller]

The ball-clay traffic would probably have disappeared within a few years, regardless of the wagons used, as the main customer base (the cheaper end of the ceramics market in the Potteries) has been reduced so much in importance. After all, Furzebrook went over to 'Tigers', but still lost the traffic. Ball clay is only used in ceramics, whereas kaolin is much more widely used.

The 'mixed' trains weren't 'mixed' in the sense of the Mallaig and Oban services, which attached fuel-oil tanks to passenger services, as far as I can see, but were passenger trains where the passenger stock was often outnumbered by parcels vans. The cement, fertilizer, and other traffic still rated a daily freight.

[slow8dirty]

Rich,

you have a PM.

 

Roundhouse, thankyou also from me for taking the time to put those Barnstaple pics in the gallery, always good to see new material.

 

Regards,

 

Matt

[hmrspaul]

Rail Blue as befitted their NPCCS status. Well, somewhere under the muck they would have been at any rate. This is the point I'd normally link to Paul Bartlett's site, but I don't think that he's put those back up yet.

 

Adam

http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/fruitd

 

Paul Bartlett

[hmrspaul]

Thanks again for further information - seems I've sparked an interesting subject!

@Paul (Bartlett) - thanks for the wagon info, good of you to link your new gallery, saves some digging around! Hopefully the Ciba-Giegy tanks should be a straightforward mod of some TTAs - and I'm kind of impressed that I've shown you a traffic flow you didn't know about! Thanks for confirming the OCA "big bag" theory too, but puzzled what they were doing in Barnie yard. Do I take it that the XXAs are the TRESTROLS? I can't find them on your new site yet & I still don't know what the ferry van was for either... PS big vote of thanks for re-instating your site - must have been a big task for something we all know & assumed was always going to be available

 

Thanks for the comment on the site revival. XXA is the trestles (trestrols are depressed in the centre like a flatrol) Unfortunately I don't have high res. scans of these so am not going to load them before doing all those that I do have high res. for. I am trying to work logically!

There are many traffics I wouldn't know about! In the 1970s there were no Google maps (OS maps were expensive and years out of date for rural areas), no books of wagon numbers, no internet sites with non passenger rail timetables. Personally I didn't belong to societies which could have helped such as IRS or RCTS (not sure why not!). When I started the only book of railway maps was the IA pre-grouping one. So, the group of us slowly built up knowledge of what was where and what was accessible. But it was very hit and miss - especially in areas like the far far south west. Dave Larkin got down that way but not many others. I had a mum in law near Yeovil so got to know some of the localities around there - but as an example it took several years, and pure fluke to realise that there was anything at Radstock (a wagon works).

 

Paul Bartlett

[Ramblin Rich]

Thanks for continuing input, folks.

 

The ball-clay traffic would probably have disappeared within a few years, regardless of the wagons used, as the main customer base (the cheaper end of the ceramics market in the Potteries) has been reduced so much in importance. After all, Furzebrook went over to 'Tigers', but still lost the traffic. Ball clay is only used in ceramics, whereas kaolin is much more widely used.

Thanks Brian - presumably the same thing happened to the Heathfield traffic. I wonder if there were dedicated "Tigers" for ball clay - I'm under the impression that it's not a dry powder like china clay, but stickier stuff - after all there were dedicated 'hoods for ball clay.

 

 

Roundhouse, thankyou also from me for taking the time to put those Barnstaple pics in the gallery, always good to see new material.

 

Regards,

 

Matt

 

I Second that....

[roundhouse]

I have added some photos taken at Barnstaple in 1985 to my RM Web gallery. I don't have any good shots of Lapford unfortunately. I will add some more photos of the line over the next few days

 

Ian

[Ramblin Rich]

Back tracking a little:

The 'mixed' trains weren't 'mixed' in the sense of the Mallaig and Oban services, which attached fuel-oil tanks to passenger services, as far as I can see, but were passenger trains where the passenger stock was often outnumbered by parcels vans. The cement, fertilizer, and other traffic still rated a daily freight.

 

 

Actually the notes attached to the timetable which Matt linked to

 

ND TT 1980

 

Says as follows:

The 0750 Barns was a mixed train - the only other one on BR was the 1630 Fort William to Mallaig and return. Formed SK, BCK, and up to 5 mostly empty vans off 0300 St Davids and also any empty Vanfits not cleared from Barnstaple and Torrington by the previous night's 1915 Barnstaple to Exeter Riverside freight.

 

So in 1980 at least, it was a true mixed train...

 

EDIT _ or do Vanfits count as passenger "XP" stock ? Unsure of the nomenclature here...

2nd EDIT _ to correct link!

[Pennine MC]

So in 1980 at least, it was a true mixed train...

 

EDIT _ or do Vanfits count as passenger "XP" stock ? Unsure of the nomenclature here...

 

I cant see what the TT says Rich cos the link doesnt work, but my understanding of a 'true mixed' is one including unfitted vehicles and thus requiring a goods brake in rear of said vehicles.

 

As you correctly surmise, Vanfits were XP-rated - hence there's no significant difference in that sense to a longer NPCCS-rated van like a CCT. I think such short wheelbase stock would have necessitated a speed restriction, though.