coal yards in the 1970's

[The Ghost of IKB]

I'm just about to start my new layout, set in the mid 70's in the North West.  I want to have some excuse to use my 20 ton coal wagons and wondered what facilities existed for unloading coal wagons at small depot's or sidings.  I have only 6' x 2' to play with and am using EM gauge track.

 

Has anyone any photos or plans of suitable depots etc that existed then?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[TheSignalEngineer]

By the 1970s most domestic coal in the West Midlands was delivered to Coal Concentralion Depots in 21T hoppers. It was conveyored onto the stacks then loaded for bulk delivery. 

 

One of the last places I remember in the North West was the Deepdale Branch at Preston, which closed about 1994

Edited April 12, 2014 by TheSignalEngineer

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Similar thought, you need to be in a somewhat remote North West location, big enough to have a yard, but sufficiently far from a major urban centre which would service a wide area from a hopper served coal concentration depot. In the North West Skipton was an example, remember seeing 16 tonners loaded with coal in the yard there in the late seventies, and it looked like the handling would be manual bagging for road deliveries, with a tractor shovel to organise the ground stacks.

[bennyboy]

There was Chadderton Coal Depot just North of Manchester. I don't know what it was like in the 70s, but these 80s pictures in the links should give you an idea of a typical facility.

 

http://www.chaddy-goods.co.uk/

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/62261-chadderton-ccd/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/actonwellsjunction/6041365513/

[The Ghost of IKB]

Thanks for that, especially the links to chadderton.  the minimalist nature of the trains and run down facilities are the kind of feeling I want to capture.   Need to find more detailed pic's of coal unloading/drops though.  I think this is going to need every building scratch built.

Edited April 13, 2014 by The Ghost of IKB

[flyingsignalman]

Gobowen station, north of Shrewsbury, had a small coal depot which used the old Oswestry bay as one of its two sidings. The depot survived quite late but has now closed.

[Silver Sidelines]

Hello ?

 

Just catching up with questions and answers.  Here is a link to a scan of a slide that I took in 1963 showing the entrance to the 'coal depot' at Kirkcudbright showing some 16ton wagons being emptied of coal onto the ground. ( Kirkcudbright is not a milllion miles from north west England.)

 

Regards

 

Ray

[The Ghost of IKB]

Thanks for that Ray, thats the kind of thing I need more pictures of and info on.  And thanks to Keith too. Do you have any more info on Gobowen?  Did it use coal drops? And do you have any links to photos?

 

Thanks for all the help everyone

[Fat Controller]

Not the North-West, but the concept's similar:- https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/sets/72157626883846203/ This yard stayed open for domestic coal until the 1984 miners' strike. There was a 'flat' (no drops) yard at Blaydon that lasted until then as well. The North-Eastern used drops wherever it could, but there were quite a few yards which used 'conventional' coal wagons.

Though a lot of the big urban areas had Coal Concentration Depots, they were by no means universal. A quick look at Baker's BR Atlas for 1980 shows depots in the north-west at Burnley, Rawenstall, Halliwell, Southport, Blackpool North, Corkicle and Barrow (two depots)

[Steve O.]

Hi,

Other ideas/photos from this thread:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/68853-domestic-coal-wagons-coal-yards-in-the-80s/?fromsearch=1

Cheers, Steve.

[flyingsignalman]

Some photos of Gobowen coal yard taken 2/3/2003

 

The entrance to the yard looking from the down platform.

 

The storage bunkers.

 

The hoppers in the sidings, looking in them I thought that they resembled the interior of 21t hoppers (with the sides cut off).

 

Showing the relationship to the station.

 

Looking towards Shrewsbury, coal sidings to right.

 

General view of yard.

Edited April 13, 2014 by flyingsignalman

[The Ghost of IKB]

Thanks for the pictures Keith that's great, especially looking down onto the chutes - something I ve not seen before.   but what are those things that look like striped bags (or even cushions!) lying between the rails - they look very odd.

Also the coal storage bunkers look similar to those at Shrewsbury, is this a standard design, LMS or GWR or BR I wonder?

[flyingsignalman]

I think the bags/cushions are either to make sure the coal goes in the hopper or, looking at the water lying around, to stop debris being washed into the hopper and so contaminating the coal. 

The depot at Gobowen opened about 1971 replacing the coal yard at Oswestry IIRC.

The storage bunkers and the equipment associated I think are "off the shelf" standard items.

Birkenhead North had similar free standing hoppers.

[18B]

Always thought this was an interesting coal yard - Buxton

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/actonwellsjunction/7949382418/

[The Ghost of IKB]

I like the look of Buxton myself, this view from the opposite angle is better I think, lots of grime and piles of coal about the place, and particularly because it has 16 toners in there rather than the 21 hop's - which I don't think there's a model of is there?

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/26690797@N02/7190378782/

 

Also in the first picture there seems to be a DMU car attached to the 25, I wonder what that was doing in the goods yard?

[The Bigbee Line]

I passed out as a guard at Ashford, Kent, in 1981. I worked 16 and 21 ton minfits to Ashford and Canterbury West (from Tonbridge on the 0748).

Ashford then had a pit and unloaded installed.

Edited April 16, 2014 by The Bigbee Line

[Fat Controller]

I like the look of Buxton myself, this view from the opposite angle is better I think, lots of grime and piles of coal about the place, and particularly because it has 16 toners in there rather than the 21 hop's - which I don't think there's a model of is there?

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/26690797@N02/7190378782/

 

Also in the first picture there seems to be a DMU car attached to the 25, I wonder what that was doing in the goods yard?

There are some 21t hoppers about; Hornby Dublo did a welded one, which passed into the Wrenn range. Airfix (then both Dapol and Hornby) did one of the rivetted ones. Parkside do the LNER original and both original and rebodied BR ones.

[Guest bri.s]

In a conversation with my uncle the other day and we got to wondering about penistone goods , the goods yard had coal drops and infact there still there along with the goods shed although the drops have seen better days . Anyways I asked him if they used to deliver coal to the drops and he said he'd only seen coal delivered there in 16 tonners , and the drops never used so I was wondering was there a date where coal drops stopped being used nationally or was it just because of the what condition they were in . Penistone goods received trains and coal right up untill the end of the woodhead route closed and (i think after) .

And at Barnsley station there was a make shift coal depot at the back of the Sheffield bound platform on what used to be the engine shed I think it had a couple of sidings again it was all 16 tonners that delivered the coal .

 

Brian

[cobbler]

The coal yard at Northampton behind the station lasted until the very early 1980,s. it consisted of two dead end sidings with the bagging plant in between. I joined the railway in 1982 on a youth training scheme and on work experience was allowed to walk round the yard checking if the wagons were empty and taking the numbers to pass on to TOPS. They handled fitted and unfitted 16 and 21 tonne mineral wagons, Mco, Mcv, Mdo and Mdv.

They were unloaded by hand into the digger bucket which moved the coal to the bagging plant.

Each siding had several upright sleepers sunk into the ground and spaced out for the wagon doors to be rested on to allow the coal merchant to stand on and shovel coal out

The loads would come in each day on the trip from Bescot. The merchant was Wiggins Coal, they also had a small weighbridge with a brick office next to the road entrance into the yard. The sidings are still called the coal yard but today handle stone.

 

Richard

[edcayton]

Does anyone know when Stevenage coal yard ceased to be rail served? When I moved to my first house in 1984 it had solid fuel heating and I got my coalite(?) from Charringtons who certainly still used the "wharf", but I don't know how the coal was delivered to there.

 

The wharf is now used by LaFarge Aggregates as a "virtual quarry" and gets large deliveries by the self discharge train.

 

Ed

[Rivercider]

In a conversation with my uncle the other day and we got to wondering about penistone goods , the goods yard had coal drops and infact there still there along with the goods shed although the drops have seen better days . Anyways I asked him if they used to deliver coal to the drops and he said he'd only seen coal delivered there in 16 tonners , and the drops never used so I was wondering was there a date where coal drops stopped being used nationally or was it just because of the what condition they were in . Penistone goods received trains and coal right up untill the end of the woodhead route closed and (i think after) .

And at Barnsley station there was a make shift coal depot at the back of the Sheffield bound platform on what used to be the engine shed I think it had a couple of sidings again it was all 16 tonners that delivered the coal .

 

Brian

Here is a wintry scene at Barnsley in 1981, are these the sidings you are referring to, with what appears to be a solitary 16 tonner? 

 

The 14.36 Sheffield - Leeds service calls at Barnsley formed by class 114 set E50003 and E56019, 26/2/81

 

cheers

[Guest bri.s]

Here is a wintry scene at Barnsley in 1981, are these the sidings you are referring to, with what appears to be a solitary 16 tonner? 

 

scan0195a.jpg

The 14.36 Sheffield - Leeds service calls at Barnsley formed by class 114 set E50003 and E56019, 26/2/81

 

cheers

That's the sidings , nice picture .

My uncle has a picture of the wagons being dropped of by a class 08 it was a trip working from wath yard.

The train normally consisted of coal wagons destined for summer lane milk depot and penistone goods depot.

He's got pictures of the coal wagons further down the siding right at the back of the platform .

 

Brian

[Fat Controller]

The death-knell for the majority of small coal depots that had survived into the beginning of the 1980s was sounded by the miners' strike. Initially, many merchants took their supplies by road, but the number of customers going over to gas or other forms of heating would mean many wouldn't survive beyond the middle of the decade. The diminishing importance of local merchants was brought home to me by our local one in Kent; when we moved down here in the early 1990s, he ran a couple of Bedford TKs and a Transit pick-up for smaller drops, each of which would have a driver and mate. Now he has a couple of Hyndai light trucks, with just a driver.

I don't recollect hearing that there was a policy of taking drops out of use if there were clients for them (Hexham used drops until rail deliveries ceased); most likely, the ones at Barnsley had become unsafe.

Another driving factor for the abandonment of much domestic coal traffic was BR's movement towards air-braked services- there was no provision for anything but hopper or containerised coal, scarcely relevant to merchants handling perhaps one two wagons per week.

[woodyfox]

The death-knell for the majority of small coal depots that had survived into the beginning of the 1980s was sounded by the miners' strike. Initially, many merchants took their supplies by road, but the number of customers going over to gas or other forms of heating would mean many wouldn't survive beyond the middle of the decade. The diminishing importance of local merchants was brought home to me by our local one in Kent; when we moved down here in the early 1990s, he ran a couple of Bedford TKs and a Transit pick-up for smaller drops, each of which would have a driver and mate. Now he has a couple of Hyndai light trucks, with just a driver.

I don't recollect hearing that there was a policy of taking drops out of use if there were clients for them (Hexham used drops until rail deliveries ceased); most likely, the ones at Barnsley had become unsafe.

Another driving factor for the abandonment of much domestic coal traffic was BR's movement towards air-braked services- there was no provision for anything but hopper or containerised coal, scarcely relevant to merchants handling perhaps one two wagons per week.

The end of most coal yards was the insistence by BR for customers to adopt air brake stock for Speedlink tripping by the early 80's. A concession on scrap metal and coal lasted until 84. Most customers had to provide their own stock or walk away. Most did the latter. To blame the miners is frankly rather absurd and panders (even after all this time) to the Thatcherite propaganda of the time.

[Fat Controller]

The end of most coal yards was the insistence by BR for customers to adopt air brake stock for Speedlink tripping by the early 80's. A concession on scrap metal and coal lasted until 84. Most customers had to provide their own stock or walk away. Most did the latter. To blame the miners is frankly rather absurd and panders (even after all this time) to the Thatcherite propaganda of the time.

I wasn't blaming the miners (at the time our house served as a collection point for monies and food for a miners' support group) ,rather that the combination of a year-long absence of domestically-produced coal, and BR's insistence on a purely air-braked freight network, signed the death-warrant on most coal depots. If the miners' strike hadn't happened then the demise of the small coal depot might have taken a year or two longer, but it would have happened.