Cornish Speedlink trip workings 1980s/90s

[The Pilotman]

As there seem to be lots of people here with lots of knowledge about Cornwall and it's railways, I am hoping that someone can shed a bit of light on how the various trip workings in the Speedlink era were organised. I have searched through this forum and a number of books already but cannot find the sort of information I am after. For the period I am interested in, there seem to be three Speedlink arrivals at BZ (at approx. 0550, 0740 and 1215) and three departures (0930, 1520 and 2210). How would the traffic on these arrivals be tripped to the various destinations, and how would the loaded wagons be tripped into BZ for the various Speedlink departures? In other words, what might a typical day look like for BZ's fleet of 37s? Obviously some of them would be engaged on the Carne Point trains, and on that subject, how was that work programmed? I am guessing that a number of locos would set off at the start of the early shift to various points and somehow manage to get back for a shift change at some point. I suspect those in the know will be thinking, well, there was no such thing as a typical day, but if anyone can provide some information on how it all happened, I would be most grateful.

[cornish trains jez]

Hi,

 

I'll also be interested in this info as I am currently modelling Par station. The link below has some useful info that could be a good start.

 

http://www.kalyr.com/railways/CornwallSpeedlinks.html

 

Best regards,

 

Jeremy

[The Pilotman]

Thanks for the link, some useful details there. I have just had my loft converted and am about to embark on what I hope won't turn out to be a too ambitious project to build a layout based on a combination of Par and Lostwithiel. It would be nice to be able to run some semblance of a realistic freight operation, although that is many months away at present...

[Rivercider]

Although the train service altered over the years, and the local trip working would be adjusted each day to cope with traffic requirements

there would still be an identifiable pattern to the services as many of the locations were forwarding traffic on a regular basis.

Indeed that was supposed to be one of the strengths of the Speedlink network, as most terminals were served on a regular basis

it should be relatively straightforward for a regular forwarder (say) ECC at Goonbarrow to send a trial wagon load  to a regular receiver (say) Mossend Freight Depot

as there was already a set of connecting services in place, no additional trains or trips would need to be arranged.

 

I have a copy of the List of Trains run in connection with Speedlink dated 17th May 1982, this just precedes (I think) the introduction

of the clay tigers on the St Blazey - Cliffe Vale service but I can work out the identity of some of the Speedlink arrivals and departures you mention.

 

6B42 23.45 Severn Tunnel Junction - St Blazey due 05.52

6B39 05.50 Severn Tunnel Junction - St Blazey due 13.30 (this later became an extension of 6V93 09.05 Mossend - Severn Tunnel Junction and went through to St Bz)

6V70 09.xx  Cliffe Vale - St Blazey due  

 

6C39 09.05 St Blazey - Severn Tunnel Junction

6C43 15.15 St Blazey - Severn Tunnel Junction

6M72  22.00 St Blazey - Cliffe Vale

 

To feed in and out of these services there would have been regular Speedlink trips to and from Burngullow/Drinnick Mill/Goonbarrow and other locations

as well as the St Blazey yard pilot making visits to Par Harbour and Pontsmill .

There are a few photos on my Flickr site of the trips ('1980s W.R. Cornwall' album) , but as I did not possess a local trip working booklet sorry I can not identify any headcodes or booked times, 

 

cheers 

[The Stationmaster]

We had a very amusing little discourse at the consultation meeting to close the Speedlink network.  A staff rep from Penzance asked 'what about the trawler fuel?' which prompted quizzical looks all around the room so the Staff Side Secretary of Sectional Council C asked him to elaborate and we then got a more explicit form with a reference to 'the Newlyn trawler fuel' which still left every body puzzled and most of them looking at me in anticipation of an answer.  But neither I nor the Speedlink management rep knew a thing about it, we'd simply never heard of it.

 

So I was despatched to make enquiries and duly ran to earth the relevant man in the Petroleum business sector - who had never heard of it either, and he'd been in the job for some years.  Anyway he too began some delving and came back to me with the message that he couldn't trace any such flow in the preceding 8 years and that no one in Petroleum had ever heard of it.  So back I went to the meeting and gave the answer - at which point the bloke from Penzance chimed in to say 'well it was a long time back and it only happened a couple of times' - so you can cross that one off the Speedlink list.

 

However one that does need to be added - and which also continued on the subsequent Tiger Rail train which replaced Speedlink out of Cornwall - was regular forwardings of loaded vans from Fitzgerald Lighting at Bodmin which were loaded to vehicles standing on the branch somewhere short of the station and yard.

[The Pilotman]

Thanks for the replies so far. This may be going into too much detail for anyone to recall but I'm interested in things like whether there would be enough traffic for trip workings to be formed of the first arrival at BZ, or would they wait for the second arrival before dispatching the first trips. Also, would the first up Speedlink departure be formed of wagons tripped into BZ that morning or would it be traffic that had arrived too late the day before to be accommodated? I shall go and have a look at your Flickr photos now Rivercider.

[Rivercider]

Thanks for the replies so far. This may be going into too much detail for anyone to recall but I'm interested in things like whether there would be enough traffic for trip workings to be formed of the first arrival at BZ, or would they wait for the second arrival before dispatching the first trips. Also, would the first up Speedlink departure be formed of wagons tripped into BZ that morning or would it be traffic that had arrived too late the day before to be accommodated? I shall go and have a look at your Flickr photos now Rivercider.

My guess, and as you say it was a long time ago, is that 6C39 was a lighter loaded train, possibly with traffic left off 6C43 from the previous night,

remember it also called at Tavistock Junction to attach (clay from Marsh Mills etc) Exeter Riverside to attach, and later Taunton to attach (cider)

6C43 would take much of that days loadings, and also might include some Cliffe Vale traffic worked up to Exeter if 6M72 was expected to be heavy

as there was a weight limit over the Cornish and South Devon banks, the clay tigers would then attach to 6M72 at Exeter later that night.

6M72 would then be made up of the rest of the Cliffe Vale clay traffic,

 

cheers 

[Rivercider]

I have looked through my photos and found another shot of a Speedlink  service in the west,

the photo is of 6C39 approaching Plymouth and traffic includes 4 PRAs of clay from Ponts Mill to Corpach and 2 clay tigers.

45127 with 6C39 the 09.15 St Blazey - Severn Tunnel Junction at Plymouth 8/3/83. 

 

Although 6C39 was not a Speedlink trunk train it was one of the principle feeder services

and as such had booked connections at Severn Tunnel Junction to a number of trunk trains:-

6S78 to Mossend

6E88 to Whitemoor via Leicester and Peterborough

6E94 to  Immingham via Worcester Toton Scunthorpe and Doncaster

6O50 to Dover via Acton and Hoo

6S97 to Mossend via Warrington and Carlisle

6M78 to Aintree via Halewood

 

cheers

[winterbournecm]

The mention of class 37s is interesting. In the period you're discussing, the 5 or 6 class 37s were mainly kept West of Exeter. The prime movers for the long distance traffic was type 4s. The class 37s were busy with the various clay hood duties, though did, of course, potter around Carbis, Drinninck and such with Tiger traffic too. Even the far west pick up freight for Chacewater cement was seldom a type 3. The class 45/46 & 47s did get some local turns whilst around BZ - even on the hoods between mainline duties.

[Rivercider]

Moving slightly off topic as these refer to the 1970s, but here are 3 pages from the local 1975 trip booklet.

This will give you some idea of how the local clay working to Fowey (Carne Point) was organised.

Some of our Cornish correspondents may be able to confirm but I would imagine the clay trip programme would have been

broadly similar up until the withdrawal of the clayhoods and their replacement by the CDAs in the early/mid 1980s.

The class 25s (trips 5 - 9) were replaced by 37s, and other type 4 locos were also involved in some of the work.

 

Extracts from the St Blazey local trip booklet dated 7th July 1975 

 

cheers

Edited May 8, 2014 by Rivercider

[The Pilotman]

That's really great information, thank you! I had assumed that there would be early and late shifts out of St.Blazey (0600-1400 and 1400-2200) but it looks like there were some much earlier starts involved. That will be a great help in trying to devise some sort of realistic operation in the absence of anything more recent. Thanks again.  

[The Pilotman]

I've been looking at lots of pictures from various sources to get some idea of which sorts of wagons were used on the various flows in Cornwall. Would I be right in saying that the china clay slurry traffic (be it silver bullets, Clayliner TTAs, Clan TTAs or Crosfield TCAs always originated from Burngullow? I can't find any pictures of these sorts of wagons on any of the other branch lines. Thanks.

[Tim H]

Going from memory here, the pattern in the late 80s and early 90s there was always a trip down to Burngullow & Parkindillick in the morning (used to follow the Sleeper from Par) that connected out of the overnight Speedlink from Exeter. which returned to St Blazey around lunchtime. The loco would often work a rake of CDAs to Lostwithiel and back mid-morning

 

There was a second trip that ran as required in the afternoon, leaving St Blazey at about 2pm and returning at around 4, and a final train to west Cornwall (Truro and Penzance) leaving in the evening coming back late at night.

 

Occasionally you'd see the odd wagon attached to a local CDA set to save an additional trip. In this case it would often run via Lostwithiel and back to save detaching it at Par.

[TomJ]

There was definitely slurry loaded at Par in the early 90s - couple of photos in JV books

[Kaolin2FS]

Just found this very useful thread whilst doing some researching. Does anyone happen to have equivalent trip working diagrams for St Blazey engines for the late 80s/early 90s at all please? I've got a few WTT Section PFs for the main diagrams but, in common with the OP, am trying to find more detail about the trip workings for maximum realism. Rivercider's 1975 diagrams are a great starting point but I expect things would have changed quite a bit in the intervening 10-15 years. Tim H's comments above are very useful and any similar information in the same vein (or redirection towards other threads I might have missed) would be greatly appreciated.

Graham