Castle Aching

[Nearholmer]

One thing I spotted in reading old accident reports recently was the number of instances of harseboxes being loaded and unloaded at passenger platforms, and instances of perishables traffic, including fresh meat at a London passenger terminal, ditto.

 

I get the impression that if the vehicle was fit to travel in a passenger train, it was fair game to unload it at the passenger platform. In theory the unloading or loading process would be pretty swift, so not an obstruction to other uses of the platform, but it seems that it wasn't always swift enough to ensure that the vehicles weren't rammed by a train before it was completed!

 

Kevin

[Caley Jim]

Can't fool me Jim. That's a model. Look how the backscene follows the pitch of the roof in the first photo...

That's the shoulder of Tinto!

 

Jim

[Nick Holliday]

This is another good point.  A side loading dock and a loading bank are two different things.

 

I am struggling to envisage how I fit in all these elements

 

1. End loading dock

2. Side loading dock e.g. for horse boxes and perishables in vans/NPC that use side doors

3. Cattle/livestock dock - same height but with the addition of pens and, importantly, drainage, so a dedicate area for livestock traffic would be best.

4. Loading bank - allowing carts to be topped into wagons.

 

The first 3 really need to be on the short siding.  Logically the loading bank can, probably should, be elsewhere. 

 

Other facilities need to be:

 

1. Coal siding (perhaps a mileage siding?) where coal, coke, lime, feed, seed etc is unloaded.  The various local merchants would have offices and pens etc along this siding, along the back fence of the yard, but essentially it's unloaded without any platform bank or staithes.

2. General merchandise - the traditional arrangement of small goods shed with platform, and yard crane for unloading in the open.

Your first set of facilities could all be on one short siding, as at Fittleworth in Sussex

https://www.scalefour.org/layouts/fittleworth/fittleworth05.html where there was an end loading dock combined with the side loading bank, a cattle dock, and, to top it all, the goods shed. Can't help with your loading bank for tipping into wagons. Only really necessary if you have a regular traffic which requires this, sugar beet, aggregates etc. As for your "other" facilities, there is no need to have a fixed yard crane. Many smaller yards didn't have one, and a small mobile crane would be delivered to the yard in advance of the load which required unloading. Cambrian do a neat kit for a GWR version of such a merchandise crane.

[Northroader]

That's the shoulder of Tinto!

Jim

I used to watch him with the Lone Ranger, didn’t know he was Scots?

[Caley Jim]

I used to watch him with the Lone Ranger, didn’t know he was Scots?

Methinks routier du nord requires to go to a certain well known optician! Can't tell his 'i's' from his 'o's'! :-)

 

Jim

Edited May 1, 2018 by Caley Jim

[Northroader]

Ooh,..Aye..

Edited May 1, 2018 by Northroader

[DonB]

Nick Holliday Wrote:-

 

"Your first set of facilities could all be on one short siding, as at Fittleworth in Sussex
https://www.scalefour.org/layouts/fittleworth/fittleworth05.html where there was an end loading dock combined with the side loading bank, a cattle dock, and, to top it all, the goods shed. Can't help with your loading bank for tipping into wagons. Only really necessary if you have a regular traffic which requires this, sugar beet, aggregates etc. As for your "other" facilities, there is no need to have a fixed yard crane. Many smaller yards didn't have one, and a small mobile crane would be delivered to the yard in advance of the load which required unloading. Cambrian do a neat kit for a GWR version of such a merchandise crane."

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure about the mobile crane availability in CA's time frame (1900 / 05 ). Virtually no motor vehicles at that time, and I don't think that a horse drawn unit ever existed ?? 

Even quite small goods yards had a fixed swivelling crane one, local to me, existed at Rolleston-on-Dove where a small Heritage group have tidied up the disused trackbed and exposed the stone/ brick foot of the swivel crane. A model (EM gauge ) of the station made by Clive Baker appears at local exhibitions see:-  www.rolleston-on-dove-station.co.uk

 

Strangely, Rolleston does not appear in the "Disused Stations" Web site

Edited May 1, 2018 by DonB

[Nearholmer]

They were on railway wagons, not road vehicles.

 

I used to work with a group of guys who had been the crew of the last one on BR(S). They were the “mobile heavy lifting gang”, whose crane went wherever there was no fixed crane, or the fixed crane couldn’t cope with a consignment. As work dried up in the late 1960s their remaining jobs were mostly for ‘the engineers’, so in the early 1970s they transferred from ‘traffic’ to ‘engineering’ headcount. Their “small” crane was still a manually operated one at that stage, but by the time I got involved in the late 1970s it had been replaced by an Atlas diesel hydraulic with telescopic jib. We also had a 75T ex breakdown crane, I think that was steam originally, but it was diesel by then, which was used for long-reach lifting of heavy transformers. Meanwhile, the PWay still had steam cranes in the PAD, one of which I helped grease the ropes on and do a boiler-washout on once.

 

So, I think the WNR could have one mobile crane, instead of numerous fixed ones, as did some Light Railways.

[Edwardian]

Your first set of facilities could all be on one short siding, as at Fittleworth in Sussex

https://www.scalefour.org/layouts/fittleworth/fittleworth05.html where there was an end loading dock combined with the side loading bank, a cattle dock, and, to top it all, the goods shed. Can't help with your loading bank for tipping into wagons. Only really necessary if you have a regular traffic which requires this, sugar beet, aggregates etc. As for your "other" facilities, there is no need to have a fixed yard crane. Many smaller yards didn't have one, and a small mobile crane would be delivered to the yard in advance of the load which required unloading. Cambrian do a neat kit for a GWR version of such a merchandise crane.

 

That is also a nice illustration of the point raised earlier; the unloading dock higher than the passenger platform.

 

I am assuming coaching stock all retains its lower footboards at this date, so no need to raise the passenger platform height.

[Compound2632]

If there's a goods shed, there would be one or two fixed cranes inside (number depending on size of shed) and unlikely to be an outside one.

 

This photo shows how to go about unloading in the absence of a platform. Note that the flatbed lorry is about the same height above rail level as the wagon floor. Picking the first example that came to hand, a drawing of a "standard" Midland Railway cattle pen shows the platform at 3'6" above rail level.

 

Passenger platforms could be as low as 1'6" above rail at the rail side at stations built as late as the 1860s but there was usually a slope towards the track; this meant that raising to 2'6" or 3'0" could often be done without altering the height at the side furthest from the track - simply reversing the slope. 

 

Lower footboards didn't start to disappear until post Great War-ish, by and large - large-scale removal from older stock seems to have been in the 20s - at least on the Midland / LMS.

[Nick Holliday]

That is also a nice illustration of the point raised earlier; the unloading dock higher than the passenger platform.

 

I am assuming coaching stock all retains its lower footboards at this date, so no need to raise the passenger platform height.

Fittleworth station was actually a late arrival on the line, being opened in 1889, and the platform height was fairly standard and remained unchanged until closure.

What I had problems with when building the layout was the great difference between the platform level and the height of the end loading dock. The former was about three feet above rail level, the dock some four foot / four foot three above, with very little space to grade between them.

[Hroth]

They were on railway wagons, not road vehicles.

...

 

So, I think the WNR could have one mobile crane, instead of numerous fixed ones, as did some Light Railways.

Triang Hornby used do a rail-mounted small crane (R127).

 

 

A bit too modern for Castle Aching?

Edited May 1, 2018 by Hroth

[James Harrison]

Or there's the Cambrian Models GWR 6-ton crane. 

Edited May 1, 2018 by James Harrison

[Bill_J]

This: http://www.igg.org.uk/  is a very informative site for general information on goods facilities and handling.Follow the 'Goods And Not So Goods' link. 

 

Regards

 

Edited: to correct link details...

Edited May 1, 2018 by Bill_J

[Tom Burnham]

They were on railway wagons, not road vehicles.

 

I used to work with a group of guys who had been the crew of the last one on BR(S). They were the “mobile heavy lifting gang”, whose crane went wherever there was no fixed crane, or the fixed crane couldn’t cope with a consignment. As work dried up in the late 1960s their remaining jobs were mostly for ‘the engineers’, so in the early 1970s they transferred from ‘traffic’ to ‘engineering’ headcount. Their “small” crane was still a manually operated one at that stage, but by the time I got involved in the late 1970s it had been replaced by an Atlas diesel hydraulic with telescopic jib. We also had a 75T ex breakdown crane, I think that was steam originally, but it was diesel by then, which was used for long-reach lifting of heavy transformers. Meanwhile, the PWay still had steam cranes in the PAD, one of which I helped grease the ropes on and do a boiler-washout on once.

 

So, I think the WNR could have one mobile crane, instead of numerous fixed ones, as did some Light Railways.

The Kent & East Sussex had a fixed crane on a round brick base at Tenterden Town (it's still there) but otherwise used two rail-mounted hand cranes, one ordered new from R.Y. Pickering, and the other a 6-wheeler, second-hand from the Midland.  There's a photo of one of them being used to load tree trunks on to Southern Railway bolster wagons at Frittenden Road.  Personally, I'd have thought Castle Aching might have run to a fixed crane, with a rail-mounted crane mouldering waiting in a siding until it's needed at a less important place...

[RedGemAlchemist]

Triang Hornby used do a rail-mounted small crane (R127).

 

r127.jpg

 

A bit too modern for Castle Aching?

I actually have one of these in the KLR's stock roster!

It's used as part of the track maintenance train.

[Annie]

I had one of those.......

 

This is the crane that decorates one of the goods yards on my digital trainset layout.  I say 'decorate' because it is entirely non-working and mostly sleeps at the end of a siding.  It would be the kind of thing that could be modelled from all manner of odds and ends found in the scrapbox.

 

[Hroth]

A small mobile crane (steam or hand-powered) would also require a bolster wagon or a 3 plank wagon to support and protect the jib when in transit and also carry supporting legs, you don't want your crane to topple while lifting, and at least a dozen sacks of coal to fuel the boiler if it was powered.

 

A static yard crane could be something simple with a fixed jib like this canal crane at Ellesmere Basin.

 

 

A similar mechanism on a wagon chassis with an extra winding drum to raise and lower the jib would be suitable for a basic mobile crane.  A shorter jib would also be in order!

 

In terms of scale, the axel for the large top gear is about head height. If you're about 6ft tall....

Edited May 2, 2018 by Hroth

[TheQ]

This was the crane used At Ludgershall (Wilts) that my Grandfather will have used, it was originally outside the goods shed..

http://swindon-cricklade-railway.org/survivors.php

[wagonman]

 

 

Lower footboards didn't start to disappear until post Great War-ish, by and large - large-scale removal from older stock seems to have been in the 20s - at least on the Midland / LMS.

 

 

GWR stock that was likely to work through to Ilfracombe (LSWR) had its lower footboards removed rather earlier. The latest issue of the GWSG journal 'Pannier' has a photo of a clerestory diner at Barnstaple, sans lower footboards, in 1911. The LSWR also imposed a length limit on GWR coaches running over that line.

[Edwardian]

GWR stock that was likely to work through to Ilfracombe (LSWR) had its lower footboards removed rather earlier. The latest issue of the GWSG journal 'Pannier' has a photo of a clerestory diner at Barnstaple, sans lower footboards, in 1911. The LSWR also imposed a length limit on GWR coaches running over that line.

 

I would be very grateful for a scan of this article, if possible.  I am interested in the GW coaches that worked through to Ilfracombe.

 

IIRC this was, and remained, common.  I am not sure that GW locos worked through at this stage (a GW 4-4-0 was noted running through during WW1), but GW locos were probably more common later, after the larger TT was installed at Ilfracombe.  

[corneliuslundie]

This is the Bishop's Castle Railway crane, courtesy of Albyn Austin. It usually seems to have been coupled to one plank wagon 59 shown in the second photo (which happens to have a fixed derrick in the background) and that wagon has no jib support.

 

 

Jonathan

[Hroth]

This is the Bishop's Castle Railway crane, courtesy of Albyn Austin. It usually seems to have been coupled to one plank wagon 59 shown in the second photo (which happens to have a fixed derrick in the background) and that wagon has no jib support.

 

BCR Crane 1.jpg

BCR flat Wagon.jpg

 

Jonathan

The rail-mounted crane appears to be stayed in the same manner as the canal-side one and probably be for use in that particular yard only. I think the wagon load of ballast is just coincidental and nothing to do with the crane, unless the crane is to be used to help empty it!.  The crane in the background to the wagon is for lifting some reasonably heavy items!

[Guy Rixon]

Years ago, why I holidayed on Alderney as a child, they had a rail-mounted steam-crane for maintaining the breakwater at the main harbour. It was not a large machine, but was the kind that could move slowly under its own power. The harbour maintainers used it for lowering cages of rocks to protect the foundations of the breakwater. It would make a lovely model and I wonder if I still have any of the photographs.

[Edwardian]

Years ago, why I holidayed on Alderney as a child, they had a rail-mounted steam-crane for maintaining the breakwater at the main harbour. It was not a large machine, but was the kind that could move slowly under its own power. The harbour maintainers used it for lowering cages of rocks to protect the foundations of the breakwater. It would make a lovely model and I wonder if I still have any of the photographs.

 

A number of pictures on the web: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=alderney++railway+crane&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH8_fK5-baAhUpLMAKHUl8BpkQsAQILw&biw=1920&bih=911#imgrc=_&spf=1525256599387

 

An interesting article on the breakwater here: https://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/52/Alderney.htm

 

According to this site, this is a Cowan & Sheldon steam crane built in 1944 that arrived in Alderney in 1946, having seen service in Aden: http://www.onlineweb.com/rail/photos/alderney_2005/alderney_2005.htm