Coal deliveries on branch lines

[doilum]

A click on Google classic lorry has great images of the Bedford K type and the Austin/ Morris FG 700 both popular in their time with coal merchants. From the mid 60s the Ford Transit became a favourite flat bed . Smokeless products were often delivered in a 10 tonner with a hopper body. The driver would fill the bags outside the customers house.

[doilum]

14 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

From the age of 15 until I finished college I used to do farm work as a summer vac job. This was the late sixties and early seventies and the first bits of 'Elf and Sadie' were coming in. One of these was to ban manhandling of grain and other sacks of over 1cwt. Two and a half hundredweight was not unknown and the older guys dismissively referred to 1cwt sacks as "boy's sizes"

Remember those well! It took two puny students to balance one on a sack trolley and the you tried to avoid catching a wobbly wheel in a broken floor board. And I haven't started on the dust, smell or weevils........

[doilum]

9 hours ago, brossard said:

Right, I can get the balance weight and sacks from Skytrex.  I just need a 1/43 coal lorry and I haven't been able to find one.

 

John

Try "Dinky Bedford truck" on eBay. 10 quid should find one delivered. A cab interior, glazing and a careful paint job will bring it to the required standard.

[flapland]

Sort of on/off topic but remember watching these trains as a young teenager.  Seemed normal of course but only with the passing of time does it feel like a very bygone era.

 

https://www.chaddy-goods.co.uk/chadderton-goods-photos/the-chadderton-goods-branch-then-now/

 

Always a  Gronk in my day. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by flapland

[Nearholmer]

I’m pretty sure the NCB did sell direct to consumers in areas that had collieries in the midlands, and near Manchester, and possibly elsewhere too, through what were called ‘land-sale yards’, which were served by colliery railways, rather than BR, and where consumers collected coal. I think they also delivered direct by road to local industrial consumers.

 

Also, not all village/small town coal merchants operated from railway yards, some collected in bulk from the railway and had their yard elsewhere. One of the local merchants in our small town had a yard near the village green, about a mile and a half uphill from the station, and in another really tiny village that I researched the coal merchant was a farmer, who seems to have stored coal at the farm, which was probably more secure than a largely unattended siding.

[brossard]

Thanks for the help with my question.  I hope it didn't divert too much from the original question.

 

John

[JohnR]

Bear in mind, the average mineral wagon took 11-12 days to complete a circuit. Part of that was of course the time taken for it to get from the pit to the merchant, but the big complaint from British Railways was the use of wagons as storage by both merchants and the NCB. 

 

So a merchant might not empty his wagon straight away.

[doilum]

16 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m pretty sure the NCB did sell direct to consumers in areas that had collieries in the midlands, and near Manchester, and possibly elsewhere too, through what were called ‘land-sale yards’, which were served by colliery railways, rather than BR, and where consumers collected coal. I think they also delivered direct by road to local industrial consumers.

 

Also, not all village/small town coal merchants operated from railway yards, some collected in bulk from the railway and had their yard elsewhere. One of the local merchants in our small town had a yard near the village green, about a mile and a half uphill from the station, and in another really tiny village that I researched the coal merchant was a farmer, who seems to have stored coal at the farm, which was probably more secure than a largely unattended siding.

The term land sale is correct though I doubt you could turn up with your own car / barrow and buy a sackful. The NCB had a fleet of the aforementioned hopper lorries which were used to deliver to schools and hospitals etc. This coal was smaller than the traditional "singles" and was used in applications with a mechanical stoker. My own Alma mater has only removed this type of boiler and converted to gas in the last couple of years. 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

18 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Next day - or more likely several days later ...... the wagon owners ( where they weren't the local coal merchant himself ) would have liked a quick return of their vehicle for the next revenue-earning trip but the coal merchants were often happy to retain this 'storage-bin-on-wheels' until they'd bagged the contents ... 

To which I would add the very frequent practise of propping the side door on a substantial length of timber to make a fairly level working surface, for the transfer from wagon to flatbed truck. Quite often with the steelyard balance on the flatbed to check weigh the sack contents; 'rough and ready' in short.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve never seen an NCB one in operation, but in Ireland BnM used to sell turf direct from the tip-head on the bog, mainly to big users like schools, as well as via merchants, and I’ve watched two nuns turn up in a little car with a tiny trailer behind, and the guys try to carefully tip “just enough” from a rail wagon into it.

 

It took a lot of clearing-up!

[Trog]

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

 

From the age of 15 until I finished college I used to do farm work as a summer vac job. This was the late sixties and early seventies and the first bits of 'Elf and Sadie' were coming in. One of these was to ban manhandling of grain and other sacks of over 1cwt. Two and a half hundredweight was not unknown and the older guys dismissively referred to 1cwt sacks as "boy's sizes"

 

My father-in-laws first job after leaving school was labouring on a farm. One day while the farmer was at lunch a lorry turned up loaded with 2cwt sacks of feed. My father-in-law unloaded them from the lorry and carried them up the stairs to the loft above the barn. Some time later the farmer came out and said, "My wife says if I am going to have you doing a mans work, I am to pay you the full mans wage rate." Result.

 

The local vet was the one who went on to write the James Herriot books, one day when he turned up my father-in-law said, "Oh no not you, the beasts always die when it is you." which went down like a lead balloon.

[Wickham Green too]

55 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

To which I would add the very frequent practise of propping the side door on a substantial length of timber to make a fairly level working surface, for the transfer from wagon to flatbed truck. Quite often with the steelyard balance on the flatbed to check weigh the sack contents; 'rough and ready' in short.

Frequent practice, undoubtedly - but frowned upon by officialdom .......... I rescued a rather nice piece of Southern Railway enamel from oblivion umpteen years ago : "... propping up or otherwise fixing Wagon Doors for the support of Coal Weighting Machines .... is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ..."

[eastglosmog]

If you have read Christopher Burtons memoirs of being a GWR/BR Goods Agent, the railways  servants could take just as long (if not longer) to unload the wagon containing their coal as did the Coal Merchants!

And Coal Merchants definitely survived the advent of the NCB and later BR.

Edited April 11, 2020 by eastglosmog

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve never seen an NCB one in operation, but in Ireland BnM used to sell turf direct from the tip-head on the bog, mainly to big users like schools, as well as via merchants, and I’ve watched two nuns turn up in a little car with a tiny trailer behind, and the guys try to carefully tip “just enough” from a rail wagon into it.

 

It took a lot of clearing-up!

NCB Land Sales supplied coal to domestic customers in some places that I'm aware of in South Wales but taht might have been to miners or retired miners of course. 

[whart57]

It's only a few years ago that I saw a couple of guys bagging up the coal grit that washed up on Seaton Carew beach and taking it away in an old Land Rover. Surely that has stopped now.

 

As an aside, I had hoped that some of this coal grit from this North Eastern beach would be suitable for model railway purposes. The size is right as is the colour - obviously. Trouble is it's impossible to get the small shell fragments out and as these are white they show up badly.

[doilum]

11 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

NCB Land Sales supplied coal to domestic customers in some places that I'm aware of in South Wales but taht might have been to miners or retired miners of course. 

Coal leaders had the contract for delivering the concessionary coal to the miners. The coal would be loose tipped in the street. As the concession was one ton each month, few miners actually had sufficient fireplaces to burn it all, resulting in a lucrative " black market" in surplus coal especially during the summer months. For a cut of the agreed price, the leader would drop it off at a "wrong " address. Unofficial: definitely, illegal: probably, but accepted by all concerned. Don't ask how I know!

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

NCB Land Sales supplied coal to domestic customers in some places that I'm aware of in South Wales but taht might have been to miners or retired miners of course. 

Concession coal, available free to miners, retired miners, and their widows.  I am absolutely unable to say that the sort of resale coal that Doilum describes ever had any basis in fact, or that my Great Aunt Nell and several others I knew of in the Valleys ever benefitted from it...  

 

There was a Valleys perception that any coal not direct under observation was fair game, even the more respectable members of the community such as clergymen and JPs not being above keeping a bucket in the boot of the car for any opportunity that, um, presented itself.  Pilferage was socially condoned and common.  In later years local lads targetted the hoppers in the Cynon Valley and if the train stopped for any reason, or even lost speed, would open the hopper doors and bring it to a stand, triggering a free for all.  The transport police used to ride on the trains, but it's a long way from the back cab to the rear of the train and a good bit of coal can be got away in wheelbarrow and buckets by the time they get there.

 

As the coal came from the famous Tower Colliery, word was passed to these divers miscreants that the Miner's Co-operative that bought out the pit to keep it in full and profitable production for another 20 years (which was beyond the ability of the NCB) would take a dim view of this, and that members might well be taking in up personally with those concerned; it stopped overnight.

[TheQ]

On 10/04/2020 at 22:33, The Johnster said:

There may even be one or two still functioning, but domestic coal is normally sourced from petrol stations or even supermarkets nowadays.  Are there any opencast or drift coal production sites that do land sales?

Not round here,  we have Coleman the coalman,  or at least we until He was taken over by a national chain of coal merchants  https://www.cpldistribution.co.uk/ stick in your post code you'll find merchants everywhere,  and they're not the only company.. 

 

In the village Im modelling,  there were 3 coal merchants,  none had coal at the railway but had their own yards,  our family  coal wagons were unloaded in the railway yard,  drive the lorry or cart alongside the wagon,  drop the door onto the flatbed ,  load straight into bags,  or onto lorry.  Drive round to coal yard, if loose shovel off into staithe. 

Edited April 12, 2020 by TheQ

[doilum]

For those modelling this century, surviving coal merchants have moved with the times and have often diversified as distributors of bottled gas and kiln dried firewood.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Not on a branch line but a suburban station, I did a few summer holiday shifts at the coal merchant managed by my great aunt in the early 1960s. The office and storage ground was in the local goods yard. IIRC there were three merchants on there.

The general coal came from Cannock Chase (e.g. West Cannock No.5) and North Warwickshire (e.g.. Baddesley). For specialist use there was an occasional wagon of anthracite from South Wales and coke from a local gas works.

Coal arrived on the daily trip workings and one of the locos would spend an hour morning and evening shunting the sidings, extracting any empties and sorting incoming fulls into the sidings where the merchants unloaded them. 

We must have been good boys as the method of unloading was not to prop the door but to park the lorry close alongside the wagon and drop the door onto the flatbed. It's also much easier to shut the door from that position. The scale was set up on the door if the load was for immediate delivery. The lorry had been tared with the empty bags on then weighed again with the full bags. If the coal was for later use it was just shovelled out onto the lorry, weighed then shovelled off onto the appropriate stack. We weighed all of the coal taken out of the wagon as this was tallied against the waybills from the NCB. 

I've never managed to find a picture of the office my great aunt worked at, but the weighbridge office next to it is shown in this picture taken in 1955. https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrso896a.htm

The sign beyond it is on the TASCOS (Ten Acres & Stirchley Co-operative Society) coal office. Their lorry is parked to the right of the office. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by TheSignalEngineer

[Fat Controller]

6 hours ago, whart57 said:

It's only a few years ago that I saw a couple of guys bagging up the coal grit that washed up on Seaton Carew beach and taking it away in an old Land Rover. Surely that has stopped now.

 

As an aside, I had hoped that some of this coal grit from this North Eastern beach would be suitable for model railway purposes. The size is right as is the colour - obviously. Trouble is it's impossible to get the small shell fragments out and as these are white they show up badly.

Sea-coal is the residue from all the pit-waste that was tipped into the sea in the Durham coalfield, along with that weathered from the cliffs and sea-bed. We bought some during the last Miners' strike, as we relied on an open fire and back boiler. It was horrible stuff; the devil itself to light, and you needed to keep the blazer handy. The blazer had a secondary purpose of containing the bits of red-hot stone that would otherwise fly everywhere.

[br2975]

"Concessionary" coal could provide unusual workings within a coalfield, especially within South Wales, where a pit may not be geared up to providing suitable household coal for its miners, pensioners and widows......e.g. the pit may be producing power station grade.

.

As a result, wagonloads of 'concessionary' coal may run from a pit producing suitable household coal, to that which didn't.

.

 'Multiheat' a smokeless fuel brewed alongside the Roath Dock in Cardiff from coal brought in from the Pantyffynnon area (down west) was also distributed as a 'concession' far and wide in the few years the plant was in operation.

 

Edited April 12, 2020 by br2975

[PatB]

15 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

I think you might have to do as the merchants did, but in 1/43scale; look for ex-military vehicles. Lots of merchants used these into the 1960s. A quick Google found this:-

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/12029589720?iid=202605659386

Yep. Early 60s, any Bedford O mod, either civilian or ex- military would be perfect. Also anything by AEC. I'd be wary of anything 4wd though, because the extra height of the load bed would be unpopular with anyone loading/unloading by hand. 

[PatB]

It's also worth remembering that domestic coal to merchants would not be the only coal traffic along many branches. Until North Sea gas got going c1970 (I can just remember our gas appliances being converted, when we lived near Cheltenham), most towns, even quite small ones, had a gasworks, which would require a regular supply. The situation in suburban areas would likely be a bit different, though, with town gas being piped from the main, central works for the conurbation. 

[Michael Edge]

15 hours ago, doilum said:

Coal leaders had the contract for delivering the concessionary coal to the miners. The coal would be loose tipped in the street. As the concession was one ton each month, few miners actually had sufficient fireplaces to burn it all, resulting in a lucrative " black market" in surplus coal especially during the summer months. For a cut of the agreed price, the leader would drop it off at a "wrong " address. Unofficial: definitely, illegal: probably, but accepted by all concerned. Don't ask how I know!

When I moved to Upton (West Riding) in the 1970s coal was quite legally bought and delivered in this way - it came as a bit of a surprise though when I got home from work to find the driveway blocked by a ton of coal. Back home in the Lancashire coalfield it always came delivered in 1cwt sacks.....