How was parcels traffic handled at platforms?

[TomJ]

I'm sure there's an obvious answer and I'm overthinking this! But I'm wondering how parcels and mail traffic was unloaded and transferred to Lorry/van at smallish stations. The ones where there wasn't a specific parcels depot. I'm considering a Minories layout, with parcels handled on the main platforms. Prob set in the 1960s

 

Would vans and lorries come on to the platform? Would a platform cope with the weight, and what about all the platform furniture, benches etc? Or would the parcels etc be unloaded onto barrows and carts to be wheeled through to the car park/road outside? That seems easier but a lot more labour intensive.

 

Just trying to get the little details right, because if its the first case then I need someway of vehicles getting on to the platform other than going through the booking office!

 

Thanks

[HillsideDepot]

This old BTF film won't answer all of the questions, but will provide heaps of atmosphere as well as a few answers.
 

 

[TomJ]

That's an amazing find. Clearly answers quite a few of my questions

 

This forum never fails to astonish me. Thanks

[Phil Bullock]

As I lad I used to cycle to Droitwich Spa from Ombersley in the mid 60s to watch trains - before I was a spotter. A regular traffic was live chicks from a local hatchery to be loaded in to the guards compartment of a Brum - Hereford train - usually a Class 120 DMU. 

 

The van would pull up on the station forecourt, boxes of chicks transferred on to a platform trolley and wheeled through the buildings on to the platform pending arrival of the train at which point all hands on deck - including me - to get them in the van ASAP.

 

Happy days!

[doilum]

The larger stations had land trains of trollies pulled by an electric tug. You had to be alert and keep out of their way.

[Nearholmer]

Varied by place.

 

In some places road vehicles could be got quite close to the train, for instance some of the London termini have “cab roads” that allow this, and many rural stations had a gate from the forecourt direct onto the platform for this very purpose.

 

But, a lot of railway parcels, as opposed to Royal Mail, had to get ‘booked’ through the parcels office (no hand-held scanners then!), so got trundled to the appropriate place to allow bureaucracy to progress and things to be sorted into delivery rounds. I seem to recall chaps with clipboards doing some ‘booking’ at the platform though.

 

And, of course, some parcels were collected, rather than delivered.

 

And, some got lost!

[pheaton]

1 hour ago, Phil Bullock said:

As I lad I used to cycle to Droitwich Spa from Ombersley in the mid 60s to watch trains - before I was a spotter. A regular traffic was live chicks from a local hatchery to be loaded in to the guards compartment of a Brum - Hereford train - usually a Class 120 DMU. 

 

The van would pull up on the station forecourt, boxes of chicks transferred on to a platform trolley and wheeled through the buildings on to the platform pending arrival of the train at which point all hands on deck - including me - to get them in the van ASAP.

 

Happy days!

was that on your penny farthing Phil

[rockershovel]

There was a platform at the East side of Kings X (now a passenger platform) which allowed vans to come alongside the platform. I believe it was used for Royal Mail traffic. 

 

At Peterborough in the 1970s parcel traffic was handled from the bay platform at the North end of the station

[Phil Bullock]

16 minutes ago, pheaton said:

was that on your penny farthing Phil

 

That would have been fun! have you seen the A4133 between Ombersley and Droitwich?

 

There were always some local spotters at Droitwich station - they were always muttering about Peaks! Before I was part of the cognoscenti I used to think they were talking about rush hour.....

[The Stationmaster]

Ironic that much of the BTF film was filmed at Slough, where I at one time worked for a while in the Parcels Office.  All inwards traffic had to be sheeted for delivery and all outwards traffic had to be sheeted for accounting purposes although by the time I was there in 1966 a lot of the accounting had been simplified but we still had to do a daily balanced account.  Traffic from large customers was handled a bit differently and by then much of the traffic went in Brutes so Aldin's siding was no longer being heavily used for loading or unloading vans as could be seen in the film.

 

The truly ironic bit was that one evening a Brute waiting on the Down Main platform for the evening Paddington - Bristol parcels rolled off the platform in front of a 'Warship' going full pelt.  The Brute contained only packages of penguin books from the printer plus a number of consignments from Berlei who at that time had a factory in the Slough area and on the train on my way to work the next morning I saw the lineside right down past Slough West strewn with mangled paperbacks and bras which gradually became much more numerous as we approached the station.  It was one of the early Brutes with the original type po of brake and they were not exactly reliable.

 

Post Office traffic was of course completely separate from railway parcels although it was often loaded on the same trains.  The bit about wheeling the barrow into the Parcels Office is really a nonsense as it would just have been left under the extensive platform canopy at the London end end of the Down Main platform.  The barrow is clearly loaded with Parcel Post bags, which railway staff handled, and not Letter Mails which was handled solely by Post Office staff but which the the railway were obliged to hold under seciure conditions if for whatever reason the PO staff had not turned up. However at larger stations there were permanent Post Office staff on the station.

[deltic17]

I remember watching on an evening at Durham around 1978-1981. There were 2 postal trains (TPO's)+Mk1 coaches too, the Bristol Mail & the London Mail. Royal Mail vans would race up to the station from the sorting office and the mail would be put onto hand pulled trolleys to be wheeled along the platform and then deposited onto the train. Occasionally the TPO coaches would be in a different formation and there would be a panic and a sudden rush to get the trolleys to the other end of the platform as time was of the essence! The workers used to then dash off in their GPO vans and get the mail for the London mail which ran about an hour later, hopefully Deltic hauled to keep us spotters happy at the time. There would be other parcels trains too, all loaded on to trolleys, there was also a BR parcels service with white BR vans (road) collecting/delivering too I believe. Stations were busy and it is such a shame that virtually all of the traffic has been lost to rail, especially now that parcels numbers are on the increase with things like eBay. From an environment point of view too it would have been so much better to have kept the mail on the rails.

Edited April 29, 2020 by deltic17

[D9020 Nimbus]

There is quite a lot of information relating to the handling of goods and parcels at a small station c. 1960 in Adrian Vaughan's Signalman's Morning (Challow, WR).

[StuartMc]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The truly ironic bit was that one evening a Brute waiting on the Down Main platform for the evening Paddington - Bristol parcels rolled off the platform in front of a 'Warship' going full pelt.  The Brute contained only packages of penguin books from the printer plus a number of consignments from Berlei who at that time had a factory in the Slough area and on the train on my way to work the next morning I saw the lineside right down past Slough West strewn with mangled paperbacks and bras which gradually became much more numerous as we approached the station.  It was one of the early Brutes with the original type po of brake and they were not exactly reliable.

 

I'm sure there's a joke there but the best I can think of is running over 1,000 bras and books must have been a novel and uplifting experience for the driver!

[Ken.W]

As has been noted above, various methods could be used depending on location and traffic levels. Most common seems to have been unloading onto trolleys to be wheeled off to the parcels office or wherever they were dealt with on the station. In later years this was largely replaced by unloading brutes which were then taking to the appropriate point.

Mail however, as Stationmaster Mike has pointed out, could only be handled by Post Office staff, and they would generally wheel them out direct to their vans. At some larger stations with large amounts of mail traffic special facilities were provided, at Newcastle the goods lifts at the east end of the main platforms connected to a subway out the station, under Forth Street, and direct in the P.O. sorting office across the road. Waverley had a mail compound between Platform 1 (the present Pl.2) and the Operations Depot', which had an overhead conveyance system from which the mail bags were hung and carried over the tracks, out the station, and into the adjacent sorting office building on Calton Road.

 

On 28/04/2020 at 15:32, deltic17 said:

I remember watching on an evening at Durham around 1978-1981. There were 2 postal trains (TPO's)+Mk1 coaches too, the Bristol Mail & the London Mail.

....time was of the esssence!

 

Ah yes, I remember those two, i was one of those who, at that time, would be providing the heating on them (or in later years, driving).

 

Time of the essence? Not always, unfortunately. Reminds me of one occasion with 1A40, the London Mail, by Durham we were on our third loco!

The first,which we'd have brought the stock up from Heaton with was declared a failure at Newcastle due to, IIRC, a boiler fault. Cue the second sent over from Gateshead in place. At, or by Durham though (it's a long time since) this one had expired so we were then onto the third, which I think was a Peak which must have been a 46 as Kings X men didnt know the 45's (think I've got that the right way round, it was one or the other and as we had 46s a Gateshead but there were no 45s on the Eastern think that was it).

 

BTW, I notice your avatar's of a Deltic nameplate .

No 8, always brings back a couple of memories for me, one involving another failure.

Way back in school days, it was my last one for spotting the the full class when, on what was maybe my first trip to York, with my Mum, it had hauled our train there.

A few years later, in '81and doing the MP12 (Driver's basic training course), which at Gateshead was done on the 47. So, on the practical handling part, for air brake train handling we used the Newcastle - Liverpools, generally a 47 with 8 Mk2s then. We'd go in a group of six, half the class, to Leeds and back taking turns driving with the others in train. After setting off from Newcastle the lad driving unfortunately spotted a body by the line in the Birtley area so stopped at Ouston Jn. to report it. The 47 then died in sympathy. Nothing could be done with it but call for assistance. A short wait, then rolling out along the Slow Line from Gateshead to our aid comes....

Deltic 8

We then continue on to Darlington where, whose turn was it to take it on to York?

The only occasion I got to drive one .... officially

Edited April 29, 2020 by Ken.W

[caradoc]

My first place of employment on BR was Harlow Town, ER, which was a Parcels Concentration Depot (PCD), ie a location from which road vehicles distributed parcels to the designated area. Parcels arrived in Brutes which were off-loaded in the Up Loop platform and taken via lifts and the footbridge to the parcels office on the Up side, there they were 'sheeted' (as described by Stationmaster) ready for delivery. A fleet of vans (branded Rail Express Parcels but actually owned and operated by NCL) did the rounds, large places were served daily but smaller locations were on a MWF or TTh basis. The bane of our lives (as clerks) were the bring-backs, ie whatever the driver had been unable to deliver, as this created extra work ! And some drivers somehow seemed to have a lot more bring-backs than others.......

 

As mentioned above, Royal Mail traffic was dealt with separately from BR's parcels, by Post Office staff.

 

[Pandora]

The BR Parcels service Red Star began in the 1960s and was still going in the mid 90s, I recall taking a large box of S&T parts to Bromley South Station for a Red Star shipment  in 1994/5,  When did Red Star  Railway Parcels service cease?  Does the Railway stil act as a common carrier of parcels for the public?

Edited April 30, 2020 by Pandora

[caradoc]

BR's C&D (Collection and Delivery) service ended in 1981, although as mentioned above Red Star continued for many year. 

 

 

 

 

[SM42]

In the 1980s and early 90s the Red Star parcels office at Kidderminster was a little, anonymous, blue building that looked like it was made from plywood. It was at the south end of the down platform and very near to where the old station signal box used to be.  The footbridge stands on the site now

 

The station chargeman used to "do the parcels" (an activity I imagine had been going on for some years) in between checking tickets off arriving trains or entertaining the regular enthusiasts that gathered to watch the freight traffic in the evenings. 

 

I remember there used to be a regular consignment of polystyrene boxes that IIRC contained some sort living organism

 

It's roof can just be made out on the left in the picutre on the ABC railway guide website

 

http://abcrailwayguide.uk/kid-kidderminster-railway-station/facts-and-figures#.XqquHZnTWUk

 

In earlier times Kidderminster had a large goods yard and there are pictures on the net and in books of parcels and rolls of carpet waiting patiently on platform trolleys  for loading onto a convenient train.

 

Andy

[Helmdon]

19 minutes ago, SM42 said:

In the 1980s and early 90s the Red Star parcels office at Kidderminster was a little, anonymous, blue building that looked like it was made from plywood. It was at the south end of the down platform and very near to where the old station signal box used to be.  The footbridge stands on the site now

 

The station chargeman used to "do the parcels" (an activity I imagine had been going on for some years) in between checking tickets off arriving trains or entertaining the regular enthusiasts that gathered to watch the freight traffic in the evenings. 

 

I remember there used to be a regular consignment of polystyrene boxes that IIRC contained some sort living organism

 

It's roof can just be made out on the left in the picutre on the ABC railway guide website

 

http://abcrailwayguide.uk/kid-kidderminster-railway-station/facts-and-figures#.XqquHZnTWUk

 

In earlier times Kidderminster had a large goods yard and there are pictures on the net and in books of parcels and rolls of carpet waiting patiently on platform trolleys  for loading onto a convenient train.

 

Andy

 

Astonishing - I was reading through the thread and got to end pretty much as you posted this. I lived in Kidderminster from birth until going to university in 1999 and remember it all very well. I used to get the train to school in Birmingham every day. All through the thread I was thinking about how I remember it working at Kidderminster, and then lo and behold in the last post....

 

By the way though, while I remember the blue building, wasn't the Red Star office (for the manager anyway) actually in what became Col's newsagents in the main building (as in the window on the left as you looked at it from the cobbles)? At least for a bit anyway? My memory was that Colin was in a hut on the down platform for years and then came into that bit of the building when Red Star moved out...

Edited April 30, 2020 by Helmdon

[TomJ]

Thanks so much for all this information. What is also equally astonishing is that my station building is inspired by the SVR at Kidderminster, with the canopy roof and all! So this is really useful information

[SM42]

3 hours ago, Helmdon said:

 

Astonishing - I was reading through the thread and got to end pretty much as you posted this. I lived in Kidderminster from birth until going to university in 1999 and remember it all very well. I used to get the train to school in Birmingham every day. All through the thread I was thinking about how I remember it working at Kidderminster, and then lo and behold in the last post....

 

By the way though, while I remember the blue building, wasn't the Red Star office (for the manager anyway) actually in what became Col's newsagents in the main building (as in the window on the left as you looked at it from the cobbles)? At least for a bit anyway? My memory was that Colin was in a hut on the down platform for years and then came into that bit of the building when Red Star moved out...

 

Colin's shop moved into the old office (?) when they refurbed the station (I use the term loosely but mainly involved asbestos removal from the building first)  and put the new bus shelter and bike racks in. I think he had a temporary shop in the car park in the meantime. I don't know 100% what was in the office that became Colin's before but I don't remember any parcels being dealt with in there. In fact I don't remember seeing anyone go in there. IIRC the manager's position was removed some years before Colin moved in.  Perhaps it was store room before the shop.

 

The chargeman's office was two doors down from the gents.The cash point occupied that office when they did away with the chargeman. I think the store room was in between. I vaguely remember mops and so on being in there.

 

But the parcels were definitely dealt with at the Worcester end of the down platform in that blue building. I remember the scales being in there and chatting to Bungalow Bill whilst he did his parcel sorting, mainly polystyrene boxes if I recall.

 

Andy

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by SM42

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, SM42 said:

In the 1980s and early 90s the Red Star parcels office at Kidderminster was a little, anonymous, blue building that looked like it was made from plywood. It was at the south end of the down platform and very near to where the old station signal box used to be.  The footbridge stands on the site now

 

The station chargeman used to "do the parcels" (an activity I imagine had been going on for some years) in between checking tickets off arriving trains or entertaining the regular enthusiasts that gathered to watch the freight traffic in the evenings. 

 

I remember there used to be a regular consignment of polystyrene boxes that IIRC contained some sort living organism

 

It's roof can just be made out on the left in the picutre on the ABC railway guide website

 

http://abcrailwayguide.uk/kid-kidderminster-railway-station/facts-and-figures#.XqquHZnTWUk

 

In earlier times Kidderminster had a large goods yard and there are pictures on the net and in books of parcels and rolls of carpet waiting patiently on platform trolleys  for loading onto a convenient train.

 

Andy

A lot (?all) of the carpet traffic from Kidderminster went as passenger rated traffic (i.e. parcels) and carpets were commonplace on the 19.45 Kidderminster - paddington parcels.  Including on one night I know of a single carpet loaded in a Vanfit thus knocking the speed of the train down to 45mph which meant the Reading men, who worked the train from Didcot (along with me who was riding with them),  lost their normal cushions ride back to Reading and had to wait for the next train nearly an hour later.

 

Referring to 'Lantavian's question - the 1962 Transport Act clearly relieved BR of its Common Carrier obligations including outside enactments affecting the rates and charges it was able to apply.  The latter was important because the 1953 Transport Act which had given the railway more freedom to decide its own rates & charges also retained the facility to allow traders to complain to the Transport Tribunal if they considered a charge to be unreasonable.  Thus the 1953 Act in theory had given the railway freedom to charge what it considered realistic for for goods etc traffic but by allowing traders to go to the Tribunal had effectively hobbled the railway's ability to price out traffic it didn't want to carry.

[The Johnster]

On 30/04/2020 at 03:53, Pandora said:

Does the Railway stil act as a common carrier of parcels for the public?

It hasn't done that since 1963.  The common carrier obligations contained within the original Acts of Parliament that authorised railways included mileage freight traffic, and at one time 'Parliamentary Trains' stopping at all stations in each direction and charging a penny a mile.  Common carrier general merchandise and mineral freight  obligations were a major loss maker for BR in the late 50s and early 60s as the government controlled the rates and demurrage; the demurrage was set too low and it was cheaper to leave your mileage general merchandise blocking sidings in vans and wagons than it was to collect it and pay for storage or warehousing until you wanted it. 

 

Removing the common carrier obligations was one of the results of the infamous Beeching Report when it was accepted by Parliament.  

[Pandora]

From 1982 to 85 I used to commute into Paddington,  The last train to my home station  a W550XX  dmu bubble car,  I do recall those same bubble cars borrowed for parcels traffic.

The goods would be simply piled into the seats and aisles, I used to think of the money I spent on business suits and that  tomorrow night I could be sitting on the same seat cushions soiled by all those  mucky old  sacks of parcels

Edited May 2, 2020 by Pandora

[The Stationmaster]

12 hours ago, The Johnster said:

It hasn't done that since 1963.  The common carrier obligations contained within the original Acts of Parliament that authorised railways included mileage freight traffic, and at one time 'Parliamentary Trains' stopping at all stations in each direction and charging a penny a mile.  Common carrier general merchandise and mineral freight  obligations were a major loss maker for BR in the late 50s and early 60s as the government controlled the rates and demurrage; the demurrage was set too low and it was cheaper to leave your mileage general merchandise blocking sidings in vans and wagons than it was to collect it and pay for storage or warehousing until you wanted it. 

 

Removing the common carrier obligations was one of the results of the infamous Beeching Report when it was accepted by Parliament.  

Incorrect.  The matter of 'parliamentary trains' was completely separate from the question of the railways acting as Common Carriers and was legislated, a decade earlier, for a very different purpose.  what is also relevant in respect of BR's obligation as a Common Carrier was the 1953 Transport Act which effectively gave BR permission to charge what it liked but then made any such charges subject to a customer appealing that rate with teh relevant Tribunal.

 

The Parliamentary train, with a specified requirement to provide 'the poorer class of travellers the means of travelling by railway at moderate fares and in carriages in which they may be protected from the weather.   at least one each way in each direction on every week Day (except Christmas Day and Good Friday - excluding Scotland) ... at an average rate of speed of not less than 12 mph .....  fare not to exceed one penny per mile ...'  and so on etc, etc.  Was enacted in the 1844 Railway Regulation Act.

 

The requirement on the railway companies to act as Common A Carriers was enacted in the 1854 Railway and Canal Act with the specifically intended purpose of preventing the railways competing unfairly with canals in respect of the traffic they were preaped, or not, to carry.

 

As I had already posted BR's obkligation as a Common Carrier was neded by teh 1962 Transport Act.