Start to finish proceedure for conveying goods in the 50s/60s/70s

[APOLLO]

This is also interesting - A bygone era.

 

 

Brit15

[Rivercider]

21 hours ago, C126 said:

I hope I will be forgiven for posting this question here, instead of a new thread, but could someone please tell me the names of staff in the local goods yards?  I am more interested in the 1970's-1980's, but all information gratefully received.

 

Inspired by @Rivercider 's B.F.I. T.O.P.S. film (above), I have composed a list of figures to buy for my goods yard, and am not sure how many staff to allocate and what they would be called.  "Yard Master" was for marshalling yards, I think; what was the manager in charge of a goods yard called?   Would he stay in the office and have a Clerk to supervise the wagons?  What are the names of the men un-/loading wagons ("Stevedore", but this is for docks)?

 

I am modelling a little yard of four sidings, including a coal-merchant and an agricultural warehouse, but two for 'general merchandise', with the steam-age goods shed demolished.  Thanks as always for giving this your consideration.

You have already had plenty of information, my knowledge dates from Bristol from 1978 onwards when I went to work in the Bristol Area Freight Centre. Some ideas might be of use on the SR.

As has been pointed out freight traffic was decreasing, staff numbers diminishing, and small yards were closing throughout the 1970s and 1980s. There are one or two reasons you might justify your yard still being busy, with enhanced staffing levels. 

In Bristol there had been quite a number of freight depots, full loads, coal yards, and marshalling yards. During the 1960s and 1970s many of them had been closed, with work concentrated on the remaining yards, perhaps that happened in Atherington and is the reason your yard is still busy while other nearby locations have closed? In the Bristol area most work was done by railmen or leading railmen, but one or two places also had a chargeman to oversee things. The busiest yard at Bristol Kingsland Road had a low level supervisor (grade A or B I think) in charge of the cartage and cranage, but that was unusual.

It might be that staff from your yard also cover work at a nearby location that is now unstaffed.

The TOPS system was implemented commencing in 1973, and by the time the whole of BR had been cut-over there were about 140 TOPS offices. I know in a few places the TOPS clerks included the former goods office full loads clerk(s). Many TOPS offices were located in Portacabins. By 1980 many of the smaller TOPS offices had closed, their workload being swallowed up by the nearest larger TOPS office.

In 1977 there were the following TOPS offices in your neck of the woods:-

87640 Norwood Yard, 87920 Three Bridges, 87980 Brighton, 88300 Bricklayers Arms, 88450 Hither Green, 88730 Hoo Jn, 89360 Tonbridge Yard, 89420 Ashford Yard, 89600 Dover Town Yard.

In the mid 1970s you might just justify a small TOPS office to cover the yard and surrounding locations single manned per shift, closing Saturday 14.00 until 06.00 Monday each weekend. The office would probably close for good by the very early 1980s.

 

cheers

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Rivercider
Grammar

[HGR]

A related question please :

 

In the pre-TOPS days, pre-nationalisation up to the early '60s goods were given a traffic class, in simple terms block trainloads such as minerals were class 1. Wagonload traffic / full-loads was class 2, and part-loads / sundries / goods were class 3.

 

Question is, what was traffic class 'A2' used for ?

 

Some British Railways wagon labels had the box around the destination 'To' details and the traffic class numeral coloured instead of plain black print. For example sugar beet and some other class 2 were orange, and such as potatoes could be red or green. These coloured labels were in circulation at the same time as the black ones. Anyone know what the colours signified ?

 

Thanks.

 

[The Stationmaster]

On 17/03/2021 at 06:57, Compound2632 said:

The OP's date range covers a period of change, so there needs to be a clear indication of when practices did change. In the 50s, as far as I can work out, goods traffic was being dealt with in the same way it had been since time immemorial*; those BR documents on the Barrowmore site represent a century of accumulated wisdom and best practice. By the 1970s, with the widespread closure of small goods yards, the scene was very different. The key turning-point was the Transport Act 1962's removal of the common carrier obligation. This was the point at which the railways ceased to be viewed as a monopoly to be regulated for the public benefit, which had been the principle underlying all previous railway legislation.

 

*Generally taken to be 1889.

 

On 17/03/2021 at 08:03, C126 said:

 

This is just the information I need, and hope will be useful to many others.  The day-to-day administration of such yards in later B.R. times is difficult to discern from the B.T.F. films, etc.  Now I can plan my purchasing of figures with more confidence.  Many thanks.

While the 1962 Transport Act had some effect the real changes to freight derived from the following things -

1. Organisational changes within BR in the 1960s which totally altered them management structure of teh vast majority of freight terminals,

2. The Introduction of the P&E changes to conciliation grades titles and duties in c.1967/68 which meant that virtually all jobs except clerical posts had v completely different titles which no longer told you what a particular job's role was.  For example a Goods Porter became a Railman, most Goods Foremen became Senior Railmen,  Number Takers became Railmen, Checkers usually became Leading Railmen but Motor Drivers remained Motor drivers and the various classes were still largely maintained as they had to be to comply with Dept of Transport regulations in respect of driving goods vehicles,

3. The creation of the NFC and National Carriers (NCL) in 1968 took away from BR most of its good sheds leaving only with yards dealing with full (wagon) loads and some specialist shed/terminal areas (e.g South Lambeth for steel traffic).  Most goods depot staff including all shed staff - except in some cases where parcels were also handled - were transferred to NCL and BR's entire road haulage fleet - which was by far the largest single owned road haulage fleet in Britain - was also transferred 100% to NCL ownership.  A lot of the BR terminals management/specialists above depot level also went to NCL.

4. As a result of the Beeching Report there was a major swing away from wagonload freight traffic to trainload working which reduced use of marshalling etc yards although wagonload traffic survived ultimately falling into Speedlink until that was closed down in 1989 and a few specialised rumps such as MoD-Link were left.

5. There was also a big argument in the 1960s about allowing private road hauliers to work into BR freight terminals although some work had alsways been undertaken by customers of their own goods or by their contractors.

6.TOPS really got underway in 1974/75 which hada massive effect on not only the size and use of the wagon fleet but completely altered the way some jobs, e.g. the daily Rolling Stock Return, were done and of course accountancy systems also changed over the years.

 

I first worked ina goods depot, complete with a Depot Manager, in late 1966 for a short while and the way things worked then was a world apart from the freight terminals I managed as an Area Manager in 1978 - a totally different railway with, as it happened, b very different traffic and the busiest of my freight terminals (which had only two permanent staff with the senior being a Senior Railman and no local clerical work at all) was by then wholly trainload traffic although some of the trains (for nuclear flasks) were very short    The usual road  haulage was only for the flasks and that was done by BRS.