MOD Shoeburyness

[faa77]

I did a quick search and couldn't find an existing thread on here. 

 

If you look at Shoeburyness on Google maps you will see a huge complex heading towards the North East with a very extensive rail system. It was used by the MoD for munitions testing.

 

Does anyone have more information? I'm particularly interested what sectorisation locomotives served/were based here during the late 80s/early 90s.

[Fat Controller]

The base, known as the Proof and Experimental Establishment, also served as a location where life-expired munitions could be safely destroyed. Into the 1990s, materiél was brought in by rail; these days, I believe road transport is used, as the quantity of material is much reduced. Depending on the wind direction, the explosions can be heard from our home in Kent, which is about 40 miles away as the crow flies.

[Tom Burnham]

Before your period of interest, but there was an article on the system in the Railway Mag in (from memory) 1959.

It provided a passenger service then 

[bécasse]

Railway Magazine April 1959.

I arranged to visit the line after reading the article. I turned up with a camera slung round my shoulders - bad mistake, the only time in my life that I have had a loaded rifle pointed straight at me. The sentries were certainly on the ball and the camera ended up locked away in the guardroom for the duration of the visit. Later I saw some works journeys buses entering the site and they were all thoroughly searched, both decks, by sentries with their rifles ready. The railway was interesting though although you will understandably find few photographs.

[daveyb]

I did some work there in 96 and 07-09.  It was used a both an experiment ground and a disposal station for a long time and had a very extensive standard gauge system and a collection of narrow gauge sections.  It even had it's own passenger services in the really busy post war period.

 

After being MOD PE&E as mentioned above, it came under the wider Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) name and later still was renamed something more closely related to its actual role, like other sectors.  With the Govt of the 80s and 90s pushing to contractor and privatise a lot of things, the Govt agencies saw RARDE split into various bits  Showburyness and the other test ranges at Eskmeals, BUTIC, Larkhill, West Freugh, etc fell under the banners or Defence Evaluation and Testing Organisation (DETO) or Defence Experimental Research Agency (DERA) DETO was supposed to test for DERA and then bill internally whilst still all being inside the Civil Service but under the control of the agency SERCO (the civil SERvice COmpany).  This was all before it was privatised.  SERCO was also split for sale and when it actually became privatised it had to tender to run its own establishments!  Another subsection of SERCO was sold off under the name Qinetiq.  Qinetiq later took over the running of Shoeburyness and even later bought it.

 

The MoD still sends significant amounts of unserviceable ammunition to Shoeburyness for contract disposal by Qinetiq (we send it back all the way from Canada rather than use local arrangements - apparently it is a global contract so global stacks must be shipped back), including fired brass from the ranges which is burnt to confirm all energetic material is destroyed before the scrap is sold to smelters.

 

The line into Shoeburyness used to be a fairly innocuous looking single loop to the south side of the terminus build at Shoeburyness station, crossing the road just in front of the the station build through big wooden level crossing gates (that had not been closed in years even in 1996), that road led to Artillery Barracks which was a coastal fort and is now houses.  Once across the road there was an access control gate through which the single track led to the exchange sidings.  Those access siding were more commonly full of stock for disposal during my visits and that could be seen from the road.  The siding behind were where the various VAA/VDA and VGA wagons were received and marshalled by whichever Steelman/ Thomas Hill / other MoD shunter was there at the time.  There was some 20ft iso container traffic too (RCTU or RLCU full side opening types), but I don't remember any PFAs only a few FGA type skeleton flat rakes.

 

  The railway was much foreshortened in the 90s & 00s and the various gates and bridges to Foulness Island were out of use, but you could still make out how each of the ranges had been served at some point.

 

I doubt any of this is of any use but it brought back some happy memories.

[Iain.d]

4 hours ago, daveyb said:

I did some work there in 96 and 07-09.  It was used a both an experiment ground and a disposal station for a long time and had a very extensive standard gauge system and a collection of narrow gauge sections.  It even had it's own passenger services in the really busy post war period.

 

After being MOD PE&E as mentioned above, it came under the wider Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) name and later still was renamed something more closely related to its actual role, like other sectors.  With the Govt of the 80s and 90s pushing to contractor and privatise a lot of things, the Govt agencies saw RARDE split into various bits  Showburyness and the other test ranges at Eskmeals, BUTIC, Larkhill, West Freugh, etc fell under the banners or Defence Evaluation and Testing Organisation (DETO) or Defence Experimental Research Agency (DERA) DETO was supposed to test for DERA and then bill internally whilst still all being inside the Civil Service but under the control of the agency SERCO (the civil SERvice COmpany).  This was all before it was privatised.  SERCO was also split for sale and when it actually became privatised it had to tender to run its own establishments!  Another subsection of SERCO was sold off under the name Qinetiq.  Qinetiq later took over the running of Shoeburyness and even later bought it.

 

The MoD still sends significant amounts of unserviceable ammunition to Shoeburyness for contract disposal by Qinetiq (we send it back all the way from Canada rather than use local arrangements - apparently it is a global contract so global stacks must be shipped back), including fired brass from the ranges which is burnt to confirm all energetic material is destroyed before the scrap is sold to smelters.

 

The line into Shoeburyness used to be a fairly innocuous looking single loop to the south side of the terminus build at Shoeburyness station, crossing the road just in front of the the station build through big wooden level crossing gates (that had not been closed in years even in 1996), that road led to Artillery Barracks which was a coastal fort and is now houses.  Once across the road there was an access control gate through which the single track led to the exchange sidings.  Those access siding were more commonly full of stock for disposal during my visits and that could be seen from the road.  The siding behind were where the various VAA/VDA and VGA wagons were received and marshalled by whichever Steelman/ Thomas Hill / other MoD shunter was there at the time.  There was some 20ft iso container traffic too (RCTU or RLCU full side opening types), but I don't remember any PFAs only a few FGA type skeleton flat rakes.

 

  The railway was much foreshortened in the 90s & 00s and the various gates and bridges to Foulness Island were out of use, but you could still make out how each of the ranges had been served at some point.

 

I doubt any of this is of any use but it brought back some happy memories.

That’s a pretty comprehensive summary from that time; I visited / worked there quite a few times between late 1995 and early 1997.  I don’t recall much being transported by rail at that time, all our stock for disposal was delivered by road.

 

We would destroy munitions on the sand flats off Foulness Island when the tide was out. The tide never seemed to be fully out – there was always a thin covering of water so it was very difficult to see the holes left by the exploded munitions, which quickly filled with water, so we would mark the holes with big wooden crosses (like a WW2 beach obstacle) and hope we would be able to see the hole, and where it was in relation to the marker, next time we went on the sands. More than one person fell in hole!

 

Working there between Nov and Feb with the wind blowing off the North Sea was bitterly cold.

 

I remember the rail yard ‘behind the wire’ and seeing a variety of wagons (never a loco), and now regret that I had plenty of opportunity to take photos, only didn’t. I did take this though:

 

 

Its from the top of the beach near where we used to stay, on what was the old barracks – our accommodation was usually the building next to the beach at the end of Chapel Road.

 

Sorry, like daveyb’s post above – probably not much use other than a nice trip down memory lane for me!

[009 micro modeller]

More recent than the period mentioned in the original post, but this photo set is interesting, from 2010: https://www.flickr.com/photos/46986413@N07/albums/72157627549566435/

 

 

Are there any of these workings still happening these days? And when did the use of parts of the system to store old rolling stock actually start?

[Johann Marsbar]

I know my Father took some photos there in the 1980's - I seem to recall an Army diesel shunter and a Wickham railcar being the subjects.  I'll see if I can find them later on as those scanned images are on another computer.

 

EDIT:  Found them easier than I expected. It's a Baguley-Drewry railcar rather than a Wickham, and the other photo shows two different Army shunters.  Both photos were taken by a turntable on the site.  Will post them on here later this morning......

 

.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Johann Marsbar
added text

[Johann Marsbar]

These are the two photos in question. My Father didn't make any notes of date/location for any photos that he took, but, based upon the others taken around that time, and on trips that I was with him, my guess is sometime during 1982 ...

 

 

[Ben B]

What an interesting set of images of an equally interesting prototype!  I love the shots linked above, of the 66 squeezing over the level crossing.  Looking on google earth, the rails on that crossing and stretch of track still look quite shiny, though the flangeways on the crossing appear a bit gunked-up.

 

Looking on Google Earth shows just how fascinatingly large the place is, with still quite a lot of railway track there, though no signs of any rolling stock on the satellite views.  The outer fringes of the track look pretty overgrown and abandoned, and I can't imagine the private sector operators would be interested in running expensive trains when a hired-in white transit van would do the job, which is a pity.  The engine shed is fascinating though, mini-turntable to a multi-road shed?  Presumably some of the internal fleet shunters must still be stored on-site, even if not used any more.  Would make an interesting micro-layout if you had a fleet of Hornby Sentinels and 48DS shunters to show off

 

When the place is inevitably sold-off for redevelopment, I wonder if it would have a similar resurgence to MoD Long Marston?  It doesn't have quite the same amount of siding space, but perhaps those long branchlines would make a test-track of sorts for a light-rail company?

[Nearholmer]

The nearer loco is an RH LSSH, similar to a BR 07, which were LSSE, the final letters designating hydraulic or electric transmission.

 

The further loco is I'm fairly sure a 153hp Barclay/Drewry, I think a Drewry-built one.

 

All my old IRS handbooks are tucked away somewhere, so if I get time to hunt them out, I will look to see what other locos and railcars were recorded there. I have a vague recollection that a new section of narrow gauge was installed quite recently (which in my mind means last 25 years!) and that two brand new locos were supplied for it.

 

 

[Darius43]

As a graduate civil engineer with the Property Services Agency (PSA) from 1987-88, I was on the Resident Engineer’s team for the construction of Havengore Bridge (a two lane road viaduct with a bascule lifting span) which links Foulness Island with the mainland and is wholly within the MOD range.  Occasionally we all had to get “under cover” when weapons trials were going on.  This meant we had to stay in the site portacabins until the all clear.  Not sure what extra protection a portacabin would provide against an errant artillery round…
 

I remember the railway system well but never saw any train movements when I was there - mainly because I used the access gate near Great Wakering rather than the main gate at Shoeburyness.

 

I do remember there being a large railway gun in the main Shoeburyness base area - I wonder what happened to that.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[Nearholmer]

This looks to me like the style of the maps in old editions of Railway Magazine, so there might have been an article about the line at some stage.

 

 

And, here is the big rail gun http://www.vanguardholdings.co.uk/history-1991

Edited January 31, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Darius43]

The “original” bridge over Havengore creek was a single lane steel plate girder construction with a rolling lift central section.  This bridge, we were told, was obtained second hand from the Port of London Authority.

 

Whilst on site in 1988 I had a small, sub-project looking after the construction of some new gun mounting pads at Q Battery, which was located at Havengore Point.  This was rail served and the trackwork was in pretty good condition in 1988.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[bécasse]

28 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

This looks to me like the style of the maps in old editions of Railway Magazine, so there might have been an article about the line at some stage.

 

 

April 1959, as already mentioned by me upthread!

Edited January 31, 2022 by bécasse

[Nearholmer]

Sorry!

[Nearholmer]

In 1970, it had an allocation of seven Austerity tanks plus two railcars.

[009 micro modeller]

6 hours ago, Ben B said:

What an interesting set of images of an equally interesting prototype!  I love the shots linked above, of the 66 squeezing over the level crossing.  Looking on google earth, the rails on that crossing and stretch of track still look quite shiny, though the flangeways on the crossing appear a bit gunked-up.

Not my photos, I just looked them up as I remembered seeing them before with the 66. The photos of the military locos and little railcar are very interesting. Presumably any remaining rail traffic is just shunted by the train loco now though, rather than being done by internal locos.

 

Isn’t the system now also used to store old EMUs etc. awaiting scrapping? And when did this start?

[Artless Bodger]

That 18" howitzer was the one deployed on the Elham Valley line during WW2 - apparently the carriage at Shoeburyness was a proof carriage also used for other pieces, and not the carriage used at Elham. The howitzer and carriage from Shoeburyness is now at Fort Nelson.

 

https://royalarmouries.org/stories/fort-nelson/18-inch-howitzer-railway-gun/

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Artless Bodger
clarification

[Northmoor]

On 31/01/2022 at 03:08, daveyb said:

I did some work there in 96 and 07-09.  It was used a both an experiment ground and a disposal station for a long time and had a very extensive standard gauge system and a collection of narrow gauge sections.  It even had it's own passenger services in the really busy post war period.

 

After being MOD PE&E as mentioned above, it came under the wider Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) name and later still was renamed something more closely related to its actual role, like other sectors.  With the Govt of the 80s and 90s pushing to contractor and privatise a lot of things, the Govt agencies saw RARDE split into various bits  Showburyness and the other test ranges at Eskmeals, BUTIC, Larkhill, West Freugh, etc fell under the banners or Defence Evaluation and Testing Organisation (DETO) or Defence Experimental Research Agency (DERA) DETO was supposed to test for DERA and then bill internally whilst still all being inside the Civil Service but under the control of the agency SERCO (the civil SERvice COmpany).  This was all before it was privatised.  SERCO was also split for sale and when it actually became privatised it had to tender to run its own establishments!  Another subsection of SERCO was sold off under the name Qinetiq.  Qinetiq later took over the running of Shoeburyness and even later bought it.

 

The MoD still sends significant amounts of unserviceable ammunition to Shoeburyness for contract disposal by Qinetiq (we send it back all the way from Canada rather than use local arrangements - apparently it is a global contract so global stacks must be shipped back), including fired brass from the ranges which is burnt to confirm all energetic material is destroyed before the scrap is sold to smelters.

 

The line into Shoeburyness used to be a fairly innocuous looking single loop to the south side of the terminus build at Shoeburyness station, crossing the road just in front of the the station build through big wooden level crossing gates (that had not been closed in years even in 1996), that road led to Artillery Barracks which was a coastal fort and is now houses.  Once across the road there was an access control gate through which the single track led to the exchange sidings.  Those access siding were more commonly full of stock for disposal during my visits and that could be seen from the road.  The siding behind were where the various VAA/VDA and VGA wagons were received and marshalled by whichever Steelman/ Thomas Hill / other MoD shunter was there at the time.  There was some 20ft iso container traffic too (RCTU or RLCU full side opening types), but I don't remember any PFAs only a few FGA type skeleton flat rakes.

 

  The railway was much foreshortened in the 90s & 00s and the various gates and bridges to Foulness Island were out of use, but you could still make out how each of the ranges had been served at some point.

 

I doubt any of this is of any use but it brought back some happy memories.

Good summary @daveyb, you obviously had more experience of the facilities than I did but I can correct a few errors; I worked for DRA, DERA and latterly QinetiQ for many years.  SERCO may have had local arrangements at Shoeburyness but no legal link to DERA or QinetiQ.  SERCO has never been a government-owned company; from Wikipedia:

"Serco was founded in 1929 as RCA Services Limited, a United Kingdom division of the Radio Corporation of America and initially provided services to the cinema industry. Following the takeover of RCA by General Electric in late 1985, RCA Services Limited was bought out by its local management. It changed its name to Serco in 1987 and has been a London Stock Exchange listed company since 1988."

 

You may be recalling the Site Services Division which internally billed DERA for facilities and building services and which was sold in a management buy-out to form COMAX, eventually becoming part of Amey (the CEO came back to DERA as Finance Director, became CEO, privatised QinetiQ and made himself even wealthier.....)

 

DRA (Defence Research Agency) merged with DTEO (Defence Test & Evaluation Organisation) to form DERA (Defence Evaluation Research Agency) in 1995.  It was DERA which was split in 2001 into DSTL (which runs Porton Down labs, amongst other things and retained as an agency of MoD) and QinetiQ, which was privatised in 2002.  QinetiQ now runs this and other trials ranges around the UK on behalf of the MoD under a 25 year contract.

 

I worked elsewhere in the organisation but did spend a couple of days at SHB in the earlier 2000s doing some rail training, which was provided by a small rail services business, exploiting the workshop facilities to earn some non-MoD income.  This was mostly repaints and refurbishment of LU stock and earning storage fees for off-lease main line stock, and may have been under the SERCO banner.  As this wasn't core QinetiQ business there was no likelihood of expansion, so the manager (Bruce Knights) left to form Knights Rail Services which operates the facilities at Eastleigh Works (rather successfully by all accounts).

 

I think the railway has seen very little use for the last 20 years; when I was there the sidings were full of off-lease stock but nothing actually running.  I'd always thought it was MoD locos and not main line ones that used the rail link, but the posted link above confirms otherwise.  I think 20s and 37s were commonly used to collect/deliver the off-lease stock in the early 2000s.

[daveyb]

On 01/02/2022 at 13:06, Northmoor said:

Good summary @daveyb, you obviously had more experience of the facilities than I did but I can correct a few errors; I worked for DRA, DERA and latterly QinetiQ for many years.  SERCO may have had local arrangements at Shoeburyness but no legal link to DERA or QinetiQ.  SERCO has never been a government-owned company; from Wikipedia:

"Serco was founded in 1929 as RCA Services Limited, a United Kingdom division of the Radio Corporation of America and initially provided services to the cinema industry. Following the takeover of RCA by General Electric in late 1985, RCA Services Limited was bought out by its local management. It changed its name to Serco in 1987 and has been a London Stock Exchange listed company since 1988."

 

You may be recalling the Site Services Division which internally billed DERA for facilities and building services and which was sold in a management buy-out to form COMAX, eventually becoming part of Amey (the CEO came back to DERA as Finance Director, became CEO, privatised QinetiQ and made himself even wealthier.....)

 

DRA (Defence Research Agency) merged with DTEO (Defence Test & Evaluation Organisation) to form DERA (Defence Evaluation Research Agency) in 1995.  It was DERA which was split in 2001 into DSTL (which runs Porton Down labs, amongst other things and retained as an agency of MoD) and QinetiQ, which was privatised in 2002.  QinetiQ now runs this and other trials ranges around the UK on behalf of the MoD under a 25 year contract.

 

I worked elsewhere in the organisation but did spend a couple of days at SHB in the earlier 2000s doing some rail training, which was provided by a small rail services business, exploiting the workshop facilities to earn some non-MoD income.  This was mostly repaints and refurbishment of LU stock and earning storage fees for off-lease main line stock, and may have been under the SERCO banner.  As this wasn't core QinetiQ business there was no likelihood of expansion, so the manager (Bruce Knights) left to form Knights Rail Services which operates the facilities at Eastleigh Works (rather successfully by all accounts).

 

I think the railway has seen very little use for the last 20 years; when I was there the sidings were full of off-lease stock but nothing actually running.  I'd always thought it was MoD locos and not main line ones that used the rail link, but the posted link above confirms otherwise.  I think 20s and 37s were commonly used to collect/deliver the off-lease stock in the early 2000s.

 

Thank you for the corrections.  It was always a little difficult to see who became who from within the green.  We also had DRA - Director Royal Artillery as a a Three Letter Acronym (TLA) so you had to know which organisation you were dealing with!

 

I remember being told off all the time for calling DERA sounding like 'Dearer' which apparently had caused them some issues at MP level - they were to know as 'Derah' with a short E and short A!

Edited February 7, 2022 by daveyb

[faa77]

Thank you for all the replies, this is very interesting!

[Mol_PMB]

Some time around the year 2000, I was working for Adtranz/Bombardier at East Ham on mods and commissioning on the Class 357s. Most of the LTS EMUs (both the 357s and the older units running the service) were kept in the carriage sidings at Shoeburyness, so I spent a fair bit of time working there.

The connection to the MoD lines snaked through the carriage sidings over several ladders of crossovers and reverse curves, before crossing the main road at a manually-operated gated crossing.

 

One day was very exciting. A class 37 turned up hauling 5 withdrawn Class 309 sets, which had come down from Manchester for storage at the MoD base. The loco hauled the old EMUs through the sidings and stopped once the back end was clear of the main line so that the crew could open the crossing gates.

That was where the problems started. A train of 20 coaches is a pretty good load for a 37, especially when it has stopped over a series of reverse curves and the loco is standing on rusty and overgrown track. Try as they might, all that happened when they applied power to pull forward into the MoD base was that the loco's wheels spun. Various people tried manually sanding, they tried setting back, but no chance. Meanwhile a big queue was building up at the road crossing, so eventually they closed the gates again.

 

Although the back of the train was clear of the main line, it was completely blocking the throat of the carriage sidings, so nothing else could get in or out. 80% of the peak service that evening was cancelled as the only trains available were those which had been running the lightly-loaded mid-day services.

Eventually, another loco was found from Tilbury; I think driver route knowledge was also an issue which took longer to resolve. I'd gone back to Barking by then, so I never did see the train get into the MoD base. I don't know why they didn't try splitting the rake of 309s in the carriage sidings, probably a 'Not my job, Guv' effect of privatisation.

 

Mol