Just what year in the 1970's did B.R. Southern Region's freight go 'fully fitted'?

[Rivercider]

2 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

Weren't there some workings (Fareham?) formed with a 'mixed' fitted head of 16 and 21t Minfits and 26t fitted Tipplers bracketing a number of MSO?

I am sure I have seen photos of fitted 16t mins on Mendip stone traffic, they must have taken a battering.

 

By the time of the 1975 trip booklet I have there were no 16t/21t mins in use, the Fareham trains were formed of 30 fitted MSVs, pools 7601, 7603, 7605, and 7607. Presumably this allowed two trains per day with 'SLIP' working (ie swap over where train arrives with loaded set, then shunts to extract empty set, berth loaded set, and returns empty set to quarry).

 

Up until 1972 Warships were also involved in the stone traffic and made their way onto the Southern, including to Gatwick.

 

cheers 

 

cheers  

[BR traction instructor]

There is a 7C20 Merehead to Botley with a Western hauling brakevans fore & aft and 5 16T minfits leading around 25 MSOs in this album. This is a relatively common formation at this time.

 

BeRTIe

[Rivercider]

3 hours ago, BR traction instructor said:

There are various Merehead/Whatley stone consists of the early 70s in this excellent book. A good 1970 example with a Western for power and brake vans fore & aft does apparently show 6 minfits (fitted head) & 34-38 unfitted tipplers.

 

BeRTIe

Thanks for the reminder, I have that excellent book on my shelf.

 

cheers

[hmrspaul]

5 hours ago, Titan said:

There were probably a few, the one I was thinking of was a tanker train comprising of 20 four wheelers, 12 were air braked and through piped for vacuum, 8 were vacuum only. On approaching a protecting signal on a down grade, the driver realised he had insufficient brake force way too late, ran through the signal and side swiped a freightliner.

Probably this one at Weaver Junction https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=400

 

Paul

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, BR traction instructor said:

There is a 7C20 Merehead to Botley with a Western hauling brakevans fore & aft and 5 16T minfits leading around 25 MSOs in this album. This is a relatively common formation at this time.

 

BeRTIe

There was a serious shortage of fitted wagons in the early days of the Merehead stone traffic and it was very difficult to get hold of any more because lots of people doubted the long term future of what was then a fairly radical traffic.  Gradially more fitted wagons were acquired but the real advance came with the first lot of 50 PO hoppers in 1974 which allowed fitted flat floor wagons to be concentrated onto the flows where grab discharge remained unavoidable.

[Rivercider]

On 02/05/2022 at 10:43, C126 said:

Has anyone a reliable (i.e., supported by printed sources) date for when the Southern Region's freight trains' un-fitted wagons were eliminated, please?  I might well have missed it, but having searched Moody's 'Southern electric 1909-1979', 5th ed., 1979, Hymans's 'Southern region through the 1970s : year by year', 2018, and a couple of more photographic volumes, I can find no mention of a specific date or even year.  Presumably the divisions declared their own dates, but if anyone knows (particularly the Central Div.), I would be most grateful.  My goods yard looks very 'monochrome' in its wagon-load guise, and I would like an excuse to sneak in a grey wagon 'un-fitted' wagon to break the bauxite monotony.  Thanks and best wishes as always.

I now have had a reply on a Facebook Group with a copy of a letter to NCB locations in South Wales, the letter says unfitted traffic for SR and ScR destinations will not be accepted by BR after 1st August 1977,

 

cheers 

[C126]

22 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

I now have had a reply on a Facebook Group with a copy of a letter to NCB locations in South Wales, the letter says unfitted traffic for SR and ScR destinations will not be accepted by BR after 1st August 1977,

 

cheers 

 

Huzzah, @Rivercider , although I was veering towards the notion that I was mistaken, and there was no 'official' date declared (which offended my Librarian's sense of neatness!).

 

May I thank all who contributed to this thread; I hope I am not alone in finding it useful.  I promise to stop asking questions for a few months now.  Hearty good wishes and thanks again to you all.

[Rivercider]

3 hours ago, C126 said:

 

Huzzah, @Rivercider , although I was veering towards the notion that I was mistaken, and there was no 'official' date declared (which offended my Librarian's sense of neatness!).

 

May I thank all who contributed to this thread; I hope I am not alone in finding it useful.  I promise to stop asking questions for a few months now.  Hearty good wishes and thanks again to you all.

I have asked if I can post a copy of the letter. Here it is:-

I would think that the 1st August 1977 deadline for loading unfitted wagons to the SR and ScR would pre-date the actual changeover by a few weeks to enable the unfitted traffic to reach its destination, be unloaded, and return off the SR and ScR. It may still have been the October 1977 WTT that saw unfitted trains eliminated, albeit for the last few weeks in practice most of the trains would have run fully fitted.

 

Don't worry about asking questions, I think a lot of us learn things from the ensuing conversations,

 

cheers 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Rivercider
Added scan.

[BR traction instructor]

…there is still more to the title question of this thread. Vacuum braked and air braked wagons clearly faced no restriction in 1977 and yet couldn’t be formed together in a fully fitted freight unless they were dual braked, or had at least a through pipe for the other brake system.

 

Therefore the letter mentioned above has no bearing on the title question of which year the SR commenced operation of only fully fitted freights.

 

BeRTIe

Edited May 5, 2022 by BR traction instructor

[C126]

13 hours ago, BR traction instructor said:

…there is still more to the title question of this thread. Vacuum braked and air braked wagons clearly faced no restriction in 1977 and yet couldn’t be formed together in a fully fitted freight unless they were dual braked, or had at least a through pipe for the other brake system.

 

Therefore the letter mentioned above has no bearing on the title question of which year the SR commenced operation of only fully fitted freights.

 

BeRTIe

 

You are quite correct @BR traction instructor ; in my excitement, I did not realise this would not rule out the occasional 'grey wagon' or two sneaking in for special purposes.  Perhaps, consequently, like my initial conclusion, there was no definite date for their 'total ban' on the S.R.  Un-fitted wagons could be run under special dispensation according to the rules.  Their final disappearance was more owing to the scrap-man, than a management decree.

[BR traction instructor]

…the bigger danger is getting two issues tangled up and reducing the value of prototype gen for new readers.

 

The phasing out of unbraked/unfitted wagons has no relevance to the running of purely fully fitted freights on either the SR or ScR.

 

I would treat the likely cessation of other than fully fitted freights in the early eighties as indicative of the last trips made by unbraked/unfitted wagons other than by special arrangement.

 

BeRTIe

Edited May 5, 2022 by BR traction instructor

[hmrspaul]

2 hours ago, C126 said:

 

You are quite correct @BR traction instructor ; in my excitement, I did not realise this would not rule out the occasional 'grey wagon' or two sneaking in for special purposes.  Perhaps, consequently, like my initial conclusion, there was no definite date for their 'total ban' on the S.R.  Un-fitted wagons could be run under special dispensation according to the rules.  Their final disappearance was more owing to the scrap-man, than a management decree.

I would like to know the answer to the original question and that South Wales letter is very helpful. There was such a date. 

 

It is NOT true that the SR slowly cleared out unfitted wagons for the scrap man. One of the benefits (for those of us living north of the Thames) was that relatively unusual unfitted SR wagons were sent north (and west into Wales). Few unfitted wagons remained in revenue use anywhere, except in specialist flows. However, the engineers did have a lot of unfitted wagons. So the effect of the introduction of excluding non fitted wagons meant items such as the few non piped Lings might be found north https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srling/e3eaf0f (Birkenhead)  https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srling/ebb31d35 (Hitchin)  etc.  Borails https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e3f8031a6 (Brent) https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e20f8e108 & https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e3ac9068e  (Beighton)   https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e222c2a18  (Northampton)

 

There was also the occasional addition of a temporary pipe such as this Borail https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e3a902c60  or more permanent conversion to air brake such as this Borail https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srborail/e378bcfbc

 

It should also be borne in mind that the SRailway (and its predecessors) vacuum braked stock than was more normally unfitted on other railways - such as the bogie ballast hoppers https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/srwalrus,  what became known as a Tunny, https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/srtunny  and the ballast brakes https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/srshark annd this also meant some quite elderly stock survived into the late 1980s. 

 

Paul