Coal traffic for the South West - Where did it originate from?

[Morello Cherry]

On 25/06/2023 at 22:10, johnofwessex said:

I recently read 

 

https://lightmoor.co.uk/books/the-portishead-coal-boats-a-history-of-osborn-and-wallis-ltd-bristol/B9136

 

What I found fascinating was that it was it seems cheaper to take the coal to Newport or Cardiff, load it into a boat and take it actross the Bristol Channel to Portishead rather than send it direct by rail

 

For what it is worth the Maggs book has a section on Yatton to Clevedon branch and the WCPLR. Interestingly it shows Clevedon Station in 1898 with a number of coal wagons from Radstock - Toomer and a Bird and Co (with dumb buffers). It also shows from 1921 coal being loaded from the WCPLR's sailing barge Lily into wagons on the WCLPR. Maggs notes that the WCLPR in its promotional material noted its proximity to the Somerset and South Wales coalfields.

 

I think the biggest takeaway from this discussion is that when modelling coal traffic to the Southwest, it can be whatever you want it to be because pretty much every option seems to have occurred. 

 

On 25/06/2023 at 23:14, D7666 said:

 

 

In back reading this thread, some of the postings are a little confusing reading now. At least three different posts refers to imports but then go on to talk about coastal colliers. Imports - to me at least - means from overseas not domestic. Coastal colliers - by definition were domestic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understood in the context of this thread  the term imports to refer to the direction of the traffic through the harbour concerned. And the distinction between origin to be between domestic imports and foreign imports. 

[KeithMacdonald]

On 25/06/2023 at 22:10, johnofwessex said:

What I found fascinating was that it was it seems cheaper to take the coal to Newport or Cardiff, load it into a boat and take it actross the Bristol Channel to Portishead rather than send it direct by rail

 

High volume bulk commodity goods are still cheaper by sea. The same still applies to modern container traffic. Last time I looked at the detailed invoices we got for a container arriving from the Far East to Wiltshire, the charge for the sea part of the journey (literally thousands of miles) was cheaper than the 50 or so miles by road from Southampton. It's quite astonishing.

[The Stationmaster]

11 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

High volume bulk commodity goods are still cheaper by sea. The same still applies to modern container traffic. Last time I looked at the detailed invoices we got for a container arriving from the Far East to Wiltshire, the charge for the sea part of the journey (literally thousands of miles) was cheaper than the 50 or so miles by road from Southampton. It's quite astonishing.

Quite understaandable in some resects as the ship will be carrying thousands of boxes and the lorry will only be carrying one.  Plus at Southampton  - unless things are much improved - the dead time in the lorry and its driver waiting to be loaded can be considerable and is still a cost. 

[jim.snowdon]

On 06/07/2023 at 00:32, KeithMacdonald said:

 

High volume bulk commodity goods are still cheaper by sea. The same still applies to modern container traffic. Last time I looked at the detailed invoices we got for a container arriving from the Far East to Wiltshire, the charge for the sea part of the journey (literally thousands of miles) was cheaper than the 50 or so miles by road from Southampton. It's quite astonishing.

It's the same principle that Brunel espoused when creating the Great Eastern - as you increase the size of a ship the volume available goes up by a cube, whereas the surface area (and hydrodynamic resistance) only goes up by roughly a square.

 

[johnofwessex]

What I was thinking of though was the transhipment costs for a fairly short haul

[D7666]

On 06/07/2023 at 00:32, KeithMacdonald said:

 

High volume bulk commodity goods are still cheaper by sea. The same still applies to modern container traffic. Last time I looked at the detailed invoices we got for a container arriving from the Far East to Wiltshire, the charge for the sea part of the journey (literally thousands of miles) was cheaper than the 50 or so miles by road from Southampton. It's quite astonishing.

Which is why the world trades with China.

 

With going i to the whys and wherefores of politics, their labour and production costs are low, the sea transit is low cost, the expensive bit is within the destination country.

 

You can be sure if we in GB were still allowed to power station burn coal as our base load we'd be bulk importing by sea from China.

 

[KeithMacdonald]

1 hour ago, D7666 said:

You can be sure if we in GB were still allowed to power station burn coal as our base load we'd be bulk importing by sea from China.

 

Or from Newcastle (Australia)

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

What I was thinking of though was the transhipment costs for a fairly short haul

 

How short?

e.g. Across the Bristol Channel or the English Channel.

My late FIL's extended family is scattered along coastal shipping routes. From their habit of "moving on a bit" each few generations. Portsmouth, Southampton, Devon, Cornwall, South Wales, and Gloucester. Where goods could have been moved by rail, but it was still cheaper to move bulk commodities by sea. I might have mentioned the interchange of metal ores and coal across the Bristol Channel - ores to the smelting plants in South Wales, coal as the return load.

 

[Tom Burnham]

On 06/07/2023 at 00:32, KeithMacdonald said:

 

High volume bulk commodity goods are still cheaper by sea. The same still applies to modern container traffic. Last time I looked at the detailed invoices we got for a container arriving from the Far East to Wiltshire, the charge for the sea part of the journey (literally thousands of miles) was cheaper than the 50 or so miles by road from Southampton. It's quite astonishing.

Nothing new - one of the perennial complaints of farmers in the late 19th and early 20th century was that wheat grown in Canada (say) could be railed to a port, shipped across the Atlantic and sent on by rail to a mill in England for less than it cost to send it 50 or 100 miles to the mill from a farm in England.