Railway Parcels (the system, rather than the trains)

[Nearholmer]

One to discuss in the lead-up to Christmas.

 

The more I think about “railway parcels”, as opposed to Royal Mail conveyed by train, the less I realise that I know.

 

 

It is common knowledge that the railways used to offer parcel services, conveying a bewildering variety of stuff by passenger train, and I know that the SR in particular gave parcels provision great emphasis when it rebuilt stations, but were there railway-owned sorting offices, and having been a big thing for decades, when did all this end? I thought it was when Red Star began in 1963 that BR pulled out of running its own door-to-door service, Citilink filling the void for the most lucrative traffic, but the more I think about it, the more I seem to recall BR-owned parcel vans much later than that.

What do we know?

 

[KeithHC]

Well I worked for a couple of months on a National Carriers contract delivering parcels for BR. That was in 1978 based out of Earlswood goods yard. Using Commer walk thru vans. My route was all around Epsom and Ewell. The vans where loaded at the large goods shed overnight. We where paid a flat 8hrs to deliver 100 parcels if we had more for every 10 additional we got 1hour overtime.  I turned up one morning with a van loaded to bursting with a list of 150 parcels. However 100 where individual footballs all going to a Surrey County Council education store. So managed to finish mid morning. If you went back too early then you could be loaded again and sent out. So several vans use to meet at the top of Reigate hill and wait to 3 pm  and then at intervals we would return to Earlswood. One of the best jobs I had.

 

Keith

[Oldddudders]

BR collection and delivery services continued long after 1963. But from some point in the late '60s, they were transferred to the National Freight Corporation, under a Mr P C Bickersteth I think, and operated as a contractor to BR, called National Carriers. 

 

Keith's recollection of the Earlswood facility was, ISTR, originally Redhill Goods Yard, next to the Down Quarry line. A chap name Kilner was the manager there in the mid-60s, and my SM and his Chief Clerk - the fearsome Mrs A - seemed to be on the phone most days complaining about the service his van driver provided. Redhill was a Parcels Concentration Depot, as well as a Full Loads Depot for freight. It was, at various times in the 60s and 70s, terminus for a 6.43 from Blisworth via Oxford and Reading, and a 2200 from Guide Bridge, precise route not known but assumed to be WCML. Both were van trains, not freight. It is likely that some mail as well as parcels was on board. 

 

Red Star was originally only for station-to-station consignments of a certain size and weight, and could only be sold where there was a direct train service - no intermediate changes of train. It was typically to be sent via the next available train. As such it was an additional premium-priced service over and above normal parcels. Over the years Red Star expanded and diversified but I am not clear how and when.

[D9020 Nimbus]

Back in the mid-1960s there was a special feature on "Christmas Parcels" in Model Railway Constructor. I read it some years after the event as my local library used to have bound volumes of MRC available to borrow. Don't remember which issue, except it was the one with the night shot of the "Western" on the cover.

[melmoth]

I seem to recall that at some point in the 1980s the Ffestiniog Railway were Red Star carriers. Not sure how that worked 

[Nearholmer]

Red Star certainly expanded its service beyond direct station-to-station, because I remember vans doing a sort of round between London termini carrying Red Star.

 

Was a “concentration point” a sorting and redistribution point?

[KeithHC]

Yes Redhill yard next to the Quarry line and the gasworks off Hooley lane. I only wish I could go back and see what vans etc where in the shed every day.

 

Keith

[adb968008]

I was picking up a parcel from red star parcels at Bolton station every other friday night  until the early 1990’s. It was sent on the 5pm from Southport to Manchester.

 

I used to deliver it every other saturday morning in Bury on my bicycle… probably 1988-1992.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by adb968008

[adb968008]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Red Star certainly expanded its service beyond direct station-to-station, because I remember vans doing a sort of round between London termini carrying Red Star.

 

Was a “concentration point” a sorting and redistribution point?

Red star signage is still visible above platform 1 at Euston.

 

I did a several week work experience at the RES offices above Euston, doing studies / analysis on late running services / delays and reasons in 1992. Commuted down from Manchester, on the Manchester pullman no less on some occasions, came home via Derby, Sheffield on another.

 

The management team I worked with were based at Euston and Derby, but the delay attrition and reasons was nationwide.

i was overwhelmed initially with readouts of every working every day.

The initial focus was TPO as this was the most important. I got to ride the Workington TPO and from Preston to Scotland on one night.

 

I didnt have my own copy of the report, but I recall the biggest reason for delay wasnt loco or stock failures, but vandalism. This occured somewhere nearly every day. But as mail and Parcels were connecting working, a short hours or so’s delay in Scotland would impact just about everything that night down to The SE and SW.

Also factors included locos in the wrong place, and need to additional workings for “missed” connections.

 

i still have my letters of thanks and references from that adventure.

 

The team behind RES at Derby were also behind 97561 being painted red, and Coalville openday.. and removing “parcels” off 47522.. they were all Midlanders no chance Apple green being a corporate Parcels sector livery. They were an interesting lot, arranged for two one DPUs to be sent to the ELR for a diesel gala, and for £600 a piece they could have kept them. The main guy who helped me has the voice over at the end of the Night Mail 2 documentary. They wanted 50’s for RES, obviously lost that fight.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by adb968008

[KeithMacdonald]

+1 for the mentions of Red Star Parcels.

 

c.1976 the people I was working with used Red Star a lot, to sent leaflets by Red Star for events all over England.

 

Red Star nearly always got them there, usually in good condition. But some boxes must have got chucked around a bit, because we regularly got some complaints about the condition at the destination. Fortunately they were only leaflets, and were going to get stuffed through letterboxes, so nobody minded too much.

 

But some parcels did go missing, never to be seen again. No option for tracking back then!

 

[adanapress]

Wether this ad anything to do with the fact that the printers McCoquodales did a great deal of work for the railways,  but just to report two

specially arranged  parcel ops that were running n the 50s and 60s, Firstly '' the McCorquodale hamper'' which certainly ran from Beccles to

Liverpool Street and back pretty much daily, carrying publishers proofs etc.  That was alleged to have been running since before WW1, but I doubt that.  Then,  started more recently,  an arrangement whereby I personally could go onto the platform at Euston,  and hand a parcel of proofs,  blocks etc, directly to the hand of a guard of a Manchester express,  and he was met on the platform in Piccadilly by someone from Henry Blacklocks or some other firm in the McQ group, George Faukiners say.   This could happen  whenever we wished to work it, and was typically three times a week.  Blacklocks of course had been the printers of Bradshaws, by then long since ceased.  I never once had a problem over several years, thank you to all those helpful guards..

[SED Freightman]

On 08/12/2022 at 14:51, Nearholmer said:

It is common knowledge that the railways used to offer parcel services, conveying a bewildering variety of stuff by passenger train, and I know that the SR in particular gave parcels provision great emphasis when it rebuilt stations, but were there railway-owned sorting offices, and having been a big thing for decades, when did all this end? I thought it was when Red Star began in 1963 that BR pulled out of running its own door-to-door service, Citilink filling the void for the most lucrative traffic, but the more I think about it, the more I seem to recall BR-owned parcel vans much later than that.

What do we know?

 

As others have already mentioned, the bulk BR parcels business was Collected and Delivered (C&D) Parcels which operated a network of rail connected parcels concentration depots (PCD's) from which deliveries and collections were made by an extensive road fleet provided under contract (with drivers) by National Carriers Ltd.  The latter being a constant source of friction as it meant BR had no effective control over an important part of the operation.

 

BR announced in October 1980 that it intended to end the C&D Parcels service from 1st July 1981 due to losses running at about £38M per annum. The closure of the business affected around 6,000 BR staff and over 2,000 at National Carriers.

 

BR estimated that its remaining parcels business was worth about £113M pa and included PO Letters & Parcels, newspapers, periodicals and other station to station business inc. Red Star. 

 

As far as the SED operation went, Bricklayers Arms was the nearest thing we had to a parcels sorting office.  Whilst there were direct vans between PCD's where the volume of traffic justified it, most flows could only justify the odd BRUTE (BR Universal Trollying Equipment) or two, so these were sent to B Arms where complete van loads were made up. Parcels for low volume destinstions were sent in mixed BRUTE's for resorting at B Arms where full BRUTE's would be made up.

[2251]

On 08/12/2022 at 16:09, Oldddudders said:

BR collection and delivery services continued long after 1963. But from some point in the late '60s, they were transferred to the National Freight Corporation, under a Mr P C Bickersteth I think, and operated as a contractor to BR, called National Carriers. 

 

 

I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I believe it is rather more complex than that and was part of the late-1960s efforts to put in place an integrated service.

 

By the 1960s, it was a matter of complaint that two nationalised industries (as well as the Post Office) dealt separately with sundries. Under the Transport Act 1968, the rail sundries traffic (apart from passenger parcels -- ie, parcels conveyed by passenger train) was transferred to the National Freight Corporation. Section 1(1)(a) of the 1968 Act required the NFC to provide "properly integrated" services and "to secure that, in the provision of those services, goods are carried by rail whenever such carriage is efficient and economic".

 

Thus while BR continued to convey non-passenger parcels, I believe it was doing so as contractor to the NFC (probably more accurately, the NFC's subsidiary) rather than on its own account, albeit under a scheme requiring rail use wherever "efficient and economic". 

[Nearholmer]

All the information about the latter years of the service under BR is very interesting, but I’m still wondering how it all worked in its heyday. The thing that intrigues me is the sheer volume and variety, and how everything got where it was meant to go. Fresh game was one traffic, in baskets, and you wouldn’t want that going off!

[Fat Controller]

49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

All the information about the latter years of the service under BR is very interesting, but I’m still wondering how it all worked in its heyday. The thing that intrigues me is the sheer volume and variety, and how everything got where it was meant to go. Fresh game was one traffic, in baskets, and you wouldn’t want that going off!

Probably counts towards the 'Hanging Period'

Day old chicks were fairly 'time-sensitive', I imagine.

[Nearholmer]

‘Hanging’ can so easily tip over into vile festering though; not nice.

[rogerzilla]

Midgham (for Douai Abbey) station is a long way from Midgham village and is actually in Woolhampton, a somewhat larger village.  The name was changed because the stationmaster was fed up of being overwhelmed by parcels meant for Wolverhampton.

[Compound2632]

On 13/12/2022 at 18:02, Nearholmer said:

‘Hanging’ can so easily tip over into vile festering though; not nice.

 

Now Ahrons has a good story about that...

 

By 'heyday' I understand 1890s.

 

A search of the Midland Railway Study Centre catalogue will turn up rates for all sorts of parcels and related non-human traffic by passenger train but, I fear, little about how the traffic was actually worked. Don't forget town centre receiving and parcels offices, also selling tickets, etc., like this one in Humberstone Gate, Leicester:

 

 

[DY 1087, Embedded link to Derby Registers.]

 

Great Northern, Leicester (address not given):

 

 

[DY 1090, embedded link to Derby Registers.]

 

Great Central, also Leicester:

 

 

[DY 1092, embedded link to Derby Registers.]

 

And the L&NW office in Gallowtree Gate:

 

 

[DY 1095, embedded link to Derby Registers.]

 

All the above, 1907-8.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Compound2632

[Oldddudders]

On 13/12/2022 at 18:35, Fat Controller said:

Day old chicks were fairly 'time-sensitive', I imagine.

They were! Cardboard boxes full of little yellow fluffy things, invariably claimed by an anxious consignee early in the day they had arrived!

[Nearholmer]

Do they travel cheep rate?

[GWR_Modeller]

They can but they have to be egged on to apply for that rate.

[rogerzilla]

Now I know what SECR Birdcage coaches were for.

[DavidBird]

I was at University in Leeds in 1989. I was surprised to see consignments of lab chemicals in "Red Star" labelling, presumably they had been collected from Leeds Station.  I had thought that Red Star had ceased by then but obviously not.

[Fat Controller]

13 hours ago, DavidBird said:

I was at University in Leeds in 1989. I was surprised to see consignments of lab chemicals in "Red Star" labelling, presumably they had been collected from Leeds Station.  I had thought that Red Star had ceased by then but obviously not.

One of our earlier cats was sent 'Red Star' from Northallerton as far as Ashford (Kent) as late as the early 1990s. 'Red Star' were bought out by 'Initial' soon after; they found themselves in company with Rentolkil and the bulkcontainer firms, IFF and UBC.

[adanapress]

There was also the Railway Letter Service, usually handled by the parcels office staff,  and  for those

interested the present day Great Central Railway has, or did have in the parcels office at Rothley, a stock of both the proper forms for parcels traffic and proper Railway Letter Stamps, which you lick and stick on and look rather like GPO stamps.  I know they did once have,  because I printed both, free of charge of course. .