Confessions of a Canton goods guard

[Halvarras]

Must add my appreciation for your efforts to all the others' Profes.......sorry, I mean @The Johnster, the detail you can recall really helps 'paint the picture' for those of us interested in railways but never worked on them. Outstanding, and looking forward to more instalments.

 

Just one question - is your modelling at a standstill now, or do your days contain more than the usual number of hours?!😜

[The Johnster]

2 minutes ago, Philou said:

C'mon @The Johnster, you haven't told 'em why the East Moors Steelworks was also known as the Dowlais Works (I know, but you can tell them in another installment). Do you want a plan with that, sir? I can do one tomoz if you like, bed is calling at the moment.

 

 

See, now this is the sort of thing I need to be pulled up on, and why I like being asked questions.  History lesson; Josiah Guest founded ironworks at Aberdare and Dowlais (Merthyr) in the 1820s, gaining a reputation for humane and sympathetic treatment of his workers at a time when 'Cosher' Bailey at Blaenafon had to build the last fortified house in Britain to protect himself from his, and had a reputation that a man wouldn't get a job unless his wife or one of his daughters had had sex with him first.  Richard Crawshay, his cousin over at Cyfarthfa, who had been in the Hellfire Club at Oxford University where they got away literally with murder and was not much better, lies today in Vaynor Churchyard in a tomb surrounded by a heavy fence, which some locals reckon is to keep the b*gger in; every year a few of them still go up there on the anniversary and p*ss on it.  Relations betwen ironmasters and their men were somewhat fraught back then, so Guest's reputation is significant.  His daughter, Lady Charlotte Guest, translated the Welsh folk legends of the Maginogion into English.

 

The Guests eventually concentrated on the Dowlais Ironworks, which became a centre for technological development in that industry.  The Bessemer steel-making process which allowed the production of high-quality steel free of impurities in the quantities that the industrial revolution was demanding, was developed at Dowlais, among other advances.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the locally available supplies of Iron Ore at Dowlais were becoming worked out, and supplying the works with this material from the coast up the very steeply graded Rhymney Bargoed route was going to be a problem, though it was done until steelmaking ceased there in the early 1950s.  A new steelworks was planned at East Moors in Cardiff, along with the promotion of a new dock to serve it, the Roath Dock, but capitalising this massive new works would need amalgamating with the Keen and Nettlefold companies.  Amalgamations of this sort were common for heavy industries in the early part of the 20th century as economies of scale were sought and capital raised.

 

The new works was a prominent feature of the southeastern Cardiff skyline for many years, closing in 1977.  The molten slag from the blast furnaces was take by rail the half-mile or so to the foreshore and tipped for land reclamation, and it was certainly impressive as a spectator sport.  But the East Moors plant in Cardiff was always known locally as 'The Dowlais', a nod to it's origins.  Railway interest was provided by a flyunder beneath the running line at the Roath Dock Iron Ore wharves, which required double heading until GKN bought a Beyer-Garratt industrial.  One of their 16" Hunslets, 'Jessie', was for many years after the closure kept at Splott Park as a feature of a playground, but eventually found it's way to the Dean Forest Railway where it has been restored to working condition.

[The Johnster]

2 minutes ago, Halvarras said:

Must add my appreciation for your efforts to all the others' Profes.......sorry, I mean @The Johnster, the detail you can recall really helps 'paint the picture' for those of us interested in railways but never worked on them. Outstanding, and looking forward to more instalments.

 

Just one question - is your modelling at a standstill now, or do your days contain more than the usual number of hours?!😜

 

This is exactly why progress on the threads is in fits and bursts, Halvarras.  In fact I'm off into the Cwmdimbath room now for an hour's operating...

[Matt37268]

6 hours ago, ianathompson said:

 

This seems to have been a very apt description of the Signalling School that I took at Ilford on joining the railways in the early 2000s.

There were written exams but everything had been throroughly covered by the instructor, often in duplicate, beforehand.

 

Having passed out on Absolute Block we all did a conversion course for Track Circuit Block.

The course lasted for one week and was tested by 20 multiple choice questions.

The answers were "accidentally" left lying around in the teaching room for the whole day before the exam whilst the instructor went for a fag break, had lunch etc.

It was so rigged that one of the leading lights of our party got 2 answers deliberately wrong to allay suspicions about its integrity!

I think that the pass level was 16 or 17 out of 20.

 

Similarly to the guard's course idiots sometimes got through but were soon found out in an everyday environment.

 

Keep up the good work Johnster it is good to get an insight into how things really were rather than as they were supposed to be.

 

Ian T

 

Definitely one for another thread as this isn’t railway related but it reminded me of a cellar management course I did back in 2015.

The gent from the brewery who took us for it told us to take plenty of notes, he also said ‘when I say this is important’ it meant it was on the final exam. Wink 😜 

Apparently this semi retired former cellar technician had taken over 2.5 thousand people on this course and he’d only had 4 people failing it…

 

’Chris’ who’s the most spectacularly inept person I’ve had the misfortune to work with became number 5

How the sodding hell you can fail an exam that is so rigged in your favour I’ll never know. 
Definitely someone only his mother could love. 

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, Matt37268 said:

How the sodding hell you can fail an exam that is so rigged in your favour I’ll never know. 
Definitely someone only his mother could love. 

 

Oh, we had them, and you'll be meeting them soon.

[nick_bastable]

The PAT exam I took  you where allowed to taking the book you studied from  given all the answers even then I knew somewone who failed

[Matt37268]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

Oh, we had them, and you'll be meeting them soon.

I look forward to it, again I do apologise for bringing something not railway related to your thread. 

[SED Freightman]

Thanks for explaining the origins of GKN at East Moors, the slag tipping operation sounds even more impressive than the Celsa melt shop at Tremorfa.  I am looking forward to further instalments but am not sure if I should be dissapointed at missing out on a visit to the asbestos clad Splott Park Rd Cafe.

[Wickham Green too]

12 minutes ago, SED Freightman said:

... not sure if I should be dissapointed at missing out on a visit to the asbestos clad Splott Park Rd Cafe.

As a saesneg, too, my only recollections of eating establishments in the vicinity are of the Florida Grill opposite Barry Scrapyard ..... maybe we'd not been in there for a few months but always got a cheery "Allo Boys, how are you?" as if we were proper regulars !

[Halvarras]

On 12/03/2023 at 10:55, balders said:

Read this whilst waiting at Ninian Park in the rain for 37403 to get the road back into the station after a jaunt up to Cwmbargoed.......most appropriate really! Very enjoyable @The Johnster 

 

Regards

 

Guy

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, as my notebook doesn't confirm, but I believe this is Ninian Park Halt, on the very railway-related date of 4/4/72 😃! The shunter is 3264 and the withdrawn Hymeks visible behind it D7060/64/83/73 (7088 was there somewhere too, I had a soft spot for that one.....) D7060 still in green, one of only five which only ever carried one livery (7004 carried five of the possible six!)

But it's the '37' which had me hunting out these Instamatic images - because this is 6607 which became 37307 under TOPS then in the mid-80s was refurbished and ETH-fitted as..........................37403! The same loco, in the same location, nearly 51 years earlier! These were the only two photos I ever look here so - how's that for a coincidence!

[The Johnster]

I can confirm that the top shot is definitely Ninian Park Halt, and contains a lot of information germane to my North Curve stories.  It is taken looking towards Penarth North Curve Junction, and the entrance shunt accessing North Curve Yard is hidden by the relay box, on the site of the previous mechanical box as most of them were.  3264 was a long standing Canton engine, from new, spending most of it's early years outstationed at Cardiff Docks, and may well be engaged in E76 work.  It is waiting for the ground position signal hidden behind it to enter the yard.

 

Reading from left to right, you can see extreme left background the oil tanks, North Curve traffic for Canton fuelling points (there were two, diesel depot and dmu).  These are standing on the 'Taff Vale Sidings', still extant behind the up platform at Ninian Park.  Behind them can be seen 'northernmost' of the gable ends of Canton Carriage Shed, the Maintenance and Running Sheds being at a lower level to the left of frame.  Coming right past 3264, the withdrawn Hymeks are standing on no.1 road of the TV sidings.  The facing shunt (we used this term for sets of turnouts) is also access for North Curve Yard, but is controlled by the Panel, not the Yard ground frame.  Trains in both directions called at the yard to drop off and collect traffic, the source of traffic for the Ferry Road and Ely Paper Mill trips, and Virgil St. coal yard.  There was no outlet at the southern end of the yard, and trains proceeding in that direction had to set back out of it, and those proceeding towards Radyr Quarry had to set back in to it.  The yard worked a morning and an afternoon shift, and also acted as an assembly/dispersal point for Per.Way Sunday occupation work in the area.

 

Above and behind the line of dead 'meks can be seen the gable end of the dmu depot, to the right of which was the dmu refuelling point.  Our fleet of 116s, 119s. and 120s were serviced here, and the efforts of the fitters to keep the worn-out 116s on the Valleys jobs running in the hot summer of 1976 were nothing short of heroic; this is something else we will revisit later!  The two curved lines of floodlight towers show the path of the North Curve itself, a single line bottleneck in those days, which again will be mentioned later.  There was a big ground frame hidden behind 3264 that controlled both access to the TV sidings and that end of the 'field' sidings, on which coaching stock can be seend stabled just to the left of the relay box.

 

This was mostly the 'B' rated stock, 75mph restricted mk1s on B1 bogies used for excursion, charter, and relief work.  Being on sidings at little separated from the main body of the Canton complex, they were prone to being used at night by people with nowhere else to go, 'dossers', domestic dispute thrown out by the missis, and others who had fallen through the holes in society.  Prepping a train over here involved walking through the stock and waking these poor souls up and telling them they had to get a shift on; I never had any backchat or problem from them, and they would vacate the compartment they'd slept in taking their rubbish with them.  Bit of courtesy went a long way here; some folk would forget that they were human beings, and that you were only a couple of pay packets away from joining them!  Not so many druggies in those days...

 

To the right of the relay box, the through running lines to Penarth Curve South Jc and Grangetown can be seen curving gently away right, with the yard following this curve.  The yard headshunt pokes itself into shot extreme right and the skyline of Penarth town is the backdrop.  To the right of the frame is the bulk of Ninian Park Stadium, where Brian Rolley doesn't go to watch Cardiff City because they don't come and see him when he's bad.

 

The 6607 shot is pretty full of information as well.  Behind the platform are the TV sidings, with the usual stock stabled in connection with the depot.  The shocvans are on the back road, behind which is the road access to the depot, the west end headshunt and ground frame to the down relief on the SWML, and you can see the bracket MAS signals on the up, for the up main and the up relief, the latter with 'feathers' to take you on to the up goods. 

 

The original South Wales Railway broad gauge main line dropped to ground level after crossing the Taff Bridge west of Cardiff General Station, and there was a gradient down to Canton Sidings, which are more or less at ground level.  The line continued at that level as far as the Ely River Bridge where it began to rise gently towards Llantrisant, crossing Leckwith and eventually Cowbridge Roads by level crossings.   At the time the broad gauge was pulled up, by which time Lansdowne road existed, these crossings were replaced by bridges and the SWML dipped between the Taff Bridge and Canton Sidings, up again over Leckwith Road, on embankment to Lansdowne Road, and then dipped again under the TVR bridge by Ely Paper Mill.  This accounts for Canton Loco being at a lower level than the Carriage sidings and DMU depot; it was built at the time of the alterations and replaced a loco shed at Newtown, to the east of the city (town, then).

 

These undulations were useful for up SWML trains appoaching the complex from the west.  Assuming you were running under greens, you could run under the TV bridge at line speed, or 60mph with a train of tanks, and shut off power to shed some pace on the first uphill stretch to Lansdowne Road, then make a gentle brake application as you approached the Leckwith Road bridge for the dip to Canton sidings.  This was the relief point for up trains, in which case you'd be routed to the 15mph up goods with a double yellow at the start of the process, but if you were running through to the station, you'd be able to drop the rest of your speed for the 30mph over the Taff Bridge and run in to your platform 'tidy, like'.

 

Mid-shot background, between the telegraph poles, is the wooded rise of Llandaff hill with it's villas, behind which is Garth Hill with the quarry, and you can just make out the grey silhouette of Garth Mountain in the haze behind that.  6607 is blocking the view of a very prominent landmark here, the spire of St John's Church in Canton, the second braking mark for up drivers.  Out of shot left you would see Ely Paper Mill, and Pentrebane with it's lollipop water tower.  Left of that would be the Ely housing estate, then the landlocked seacliffs of Leckwith woods.  To the right of frame if not obscured by dead 'Meks, the backs of the terraced houses on Ninian Park Road, with the loco down in the dip and the roofline interrupted by the real messroom and cultural ground zero of Canton shed, the Craddock Hotel, a few yards from the famous footbridge.

 

And this will most certainly feature in later episodes!

 

 

[Hroth]

On 16/03/2023 at 00:56, The Johnster said:

See, now, what's happened here is that I wrote out a whole part 4 screed as a blog, describing the training course, and it's vanished; about an hours' writing up the spout. 

 

Just scrolling back through the thread and the above caught my eye.

 

Never EVER compose a large piece of your deathless prose live in RMweb, always type it up in something like Notepad and save it onto your computer just in case... 

 

When it says what you meant to say, then  open up a posting window, highlight the Notepad text (Select All is best) and then copy it into RMweb. Give it a quick once-over and only then click Submit Reply to commit your words for us to read!

 

Of course, if I'm teaching a chastened Johnster to suck eggs, I apologise and I'll pipe down...

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Hroth
A little more...

[The Johnster]

This is clearly very sensible and wise advice, sir, and I will take it as soon as I've defeated my inner technophobe and worked out the nuts and bolts.  Give Cute Dougie Dog a brain tickle for me, please, they love their brains being tickled...

[Halvarras]

38 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I can confirm that the top shot is definitely Ninian Park Halt, and contains a lot of information germane to my North Curve stories.  It is taken looking towards Penarth North Curve Junction, and the entrance shunt accessing North Curve Yard is hidden by the relay box, on the site of the previous mechanical box as most of them were.  3264 was a long standing Canton engine, from new, spending most of it's early years outstationed at Cardiff Docks, and may well be engaged in E76 work.  It is waiting for the ground position signal hidden behind it to enter the yard.

 

Reading from left to right, you can see extreme left background the oil tanks, North Curve traffic for Canton fuelling points (there were two, diesel depot and dmu).  These are standing on the 'Taff Vale Sidings', still extant behind the up platform at Ninian Park.  Behind them can be seen 'northernmost' of the gable ends of Canton Carriage Shed, the Maintenance and Running Sheds being at a lower level to the left of frame.  Coming right past 3264, the withdrawn Hymeks are standing on no.1 road of the TV sidings.  The facing shunt (we used this term for sets of turnouts) is also access for North Curve Yard, but is controlled by the Panel, not the Yard ground frame.  Trains in both directions called at the yard to drop off and collect traffic, the source of traffic for the Ferry Road and Ely Paper Mill trips, and Virgil St. coal yard.  There was no outlet at the southern end of the yard, and trains proceeding in that direction had to set back out of it, and those proceeding towards Radyr Quarry had to set back in to it.  The yard worked a morning and an afternoon shift, and also acted as an assembly/dispersal point for Per.Way Sunday occupation work in the area.

 

Above and behind the line of dead 'meks can be seen the gable end of the dmu depot, to the right of which was the dmu refuelling point.  Our fleet of 116s, 119s. and 120s were serviced here, and the efforts of the fitters to keep the worn-out 116s on the Valleys jobs running in the hot summer of 1976 were nothing short of heroic; this is something else we will revisit later!  The two curved lines of floodlight towers show the path of the North Curve itself, a single line bottleneck in those days, which again will be mentioned later.  There was a big ground frame hidden behind 3264 that controlled both access to the TV sidings and that end of the 'field' sidings, on which coaching stock can be seend stabled just to the left of the relay box.

 

This was mostly the 'B' rated stock, 75mph restricted mk1s on B1 bogies used for excursion, charter, and relief work.  Being on sidings at little separated from the main body of the Canton complex, they were prone to being used at night by people with nowhere else to go, 'dossers', domestic dispute thrown out by the missis, and others who had fallen through the holes in society.  Prepping a train over here involved walking through the stock and waking these poor souls up and telling them they had to get a shift on; I never had any backchat or problem from them, and they would vacate the compartment they'd slept in taking their rubbish with them.  Bit of courtesy went a long way here; some folk would forget that they were human beings, and that you were only a couple of pay packets away from joining them!  Not so many druggies in those days...

 

To the right of the relay box, the through running lines to Penarth Curve South Jc and Grangetown can be seen curving gently away right, with the yard following this curve.  The yard headshunt pokes itself into shot extreme right and the skyline of Penarth town is the backdrop.  To the right of the frame is the bulk of Ninian Park Stadium, where Brian Rolley doesn't go to watch Cardiff City because they don't come and see him when he's bad.

 

The 6607 shot is pretty full of information as well.  Behind the platform are the TV sidings, with the usual stock stabled in connection with the depot.  The shocvans are on the back road, behind which is the road access to the depot, the west end headshunt and ground frame to the down relief on the SWML, and you can see the bracket MAS signals on the up, for the up main and the up relief, the latter with 'feathers' to take you on to the up goods. 

 

The original South Wales Railway broad gauge main line dropped to ground level after crossing the Taff Bridge west of Cardiff General Station, and there was a gradient down to Canton Sidings, which are more or less at ground level.  The line continued at that level as far as the Ely River Bridge where it began to rise gently towards Llantrisant, crossing Leckwith and eventually Cowbridge Roads by level crossings.   At the time the broad gauge was pulled up, by which time Lansdowne road existed, these crossings were replaced by bridges and the SWML dipped between the Taff Bridge and Canton Sidings, up again over Leckwith Road, on embankment to Lansdowne Road, and then dipped again under the TVR bridge by Ely Paper Mill.  This accounts for Canton Loco being at a lower level than the Carriage sidings and DMU depot; it was built at the time of the alterations and replaced a loco shed at Newtown, to the east of the city (town, then).

 

These undulations were useful for up SWML trains appoaching the complex from the west.  Assuming you were running under greens, you could run under the TV bridge at line speed, or 60mph with a train of tanks, and shut off power to shed some pace on the first uphill stretch to Lansdowne Road, then make a gentle brake application as you approached the Leckwith Road bridge for the dip to Canton sidings.  This was the relief point for up trains, in which case you'd be routed to the 15mph up goods with a double yellow at the start of the process, but if you were running through to the station, you'd be able to drop the rest of your speed for the 30mph over the Taff Bridge and run in to your platform 'tidy, like'.

 

Mid-shot background, between the telegraph poles, is the wooded rise of Llandaff hill with it's villas, behind which is Garth Hill with the quarry, and you can just make out the grey silhouette of Garth Mountain in the haze behind that.  6607 is blocking the view of a very prominent landmark here, the spire of St John's Church in Canton, the second braking mark for up drivers.  Out of shot left you would see Ely Paper Mill, and Pentrebane with it's lollipop water tower.  Left of that would be the Ely housing estate, then the landlocked seacliffs of Leckwith woods.  To the right of frame if not obscured by dead 'Meks, the backs of the terraced houses on Ninian Park Road, with the loco down in the dip and the roofline interrupted by the real messroom and cultural ground zero of Canton shed, the Craddock Hotel, a few yards from the famous footbridge.

 

And this will most certainly feature in later episodes!

 

 

 

Many thanks for all this info @The Johnster, that had me examining my own photos very closely indeed! Not bad considering that I wasn't even sure I'd bothered scanning them some years ago so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that I had - I just hadn't processed them when I had access to Photoshop at work. A good job I left in as much background as possible when tidying them up before posting! Funny how two photos I'd all but ignored for decades suddenly come into their own.......

 

4/4/72 was a day trip from Truro to Cardiff via Bristol St Philips Marsh (to view the withdrawn hydraulics there). I can see how that would be easy enough at the moment with 'Castle' HSTs and a few 5-car IETs (big swap coming) running between Penzance and Cardiff but how we managed to cram so much in back then beats me - I guess it must have been one of those days with more than 24 hours in it 🤭! I dunno - days seemed longer then than they do now, must be a perception which comes with age. I believe you are a year or so older than me so you'll likely know what I mean! Best not think about it - back to the distraction of the modelling bench 🤪!!

 

[The Johnster]

Know exactly what you mean!  I think it's because your mind percieves your entire life as a set period, 'I've always been alive this long', and as you 'advance from youth' as my GP delicatly put it, you divide set periods such as years, or decades, in to shorter proportions of your whole life.  So time appears to speed up as we age, because we contantly subconciously compare hours, weeks, years, seasons, whatever, to a longer total amount of time lived. 

 

This is why hot summer afternoons in school dragged so interminably; your tenth year was an entired tenth of your total life lived, while that between 69 and 70 was a 70th of it, proportionally seven times shorter.  I think back to my teenage spotting trips and realise that the world has changed as well; one cannot envisage a group of 15-year-old lads being allowed nowadays to set off from Cardiff on the 20.40 York TPO Friday evening for a shedbash around the North of England, and not return until 23.25 on the 20.25 from Crewe on the Sunday, living off the land, sleeping rough in empty coaches at places like Newton Heath or Neville Hill, and being picked up by whoever's dad's turn it was filthy from steam engines at the station, car seats covered in newspapers and smelling a bit... 

 

There were the same number of hours in a day, but they were longer compared to our lives.  We coped better because of this, things were more relaxed. 

 

Perhaps.

[Philou]

Here we are - sorry for the delay - another map highlighting some of @The Johnster's post (I've also shown from where @Halvarras took his two photos).

 

Johnsters Cardiff 05.doc

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

PS: I can do another map showing Awre Junc. and the rest, but the scale would be very small. A railmap might be a better bet if you want to have a look.

[The Johnster]

Later screeds will take in a geograhpical area bounded by Carmarthen in the west, Shrewsbury in the north (but not the Central Wales Line), Birmingham in the northeast, Reading in the east (but not the OWW), Westbury in the southeast and Bridgewater in the southwest, the limits of my eventual route knowledge.  A 10" or so to the mile road atlas that shows railways reasonably clearly, or the 1:250,000 OS will probably be adequate, and if you need more detail, I'd recommend the NLS OS maps, though few will be recent enough to accurately represent the 70s.  There were more than a few places where track layouts were unchanged for many years before and after that time, though.

[KeithHC]

Also on the nls website there is a photo mosaic that dates back to the 40’s 50’s. This covers the Cardiff area but the resolution is not too good but you can see the gasworks and the outline of the railways.

 

Keith

[Philou]

14 minutes ago, KeithHC said:

you can see the gasworks and the outline of the railways

 

@KeithHC I there is one of 1946 (IIRC) that clearly shows the bomb damage to Cardiff. Our first house was a utility house that was rebuilt on the site of my great grandmother's house. It was completed in 1952, two years after I was born.

 

@The Johnster My word Richard, you will be getting out and about a bit! I'll try and keep up.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[The Johnster]

I’ll try to moderate the pace a bit, Phillipe.  Apart from anything else I don’t want the thread dominating my existence, and am going to see how it goes with weekly installments so I have plenty of time for queries and comments.  

[sf315]

In Helvarras’s second pic above it seems to me that the visible vans maybe gunpowder vans. Anyone else reckon the same. 

I keep checking back on this thread to see if anymore info or another installment has been put up. 

Yes it makes for good reading but it is also useful for modeling purposes as well in terms of operation and what went on really. 

Loving this thread

Steve. 

[Halvarras]

3 hours ago, sf315 said:

In Helvarras’s second pic above it seems to me that the visible vans maybe gunpowder vans. Anyone else reckon the same. 

I keep checking back on this thread to see if anymore info or another installment has been put up. 

Yes it makes for good reading but it is also useful for modeling purposes as well in terms of operation and what went on really. 

Loving this thread

Steve. 

 

Yes I meant to mention that - they look like gunpowder vans to me too, too low to be normal goods vans. I'd never looked at what 6607 was hauling until now!🙂

[C126]

Or perhaps they are HO wagons, behind a OO '37'...  😀  Hat, coat, gloves, scarf, brolly, exits speedily...

[Enterprisingwestern]

13 hours ago, Philou said:

Here we are - sorry for the delay - another map highlighting some of @The Johnster's post (I've also shown from where @Halvarras took his two photos).

 

Johnsters Cardiff 05.doc 2.26 MB · 12 downloads

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

PS: I can do another map showing Awre Junc. and the rest, but the scale would be very small. A railmap might be a better bet if you want to have a look.

 

First time I have ever seen or heard "posh" and "Cardiff" mentioned together, I'd always thought it to be the ultimate oxymoron!

 

Mike.

[Wickham Green too]

7 hours ago, Halvarras said:

Yes I meant to mention that - they look like gunpowder vans to me too, too low to be normal goods vans. I'd never looked at what 6607 was hauling until now!🙂

Ditto ......... unless you look closely it's easy to not see the roofs and dismiss them as mineral wagons. ☹️