Black colliery wagons with a large white cross.

[doilum]

What priority did empty coal trains get?

Late father recounted how on several occasions he missed a day at school because his train was held in a layby siding for several hours. Eventually a train carrying military equipment would roll by finally allowing his train to complete the last mile or so into Leeds. As it was by now well after lunch time they crossed the platform and caught the next train home.

[Wickham Green too]

....... and the school actually BELIEVED that !!?! 😁

 

Worthy of a Reggie Perrin excuse !

[doilum]

Even the Jesuits followed government advice about questioning the war effort. " Loose lips sink ships". " Had to wait for a govvy train." End of discussion.

[roythebus1]

The wagon shortage was exacerbated by the cross-London routes vulnerability to the Luftwaffe. We had the East London Line, mostly underground, via the City widened Lines to the GN and Midland lines as well as the GW at Paddington. This was out of action for lengthy periods when Moorgate and Farringdon were badly damaged.This also affected goods traffic via Blackfriars. The West London Line, all above ground. Limited goods traffic on the Turnham Green/Gunnersbury-Richmond line. Next was the NLL via Brentford. The next available route round London was at Reading!

[The Johnster]

7 hours ago, doilum said:

What priority did empty coal trains get?

Late father recounted how on several occasions he missed a day at school because his train was held in a layby siding for several hours. Eventually a train carrying military equipment would roll by finally allowing his train to complete the last mile or so into Leeds. As it was by now well after lunch time they crossed the platform and caught the next train home.

 

Empty mineral traffic was Class K, the lowest on the pecking order, but Control often had a say in how they ran. as a supply of empty wagons to collieries is vital.  In hilly coalfields likt South Wales, most pits had limited siding space (because the sites were restricted by being at at the bottom of a narrow valley or cut into a shelf in the mountainside) and preferred to use it to keep loaded wagons ready for dispatch, but empties are vital to ensure that there are always wagons available to load coal into under the washery hoppers.  A lack of them means that it is not long before coal backs up through the screens, at the pit head, and then at pit bottom, where a logjam of loaded tubs will soon mean that the men working at the coal faces will not be able to load into tubs, and work will come to a halt, not the desired way of keeping men expensively pumped and ventilated underground...

 

I have childhood memories of empties on the Rhymney Valley line out of Cardiff in the 50s and 60s, always under clear signals and always with a sense of urgency to them.  Not that passenger traffic would be held for them. 

 

I have heard stories of wartime congestion at Severn Tunnel Jc, with crews being relieved and booking on the next day to travel up to the Junction to re-man the same train, which had not turned a wheel in fifteen or sixteen hour, then being relieved again at the end of their shift.  Military traffic was heavy and prioritised, especially during the D-day buildup.

[Michael Hodgson]

14 hours ago, doilum said:

What priority did empty coal trains get?

Late father recounted how on several occasions he missed a day at school because his train was held in a layby siding for several hours. Eventually a train carrying military equipment would roll by finally allowing his train to complete the last mile or so into Leeds. As it was by now well after lunch time they crossed the platform and caught the next train home.

Surely the whole purpose the railway control offices and the REC was to decide which traffic to prioritise?  There would undoubtedly have been been competition for priority between troop trains, collieries, munitions, steel, foodstuffs and what was urgent one day might be much more urgent than the previous day in order to allow ships to sail.   Logisitics Officers would have had to decide which of the "essential war supplies" were the least pressing taking account of planned military operations, siding capacity constraints, and yes, priority could potentially have been empty coal wagons needing to be cleared away from the ports or desperately wanted for reloading.

[jim.snowdon]

12 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

The West London Line, all above ground. Limited goods traffic on the Turnham Green/Gunnersbury-Richmond line. Next was the NLL via Brentford. The next available route round London was at Reading!

You left out the N&SWJR between Willesden and Kew, giving access to Feltham Yard, and the wartime connection between the GW's Staines West branch and the SR at Staines,

[doilum]

Perhaps the " need to know" got in the way of synoptic thinking and medium term planning. A special movement of big guns to a shipyard might need a clear slot of several hours as the exact timing was a closely gaurded secret.

Pooling should have greatly reduced the time taken for the return of empty wagons but would have required a new level of organisation to ensure that collieries received sufficient empty stock. Perhaps the London problem was that the city had almost always operated on a "just in time"basis with it's coal and food supply. It doesn't take too many sudden changes to cause serious interuption.

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by doilum

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, doilum said:

What priority did empty coal trains get?

Late father recounted how on several occasions he missed a day at school because his train was held in a layby siding for several hours. Eventually a train carrying military equipment would roll by finally allowing his train to complete the last mile or so into Leeds. As it was by now well after lunch time they crossed the platform and caught the next train home.

Pretty near the bottom of the heap but yards in colliery areas where the empties were collected would invariablty havea ta least one trip a day to every colliery and teh collieries hada trip on every shift pus ;as ordered' turns which could be whistled up at short notice.

 

The big problem with empties was - as ever - getting the things unloaded at receiving sites as many had a tendency to hang on to them to avoifdputting coal to ground and then having to shift it to where it was needed.  In some cases, for example East Moors at Cardiff,  because of wartime conditions the standard demurrage charges (which seem to have applied to pooled coal wagons from an audit report I saw in 1973) were considerably relaxed thus there wasn't even a financial incentive to get wagons unloaded.

I would be surprised if - despite their low headcode - trains of coal empties did not receive a degree of priority for resources especially if collieries were short of wagons.  The big emphasis seems always t have been on getting wagons empitede - not on problems moving them

 

So the  British situation in WWII was the exact opposite of where the Schlieffen Plan fell down in the Great War.  In Britain there wasn't much of a problem moving empties (although it could take time); it was getting the receiving sites to empty the wagons and release them.  Whereas with Schlieffen the destinations, not surprisingly, emptied wagons and coaches very rapidly but the Plan didn't make any proper provision for trains to return them to where they would be needed for their next load..

Edited August 4, 2023 by The Stationmaster

[roythebus1]

6 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

You left out the N&SWJR between Willesden and Kew, giving access to Feltham Yard, and the wartime connection between the GW's Staines West branch and the SR at Staines,

I mentioned the NLL via Willesden and Kew, part of the NSWJR. :) Was the link at Staines ever used?

 

Edited to add to the bit about crews being sent to Sevrrn Tunnel for relief, the rugby men I worked with in 1975 told the same sort of tales, of working freight from Crewe to Willesden, being looped at Hanslope or somewhere similar, not turning a wheel and getting relieved by another crew 10 hours later! Quite how the got to Hanslope is a mystery, maybe dropped off a passing freight?

 

If they were behind another train (permissive block in the loops) the fireman would tie the loco coupling to the brake van coupling in front, so when that train moved, the coupling would drop with an almighty clang and wake the crew up!

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by roythebus1

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, roythebus1 said:

...Was the link at Staines ever used? ...

Without reversal the West Drayton connection was only accessible from the east - so probably only of any use as a London bypass if several other options were unavailable.

[Tom Burnham]

8 hours ago, doilum said:

Perhaps the " need to know" got in the way of synoptic thinking and medium term planning. A special movement of big guns to a shipyard might need a clear slot of several hours as the exact timing was a closely gaurded secret.

Pooling should have greatly reduced the time taken for the return of empty wagons but would have required a new level of organisation to ensure that collieries received sufficient empty stock. Perhaps the London problem was that the city had almost always operated on a "just in time"basis with it's coal and food supply. It doesn't take too many sudden changes to cause serious interuption.

 

The detective novel "Death of a Train " by Freeman Wills Croft is set in WW2 and starts with the planning involved in a special train of radio valves for shipment from Plymouth.

[roythebus1]

17 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

The detective novel "Death of a Train " by Freeman Wills Croft is set in WW2 and starts with the planning involved in a special train of radio valves for shipment from Plymouth.

And so the plot thickens...dan dan daaann!!!

[jim.snowdon]

On 04/08/2023 at 17:48, roythebus1 said:

I mentioned the NLL via Willesden and Kew, part of the NSWJR. :) Was the link at Staines ever used?

 

 

Misread you, if only because in my mind the NLL ends at Willesden.

 

How much the link at Staines was ever used is a moot point. The fact the it faces east at its connection with the GWR main line would certainly be an inconvenience for trains coming up from Reading, but not so for anything coming down off the NLL via Willesden of off the Midland via Cricklewood. Being single line with, I think, only one passing loop, would have seriously limited its capacity, not to mention the considerable challenges of the climbing curve up into West Drayton.

 

[VIA185]

19 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

Misread you, if only because in my mind the NLL ends at Willesden.

 

How much the link at Staines was ever used is a moot point. The fact the it faces east at its connection with the GWR main line would certainly be an inconvenience for trains coming up from Reading, but not so for anything coming down off the NLL via Willesden of off the Midland via Cricklewood. Being single line with, I think, only one passing loop, would have seriously limited its capacity, not to mention the considerable challenges of the climbing curve up into West Drayton.

 

The fact that it faced east was precisely so that it served as a diversion route round London. I have never seen any suggestion that it was intended to serve trains from the west. It was an avoiding route for London. There was one passing loop at Colnbrook. As part of the project to divert trains away from London, the Colnbrook loop was considerably extended northwards as far as the Bath Road over bridge. I believe the present siding for the Heathrow fuel trains is still in exactly the same position. My understanding is that the Staines Moor spur did see use for wartime traffic avoiding London and that the largest vehicle to use the link was the WW1 15in rail-mounted Howitzer 'Boche Buster' which was moved from storage at Catterick to the Kent Coast by way of the Staines branch. The branch was GWR route restriction Red so could take the 2-8-0s and 4-6-0s except for 'Kings'. I suspect that the majority of traffic would have been heading south, so would not have been affected by the sharp curve and climb at West Drayton. In some respects there was a conflict of interests because the incomplete King George V and Queen Mary reservoirs were used as a decoy for German bombers and were dressed up with lights to look like Clapham Junction at night. As a result, Staines took a pounding from the Luftwaffe and a number of bombs fell on or near the Staines West branch line, which was quite close to the reservoirs. (CJL)

 

[Wickham Green too]

come friendly bombs ................. oh no, that was Slough, not Staines

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, VIA185 said:

The fact that it faced east was precisely so that it served as a diversion route round London. I have never seen any suggestion that it was intended to serve trains from the west. It was an avoiding route for London. There was one passing loop at Colnbrook. As part of the project to divert trains away from London, the Colnbrook loop was considerably extended northwards as far as the Bath Road over bridge. I believe the present siding for the Heathrow fuel trains is still in exactly the same position. My understanding is that the Staines Moor spur did see use for wartime traffic avoiding London and that the largest vehicle to use the link was the WW1 15in rail-mounted Howitzer 'Boche Buster' which was moved from storage at Catterick to the Kent Coast by way of the Staines branch. The branch was GWR route restriction Red so could take the 2-8-0s and 4-6-0s except for 'Kings'. I suspect that the majority of traffic would have been heading south, so would not have been affected by the sharp curve and climb at West Drayton. In some respects there was a conflict of interests because the incomplete King George V and Queen Mary reservoirs were used as a decoy for German bombers and were dressed up with lights to look like Clapham Junction at night. As a result, Staines took a pounding from the Luftwaffe and a number of bombs fell on or near the Staines West branch line, which was quite close to the reservoirs. (CJL)

 

On a point of not quite pedantry at least three official sources show the Staines branch as 'Dotted Red' - NOT Red.   Dotted Red means that Red RA engines were only permitted if specially authorised and the 1948 STT (aka WTT) did not authorise any Red RA engines at all and the only Blue RA engines authorised were 61XX..  This classification, and these restrictions, still applied in the Winter 1958/59 WTT

 

It is of course quite likely that some Red RA engines were authorised at some earlier date during the war but as the route was Dotted Red it is very unlikely that 47XX 2-8-0s were authorised as the restrictions on them weren't much different from those applying to 'Kings' when it canm to secondary routes and branches 

[VIA185]

17 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

On a point of not quite pedantry at least three official sources show the Staines branch as 'Dotted Red' - NOT Red.   Dotted Red means that Red RA engines were only permitted if specially authorised and the 1948 STT (aka WTT) did not authorise any Red RA engines at all and the only Blue RA engines authorised were 61XX..  This classification, and these restrictions, still applied in the Winter 1958/59 WTT

 

It is of course quite likely that some Red RA engines were authorised at some earlier date during the war but as the route was Dotted Red it is very unlikely that 47XX 2-8-0s were authorised as the restrictions on them weren't much different from those applying to 'Kings' when it canm to secondary routes and branches 

Interesting - we learn something new every day. I've only ever seen it quoted as 'red' but I've never seen any illustration of a 'red' engine on the branch. (Did a Class 40, Warship or Western count as Red - because all three classes were observed on the oil train in much later years? ) The only 2-6-2Ts I'm aware of are small 'prairies' and the one instance of a 61XX on the first oil train to Staines West in 1965. Sean Bolan did a painting of a wartime train passing the 'coal post' which, I think, was between Colnbrook and West Drayton, and the loco (if I recall correctly) is a 43XX. I've no idea on what information/original the painting was based.  (CJL)

[Cwmtwrch]

There is photographic evidence to show that Westerns, Warships [including the D600 version], Hymeks, Class 47s and "Falcon" all carried red disks while in green livery. Class 37s carried blue discs, and D63xx carried yellow. In the case of the diesel-electrics this was limited to those allocated to the WR, which class 40s generally were not at that time. There is a 1963 document [issued by the ex-Midlands Division and Gloucester District on the former's transfer to the LMR] which shows that Class 45 were red; class 40 are not included in the list.

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Cwmtwrch said:

There is photographic evidence to show that Westerns, Warships [including the D600 version], Hymeks, Class 47s and "Falcon" all carried red disks while in green livery. Class 37s carried blue discs, and D63xx carried yellow. In the case of the diesel-electrics this was limited to those allocated to the WR, which class 40s generally were not at that time. There is a 1963 document [issued by the ex-Midlands Division and Gloucester District on the former's transfer to the LMR] which shows that Class 45 were red; class 40 are not included in the list.

EE Type 4/Class 40 were Blue WR RA as were the Deltics.  Looks like Englich Electric mayt have use some very special steel but having check the 'working ordet' axle weights of both in the Diagram Book they were definitely within the Blue range.  On the other hand the 'Baby Deltics' were Red RA.

 

Hymeks had a geberal authority, except where otherwise sated, to run over any Dotted Red route but restricted to a maximum speed of 60mph.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

...  On the other hand the 'Baby Deltics' were Red RA. ...

Do we need a "How close to the Western Region did 'Baby Deltics' ever get ?" thread ? 🙄

[jim.snowdon]

4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

EE Type 4/Class 40 were Blue WR RA as were the Deltics.  Looks like Englich Electric mayt have use some very special steel but having check the 'working ordet' axle weights of both in the Diagram Book they were definitely within the Blue range.  On the other hand the 'Baby Deltics' were Red RA.

 

Hymeks had a geberal authority, except where otherwise sated, to run over any Dotted Red route but restricted to a maximum speed of 60mph.

The EE Type 4s were 5 tons lighter than the BR Type 4s, which may have made all the difference.

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

The EE Type 4s were 5 tons lighter than the BR Type 4s, which may have made all the difference.

The real decider was the axle load on one axle on the 'Peak' derivatives