The Pilotman

Thanks for the replies so far. This may be going into too much detail for anyone to recall but I'm interested in things like whether there would be enough traffic for trip workings to be formed of the first arrival at BZ, or would they wait for the second arrival before dispatching the first trips. Also, would the first up Speedlink departure be formed of wagons tripped into BZ that morning or would it be traffic that had arrived too late the day before to be accommodated? I shall go and have a look at your Flickr photos now Rivercider.

Thanks for the link, some useful details there. I have just had my loft converted and am about to embark on what I hope won't turn out to be a too ambitious project to build a layout based on a combination of Par and Lostwithiel. It would be nice to be able to run some semblance of a realistic freight operation, although that is many months away at present...

As there seem to be lots of people here with lots of knowledge about Cornwall and it's railways, I am hoping that someone can shed a bit of light on how the various trip workings in the Speedlink era were organised. I have searched through this forum and a number of books already but cannot find the sort of information I am after. For the period I am interested in, there seem to be three Speedlink arrivals at BZ (at approx. 0550, 0740 and 1215) and three departures (0930, 1520 and 2210). How would the traffic on these arrivals be tripped to the various destinations, and how would the loaded wagons be tripped into BZ for the various Speedlink departures? In other words, what might a typical day look like for BZ's fleet of 37s? Obviously some of them would be engaged on the Carne Point trains, and on that subject, how was that work programmed? I am guessing that a number of locos would set off at the start of the early shift to various points and somehow manage to get back for a shift change at some point. I suspect those in the know will be thinking, well, there was no such thing as a typical day, but if anyone can provide some information on how it all happened, I would be most grateful.

Thanks for the replies, gents. Sounds like quite a busy spell for all concerned at St.Austell... Must have needed a fairly big gap in traffic to accomplish all that.

Thanks for the link ZiderHead. Couldn't see any mention of the down working. My guess would be that the shunter would come onto the back of the train when the passengers were off and pull the lot back (minus the train engine) into the loop, then shunt the two sections into the sidings. Then the train engine would follow and couple onto the passenger coaches once the shunter was coupled to the flats.

Afternoon all. Can anyone shed any light on the details of the (by the look of it, quite complicated) shunt movements that were required at St.Austell to unload/load the passengers and cars on the Motorail train from/to Kensington Olympia when it ran as passenger coaches and car flats in the 70s and 80s)? I have seen plenty of pictures of the down train in the down platform, the up train in the up platform and the two portions of the train in the sidings but none of the bits in between. In one of his books, John Vaughan mentions that there was once a resident shunter or that a loco came down from St.Blazey to assist. As the car flats always seemed to be at the rear in both directions, I would love to know how they did it. Regards.