SED Freightman

The wagons you are thinking of operated from Angerstein Wharf and conveyed sea dredged aggregate to terminals at Paddington New Yard, Park Royal, Kings Cross Goods, Luton Limbury Road and Battersea (Stewarts Lane). They were originally operated by Murphy (?), then Marcon, then Tarmac, before being sold to EWS, however through all this they continued to convey the same traffic from Angerstein Wharf. The Marinex / Brett wagons primarily operated from Cliffe to Purley and Salfords, but were also used to the Bat & Ball Redland Sdg and very occasionally to the Allington ARC Sdg.

Having thought a little more, the original service may have been Cliffe - Salfords (detach 9) - Purley (unload 9) - Salfords (attach 9 etys) - Cliffe, I will dig out an old timetable tomorrow and have a look. The original Marinex / Brett hoppers were coded PHA Nos. ELC17501-ELC17520, but the TOPS code changed in the early 1990's to JHA. On a murky Saturday morning 33107 + 33110 have run round the empty hoppers in Platform 6 and are propelling them back into the Headshunt prior to departing as the 0940 (7Z81) Purley to Cliffe additional service. 33107 + 33110 head south through Platform 4 with the 0940 (7Z61) Purley to Cliffe additional service on 04/02/1989. Note that the wagons are equipped with air operated bottom doors, controlled by the red and yellow levers attached to the wagon solebar. Amended 23/12/17 - TOPS wagon code for Brett wagons revised.

As Olddudders correctly mentions, the terminal originally received sea dredged aggregate from Cliffe in trains of 18 x Marinex bogie hoppers, these ran via Clapham Jn to Salfords where 9 wagons were detached before proceeding back to Purley where the other 9 wagons were unloaded. The return service conveyed only empty hoppers and operated in reverse to the loaded route, the run round at Purley in the return direction being performed in the Caterham / Tattenham Corner Branch platforms. Despite the traffic being conveyed in hopper wagons there was no hopper discharge pit, the wagon contents being carefully emptied onto a conveyor belt running along the centre of the siding, a similar arrangement also applied at Salfords. The Charringtons coal depot continued to receive coal by rail until 1990, latterly in HEA's conveyed on Speedlink Coal Network services. When coal traffic ceased the aggregate operation eventuall expanded to take over the whole yard and the aggregate terminal operation switched from Brett Marine Aggregates to Day & Son (Brentford) Ltd (latterly Day Aggregates) who then expanded the operation to include receipt of limestone ex Foster Yeoman, this arrived from Acton in open box wagons for grab discharge, having been moved from Merehead to London as a portion of one of the Foster Yeoman supertrains. With privatisation, ownership of the yard passed to EWS and with a long term tenancy in place Day Aggregates invested £3.6m in the terminal during 2005/2006 and constructed the current rail layout, hopper dischage pit and storage bins. After completion of the new rail facilities a large concrete batching plant was also constructed on site by London Concrete Ltd who have constructed similar facilities within a number of Day Aggregates rail terminals (eg. Stewarts Lane). The short spur siding is for crippled wagons and is the remnants of a siding which once extended along the eastern side of the site and was latterly used for the grab discharge of the traffic ex Merehead, as an aside during the mid 1990's a particular local resident used to be so aggrevated by trains arriving on this siding in the early hours that they used to shout and throw stones at the loco ! Amended 23/12/17 to show correct routing of Marinex / Brett service via London, details of coal traffic, and revised information on the aggregate terminal.

Sorry, no album, but I have found another couple of photos showing the red and green lights controlling rail movements into buildings within Tremorfa Works. There were (a couple of years ago) no signals controlling movements from Tremorfa Works via either route into Tidal Sidings nor on the Cross Dock Link connecting Tremorfa and Castle Works via Splott Junction. The West Section Mill Billet Unloading Bay has a single two aspect signal applicable to all three sidings. The New Scrap Bay has separate signals for each siding.

As BR295 mentions above, there is no internal signalling as such within Celsa UK's Castle or Tremorfa Works, however there are red and green lights at the entrance to buildings where overhead cranes operate in order to prevent rail movements from taking place whilst loading or unloading operations are occuring. In the picture below, red and green signals can just be seen either side of the entrance to the Tremorfa Works Melt Shop, where Hunslet 0-6-0 DH50-2 is about to place empty wagons for loading with billets.

But at least you and your colleagues tried, whereas nowadays (for a whole variety of reasons) the first action appears to be to deter anyone from attempting to travel and then arranging rail replacement bus services for anyone actually needing to get to work, school, home, etc.etc. I fully appreciate that there are still people out on the ground in all weathers trying to keep things on the move, however my experience suggests that from the passengers perspective the easy option of cancelling all services and suggesting people travel on a later date is far more common now than in BR days.

33058 hauling an unidentified 4CEP at Waterloo East forming the 0831 Ashford to Charing Cross on 15/01/87, back in the days when the railway could still usually be relied upon in the event of bad weather.

At privatisation most disused trackbeds, bridges, tunnels etc. transferred to BRB (Residuary) Ltd rather than Railtrack as the ongoing maintenance costs and liabilities could potentially have affected the latters share price. Over the years efforts were made to sell off parcels of land and dispose of, or demolish, structures where possible. On 30th September 2013, BRB (Residuary) Ltd was abolished and most of the remaining property and structures were transferred to the Highways Agency Historical Railways Estate, certain larger properties that had major development potential were transferred to London & Continental Railways Ltd, probably to tempt potential buyers, whilst a number of properties and structures associated with the operational railway were transferred to Network Rail as they should have remained part of the operational railway in 1994.

A former colleague and friend, now deceased, was employed on overtime to undertake a passenger count on late evening services between Alton and Winchester, he apparently spent a couple of hours enjoying a pint (or perhaps two) in a pub at Ropley whilst the guard noted details of passenger numbers. The information was then handed over on the last train of the day, and whilst the guard probably added a few additional passengers to the tally my friend also added a few more as it was obvious what the usage figures would be used to support a closure proposal. Unfortunately, if enough ghost passengers had been added to the figures to save the service the fiddle would have become obvious so closure of the line occured in due course. As suggested by the Stationmaster I suspect a lot of well meaning staff tried to boost traffic figures as they suspected senior management would try and reduce them, however this probably had little if any effect on the eventual outcome.

During February and March 1988 there were six loaded trains formed of HTV's from Halling Cement Works to Chinnor Cement works conveying imported coal, I guess that these were the wagons usually used to serve Chinnor from elsewhere.

I think that at least some of the vans used on South Eastern Division newspaper trains conveyed trestle tables and other materials (string, labels, etc) which were used by the wholesale newsagents to prepare bundles of papers for individual customers, in which case it would be quite important to ensure the vans remained on their allocated workings.

RBV No. W87964 at Severn Beach on 30/01/82. Sorry if this is not in the required area, but it is on the WR so may be of interest. I think this is my only photo of an RBV and it does show the layout of the lettering and generally dirty condition af the wagon, although I cannot now recall if the base colour was white or blue.

I have only just come across this topic whilst slowly working my way through the many interesting old threads on the forum, so apologies for the rather belated comments. The first class 58 to reach the Isle of Sheppey was 58039 on a guaging trip which visited Queenborough Yard (and Ridham Dock) on 19th March 1994, this was prior to the class being introduced on certain Speedlink type services. Class 56's were used on the MGR trains to UK Paper's Ridham Sidings, but not until the mid 1980's after the miners strike, when they replaced pairs of 33's or 73's. With a little modellers licence it would have been possible for a loaded MGR train to reach Queenborough in the event of a problem with the groundframe preventing access to Ridham, although under normal circumstancies such trains would have been stabled in the Down Loop at Sittingbourne.

I believe the last conventional type of loading gauge to be installed on the South Eastern Division was erected in Queenborough Yard in about 1980 when imported Japanese cars (shipped to Sheerness) began to be loaded in Queenborough Pier Sdgs. There was quite a bit of expense involved in the installation as not only did the loading gauge structure have to be manufactured and installed, but the siding for about 60ft either side also had to be considerably upgraded. For modelling purposes it is worth remembering that a conventional loading gauge would usually need to be installed on a section of straight and level track which needs to extend for a wagon length either side of the gauge.

Generally speaking, the safe securing of any load these days will be examined before despatch by someone trained and passed as competent for the particular type of traffic involved, while for some types of traffic this will also involve signing the relevant wagon labels showing the load is fit to move. There are now only a handful (at most) of staff who could be considered as competent to deal with anything much out of the ordinary, certainly there are no equivalent of the BR Divisional and Regional Loading Inspectors who were quite capable of dealing with all manner of truly exceptional and out of gauge loads in conjunction with the staff located in the Civil Engineers Gauging Sections.

What you say all makes sense and it is interesting to learn that shorter sleepers could be obtained although I'm not sure I have ever come across any. I was lead to believe that concrete sleepers should not be cut in order to avoid exposing the reinforcing wire which could then rust and cause the sleeper to crack. Regarding the use of shortened wooden sleepers, the photo below shows three inserted in a section of otherwise concrete sleepered track in order to fit past the catch pit adjacent to the Down Main Line at Sevenoaks (line speed 80mph), maybe the track was relaid in Railtrack days.

The sand traffic hauled by Freightliner in open box wagons from Middleton Towers was sprayed with what I understood to be something similar to dilute PVA glue. The apparatus for applying the liquid can be seen in the photo below, stored clear of the loading siding and above the chemical storage container, the roof of which also acted as a working platform.

Although it may be an optical illusion, the platform face adjacent to the wooden sleepers appears to be closer to the track, which makes me wonder if the sleeper ends have needed to be trimmed off to fit. Wooden sleepers are often substituted for concretes where the ends need to be trimmed, for example adjacent to catch pits or other obstructions located in the six foot. Alternatively, as suggested by The Signal Engineer, the wooden sleepers may be necessary to accommodate additional fixings for the type of buffer stop that is to be installed.

Unfortunately I only have the one photo of this service. The wagons further back in the train may possibly have been some of those previously used for TML Channel Tunnel construction traffic.

I do not recall any regular use of TLF Construction locos on the weekday bulk ballast services operating on the Southern, although they may have appeared from time to time due to failures or if there happened to be a particularly heavy programme of weekend engineering work they may have been hired to the engineering functions. On the former South Eastern Division there was a substantial programme of major works in the early 1990's associated with the impending opening of the Channel Tunnel with many ballast trains at weekends, some of which used high capacity air-braked wagons, no doubt TLF Construction locos will have appeared on these workings on some occasions. Although not quite what was being looked for, the appended photo taken on 08/02/92 shows 56037 'Richard Trevithick' heading a very late running 1305 (6Z82) Folkestone West to Hoo Junction spoil train after failure en route of the train locos 33117 & 33012.

Stopped off at Maidstone West this week (09/11/17) and the long abandoned Grampus is still in position and looking fairly neat although the rust is starting to come through in places. Does anyone know the wagon number or when it actually arrived ? I think the wagon was originally detached from a passing engineers service (hot box?) and red carded so it may have been left in a position where it was too difficult to effect repairs.

Further to my earlier note re the use of ragstone on bridges north of Sevenoaks Station. I should of course have mentioned that prior to re-building the platform walls were also largely of ragstone construction, a short section of which still remains under platform 3 as seen in the appended photo taken on 20/10/17.

The external views of the footbridge look just like the real thing, all you need now are a few roosting pigeons and the resultant mess on the platforms below. More seriously, the internal cladding was only installed relatively recently, possibly as part of the 2012 Olympics station upgrade, prior to this the corrugated steel sheeting and supporting steel framework was fully visible from the inside of the staircases and footbridge. At the present time work is taking place to install smooth cladding over the outside of the structure which gives it a very different appearance from the former corrugated look. With regard to the spaces below the footbridge on each platform, the area north of the gap giving access to the lift forms a plant room for the lift equipment and if I remember correctly the floor level is sunk down to about track level. South of the lift shafts is a small room for platform staff, with sloping ceiling beneath the stairs, and a low height store room only accessible via an external doorway.

In addition to the London Road bridge at the North end of the station there were five other bridges (one now demolished) on the main line and two on the Bat & Ball branch constructed with ragstone arches, abutments or piers. These all appear to have been constructed on land forming part of the Bradbourne Estate and therefore the use of ragstone is likely to have been a requirement by the landowner at the time of the lines construction. With regard to the bridge at Riverhead, following a number of bridge strikes by HGV's resulting in parts of the stone parapets falling onto the A25 they have been replaced with fibreglass panels cleverly moulded to resemble the original stonework but much easier to replace.

Having stumbled across this thread a couple of days ago I have now had time to read it through from the beginning. All I can say is what a superb layout this is. Having either changed trains at, or travelled to / from, Sevenoaks between 1971 and the present day, the layout certainly captures the feel of the rebuilt station, the key features of which are instantly recognisable despite the need for some alterations to fit the available space. There is certainly scope to operate a very wide selection of services and rolling stock, from MGR trains to Inter-City services and even LT's Sarah Siddons which passed through in 1985, in addition to the staple diet of EMU's. I look forward to seeing further updates as the layout construction progresses as well as more of the interesting comments and photos provided by others.