Will Crompton

From Flickr, a road crane being used to lift a wagon at Moreton Park taken by Jamerail in December 2013.

Thanks for the clarification. I plead the fifth amendment and the caption on Flickr!😞

Thanks for this info. 👍 I've managed to track down a couple of pictures of the sidings in question at Hoo Junction from 1987 uploaded to Flickr by Roger Goodrum who I assume took them.

Wheelsets at the old Toton WRD in 2001 by Ernie Puddick on Flickr. It is from a very nice Album of shots of Toton WRD he has uploaded featuring loads of close up detail photos. Here is a link to said album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/55938574@N03/albums/72157636353723096/

I haven't managed to track down a picture of the gantry hoist at Coton Hill but I have found this on Steve Clement's Flickr site of a Cowans and Sheldon 6.5 ton crane used to change wheelsets there back in the day.

It seems they are still being produced in modern forms. https://www.worlifts.co.uk/rail/mfd-re-railing-equipment/

I've just started looking for pictures of jacks being used for lifting railway vehicles in the 1970s and 1980s and came across a nice sequence of Peak D18 being rerailed at Hotchley Hill in 1971 very much as you describe above using lifting jacks and traversing jacks. It's on page 899 of Dave F's wonderful RMweb thread of his and his father's railway photographs.

Many, many thanks, this is really helpful. I am hoping to try my hand at an n-gauge shunting layout based around a small C and W facility so details like this are priceless. As luck would have it the next RTR items from the N Gauge society are planned to be small rail mounted cranes (Cowan and Sheldon 6.5 ton and 10 ton cranes).

Well, that's one way of doing it!!!🤣

Many thanks, I have been wondering, as noted in my question about the use of jacks especially as they seem to be used at modern locations such as the small WRD at Tees Yard. I would be interested to know if the same basic design as the modern examples were used back in the 1970s and 80s. Here's a picture showing the jacks at Tees from about 10 years ago posted on Flickr by Yogi59.

Looking at pictures of wagon repair depots and sidings both existing and closed one finds a variety of cranes depicted at these sites including rail mounted cranes, gantry cranes and even road cranes such as this one in a photo of Blyth Cambois TMD by John Reay. This picture clearly shows a wheelset being lifted as described by answers to a question I asked in an earlier thread - Were/are cranes ever used to lift wagons up to allow wheel sets to be changed or were/are wagons raised up on jacks to allow this? I wonder as I have seen photos of steam locomotives being lifted by a gantry crane at a depot. Also were another bits of heavy kit, other than wheelsets, moved using cranes at wagon repair depots/sidings?

I would agree that there is a certain amount of lazy journalism and clickbating going on here. Amongst my interests (railways, model railways, photography, playing mediocre slide guitar etc etc) I am a bit* of a Star Wars buff. Now you think you;ve seen whingeing on model railway fora. You ain't seen nothing. Nobody, but nobody whinges like an agrieved genre film/comic/tv show fan (the same seems to be true of Trekkies, Superhero film afficianados etc etc). It is therefore easy for a lazy journalist to find comments on film fan websites moaning (rightly or wrongly) about the latest iteration of a genre franchise and build a story around it. For example in the dear old Grauniad the latest Disney + (other streaming services are available!) Star Wars series Ahsoka was described as a failure. This was not in a review I hasten where a critic could appropriately criticise the program positively or negatively as they see fit but in a more general article about Star Wars at Disney plus. In fact the viewing figures seemed to have been good and the review percentages on review aggregate sites are very good. Lucasfilm have just announced season 2. I think there is a certain amount of this going on in the articles re. railway modelling discussed above. *Actually borderline unhinged.🤪

There is a relevant picture in 'Rail freight since 1968: Wagonload' by Paul Shannon (Silver Link Publishing Ltd, 2006). It is credited to J.H. Cooper-Smith and is on page 15. It shows a Clayton passing Newcastle with a northbound trip freight working on May 4 1971. It's rather interesting as the first vehicle in the consist is a MK1 GUV. This is followed by three conflats carrying land rovers. Behind I can make out a couple of hoppers, some opens and some vans.

Some detail from the Grauniad. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/31/rail-ticket-office-closures-in-england-train-operators

Many thanks for the info. Just followed up your suggestion and found a picture of some cripples in Melton Mowbray Yard. I think I would have needed an extra shredded wheat to attempt moving those wheelsets with an iron bar!

Thank you everyone for the informative answers. Thank you Paul for the links to your photographs. I am currently in the early stages of planning a layout based around a small C and W facility so this is all really helpful. One thing I am debating is whether to have a fixed wagon hoist (for example as at Skipton C and W siding) or a handcrane. It's going to be n gauge and the NGS is going to be producing some models of hand cranes in the near future which look tempting. As noted above by Fat Controller, Hereford and Tonbridge used these. Tonbridge is interesting as it also had a fixed hoist so at a push I could have both I suppose. One feature at Bristol Barton Hill I rather like are the inset tracks that were placed at right angles to the track under the hoist. I was wondering how the wheel sets were moved from the inset tracks to the hoist track. Bristol Barton Hill wagon repair depot in the early 1980s. Picture by Robert Tarling.

I would like to find out how wheelsets were a) transferred to wagon repair depots and sidings from works and b) once they were there how they were moved around within the site. With regard to a) I am primarily interested in what wagon types were used to move wheelsets. I've found a handful of pictures online but my knowledge of wagons is too sketchy to identify them. Here's an example: Stoke Gifford Sidings. Picture taken by Stephan Dowle on March 12th 1974. As to b) I guess there will be several answers. Some of these sites were equipped with small rail going cranes and I assume they could be used in these places. Where there was a fixed wagon hoist could forklifts be used?

Apologies for not putting the link to your site. I was assuming (probably wrongly) that everyone reading the thread would probably be familiar with it. And point taken re. infrastructure. My spotting days were the early 70s and I was armed only with an obscure format bellows camera (120mm?) which my dad had given me. I seem to recall it only took something like 12 shots per roll of film. Being on pocket money only at the time shots were reserved for locos rather than wagons and coaches far less infrastructure - other than as background. I do remember being intrigued when looking at wagons stopped in stations when they had pre-nationalisation builders plates.......drifts off down memeory lane.😌

Just out of curiosity, was it to the south or north of the station? I am curently in the early planning stages of a layout based around a small C and W repair yard and have found that in comparison to photos of loco depot infrastructure, photos of wagon repair facilities are much less common. As people have commented, pre-digital, given the expense of film, even those interested in freight stock tended to concentrate on the vehicles rather than the surrounding infrastructure. I'm interested in the New Found Out Lane C and W siding in Warrington and have found a number of pictures of wagons there (including on Paul Bartlett's wonderful site) but only a couple of the wagon hoist. I've started a thread in the Modelling Musings and Miscellany section to collect pictures of wagon repair facilities which I am adding to slowly. Good luck with your project, I will watch with interest.

You may well have seen both of these but just in case. Uploaded to Flickr by Arnie Furniss. It's captioned as Stanley Bells Wagon Works South Reddish but I'm assuming its the Standard Works. Secondly there is a brief discussion of the way wagons were tripped to and from the works on P18 of the 70s industrial steam thread on RMWeb.

Two more sites. First the C and W siding (in the background) that used to be at Skipton. Taken in February 1983 by Graeme Phillips. Second, September 1997, Carlisle Currock wagon shops as was, uploaded to Flickr by Wembyard.

I clearly didn't think this through. Still it could be worse. "Oh go compare!"🎵🎵

This surely cries out for recreation in model form using a DCC sound fitted signal box!

A couple more of the Hereford facility by Jamerail from his Flickr account. First the c and w compound seen in the rear of a view across the yard. I assume the crane was used to help change wheelsets. Picture taken in July 1984. Next up the end of the two c and w sidings and a different crane in December 1982. I think the concrete building and lockable associated compound are very 'modelable' details.

6501. The face of Kof. Which sounds like something from a cheesy sword and sorcery film.