GWR Coal Drops & loading/unloading of coal in towns and goods yards

[Titanius Anglesmith]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It couldn't possibly be GWR practice if the "staiths" themselves were not usual GWR practice! Besides, this circles back to the key point that unloading the coal wagons wasn't the railway company's responsibility but the coal merchant's.

 

The coal pens at Uxbridge Vine St (GWR!) backed up to the siding, but it looks like there was enough space to swing the door fully open, so it wouldn't be propped up by the back of the pen.

 

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW041117

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

I agree the maps are by no means definitive - its why I am relying on the aerial photos for my work. If its not there in 1946 I doubt it was in 1930 as far as coal working goes. Of course this leads to the even more arcane question of if the coal was dumped in heaps how big / high might they be! Modelling will be easier though - just a ground up pile held in place with PVA! Or perhaps it was never just dumped on the ground if Gas Works private wagons were being used - maybe it just lived in their wagons and was gradually shovelled direct into carts until the wagon was empty. So following the Stationmaster's logic would the GWR charge by the day for a private wagon to sit in the siding and would that be more expensive than it sitting on the ground? The 1946 photo seems to show a cart but no actual piles on the ground.

Andy

Putting coal to ground inevitably means double handling so would be avoided if possible and the coal could get mixed with dirt etc.  But I bet many coal merchants were far less fussy about damage to the coal than were industrial customers although they too would no doubt try to keep it in wagons if they could (they definitely tried to keep it in the wagons in BR days).

 

What I can't find is a figure for Siding Rent (for PO wagons) - I can tell you, in mind numbing detail, the legal situation in respect of charging it; when it was to be charged;  and how it had to be accounted taken to monthly account on the GWR.  Having a vague memory (not necessarily reliable) of demurrage rates in the late 1960s and knowing that Siding Rent was cheaper than demurrage I'd be very surprised if it was any more than a couple of bob a day and almost certainly considerably less than that (and probably less than a shilling per day).

[Compound2632]

33 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

But I bet many coal merchants were far less fussy about damage to the coal than were industrial customers although they too would no doubt try to keep it in wagons if they could (they definitely tried to keep it in the wagons in BR days).

 

But I suppose an industrial customer had the advantage that they could store coal in their own wagons on their own private siding, at no cost to anyone other than themselves. Nevertheless unloading and stacking seems to have been the practice at Huntley & Palmers, c. 1922 (allegedly). There we see both the firms' own wagons and those of a factor. 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

From the GWR 1936 General Appendix:

 

This rule is a strong indication that in there wasn't anything else to lean the door on. 

[JimC]

Propping up a door with a random baulk of timber has obvious dangers, but I'm not sure that resting the door on a solidly constructed sound wall would be any more dangerous than resting it on a goods platform. But the point seems moot as there appears to be no evidence of it being done. 

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But I suppose an industrial customer had the advantage that they could store coal in their own wagons on their own private siding, at no cost to anyone other than themselves. Nevertheless unloading and stacking seems to have been the practice at Huntley & Palmers, c. 1922 (allegedly). There we see both the firms' own wagons and those of a factor. 

However in certain circumstances Siding Rent still applied to wagons held on private sidings although that no doubt depended on who owned the wagons and whose siding they were standing on but the charge was collected by the railway company.

 

2 hours ago, JimC said:

Propping up a door with a random baulk of timber has obvious dangers, but I'm not sure that resting the door on a solidly constructed sound wall would be any more dangerous than resting it on a goods platform. But the point seems moot as there appears to be no evidence of it being done. 

There could be quite a difference between 'there appears to be' and the reality.  For example looking at a propped wagon would be enough to give any sane or careful person sufficient information not to do it - but there had to be an Instruction to do - which indicates that there were, or had been, instances of it being done.

 

Unloading coal is an awkward job because it u is not easy to shovel at the top of a heap, or the top of a wagonload of coal. Dropping the side door, while not without its risk to the person doing it, will save a huge amount of work and time.  If a door could be dropped onto the edge of a coal cell or pen etc then I would put good money on somebody doing it even if they had a goodly amount of coal to clear up off the ground afterwards.  As always the people doing the job will find the easiest and quickest way to do it - however dangerous it might be.

 

The railways have some very long established and extremely sensible personal safety Rules for their own staff but still people ignored them and paid the price.  And that has even happened (fortunately very rarely) in today's very safety conscious world both on 'big railway' and heritage railway territory  - leading in both instances to a fatality.  If trained railway staff can err I reckon it could readily occur with untrained casual labourers working for a coal merchant.

[Michael Hodgson]

5 hours ago, JimC said:

Propping up a door with a random baulk of timber has obvious dangers, but I'm not sure that resting the door on a solidly constructed sound wall would be any more dangerous than resting it on a goods platform. But the point seems moot as there appears to be no evidence of it being done. 

I've always understood "Doors must not be propped" to refer to the practice of using baulks of timber with associated risks.  Where a wagon (or van) door can drop down so that it is supported by a fixed solid platform or similar structure, I wouldn't describe that as  "propping it open". 

[Morello Cherry]

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic. I was reading about Blaenau Ffestiniog and it mentions that goods facilities including coal were withdrawn in 1984. How would coal have been handled there where there don't appear to be any obvious facilities for unloading? What would it have been transported in? (I assume that BF wasn't the only small place receiving household coal until late and maybe people can remember how it was done elsewhere - this is one of those small but common operations that I probably saw but took no notice of until it stopped).

[meil]

5 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic. I was reading about Blaenau Ffestiniog and it mentions that goods facilities including coal were withdrawn in 1984. How would coal have been handled there where there don't appear to be any obvious facilities for unloading? What would it have been transported in? (I assume that BF wasn't the only small place receiving household coal until late and maybe people can remember how it was done elsewhere - this is one of those small but common operations that I probably saw but took no notice of until it stopped).

It would have been handled by hand. I used to work at my cousins' coal business during University winter vacations and each day had a different routine but Thursdays were "Concession Day" i.e. it was delivering concession coal (part of their wages) to miners. It was not a day I looked forward to as the coal was generally in an ungraded state and therefore was all sorts of sizes with some large lumps in it. These stuck in your back when you were delivering the coal.

 

The coal was in standard (internal user) wooden coal wagons (this was at the pit - not the railway). We were lucky as there was sufficient space to back the lorry up to the wagon door. You would by hand and shovel put coal into bags inside the wagon, weigh it on the scales and then put it onto the lorry. You had been weighed in on arrival and you were weighed out when you left; there was always a heap of coal by the weigh bridge where overweight lorries used to dump some coal so the under weight lorries could chuck some on top to bring it up to weight. Why was that? it was because it was concession coal so it wasn't about paying for the coal on the lorry - the weight had to be exact.

 

So as to the question of "facilities" all you need is a siding that you can get a lorry to and a couple of blokes with shovels.

Edited May 22, 2022 by meil

[Aire Head]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic

 

The traditional method involving some men and some shovels! 

[Andy Keane]

Keith gave this link a short while ago:

https://www.lambournvalleyrailway.info/bodmans.html

I think it shows sacks being filled inside the railway wagon and then loaded onto a lorry.

Andy

 

[Harlequin]

2 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic. I was reading about Blaenau Ffestiniog and it mentions that goods facilities including coal were withdrawn in 1984. How would coal have been handled there where there don't appear to be any obvious facilities for unloading? What would it have been transported in? (I assume that BF wasn't the only small place receiving household coal until late and maybe people can remember how it was done elsewhere - this is one of those small but common operations that I probably saw but took no notice of until it stopped).

 

Do you mean, how was coal brought in to the area and distributed after bulk rail deliveries had ceased?

 

[KeithMacdonald]

On 19/05/2022 at 17:12, Andy Keane said:

Of course this leads to the even more arcane question of if the coal was dumped in heaps how big / high might they be

 

Exhibit #2 M'Lud, coal heaps at Didcot Power Station in 2003. All delivered by a branch from the Great Western Main Line. The white van on the left gives an idea of scale.  The power station burnt something like 3.7 million tons of coal a year. A friend was a quantity surveyor there at the time, IIRC he said they stored enough coal for four weeks operations, so that heap might be c. 300,000 tons.  Not sure how big it would be in OO gauge though.

 

 

 

 

[Morello Cherry]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

 

Do you mean, how was coal brought in to the area and distributed after bulk rail deliveries had ceased?

 

 

In the sense of you have a goods yard like BF that doesn't appear to have any specialised equipment for coal unloading other than a dock. Would it have been in a 16T mineral wagon and people and shovels as late as the 1980s? I'm assuming it wouldn't have been an HBA because no drops.

 

I guess by this time the era of a coal yard with three coal merchants was probably gone in towns of similar size to BF

 

The thing is that for example I can remember in the early 80s we would have coal delivered by the coal man but by the end of the 80s I remember getting it from the local DIY store. I can't remember when it stopped but I guess it was a knock on from the Miners' Strike.

 

There is an image of the coal yard at BF in 1977. If anyone can decipher how coal was unloaded and what was being used to bring it to BF that would be brilliant.

 

 

Wiki commons has thrown up a photo of the station site from 1976 and the coal yard can be seen clearly.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Morello Cherry
Found two photos of the coal yard at BF.

[Fat Controller]

On 20/05/2022 at 14:12, The Stationmaster said:

However in certain circumstances Siding Rent still applied to wagons held on private sidings although that no doubt depended on who owned the wagons and whose siding they were standing on but the charge was collected by the railway company.

 

There could be quite a difference between 'there appears to be' and the reality.  For example looking at a propped wagon would be enough to give any sane or careful person sufficient information not to do it - but there had to be an Instruction to do - which indicates that there were, or had been, instances of it being done.

 

Unloading coal is an awkward job because it u is not easy to shovel at the top of a heap, or the top of a wagonload of coal. Dropping the side door, while not without its risk to the person doing it, will save a huge amount of work and time.  If a door could be dropped onto the edge of a coal cell or pen etc then I would put good money on somebody doing it even if they had a goodly amount of coal to clear up off the ground afterwards.  As always the people doing the job will find the easiest and quickest way to do it - however dangerous it might be.

 

The railways have some very long established and extremely sensible personal safety Rules for their own staff but still people ignored them and paid the price.  And that has even happened (fortunately very rarely) in today's very safety conscious world both on 'big railway' and heritage railway territory  - leading in both instances to a fatality.  If trained railway staff can err I reckon it could readily occur with untrained casual labourers working for a coal merchant.

The most extreme 'propping' I've seen was a photo taken in a conventional coal yard. Someone had sent a 21t mineral for unloading. The problem was that it was a former Swansea Corporation wagon, which had end doors at both ends, but no side doors.  These doors were top-hinged...The recipient had used a pair of baulks to support the open doors; someone would have to work under the raised door, moving the coal as it was brought forward from further down the wagon. Bear in mind that the end doors were several times larger and heavier than side doors would have been.

[Compound2632]

29 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

In the sense of you have a goods yard like BF that doesn't appear to have any specialised equipment for coal unloading other than a dock. 

 

Coal unloading in ordinary goods yards never called for any specialised equipment, unless you count a shovel as such. Unloading coal at a dock or raised bank would be an unusual luxury! I would imagine that at most places if the stationmaster caught that going on he would have pointed out that the dock was intended for the unloading of merchandise and ingrained coal dirt would not be welcome.

 

(Of course there are always photographs of exceptions but that's what they are: exceptions.) 

[Nick G]

40 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

 

There is an image of the coal yard at BF in 1977. If anyone can decipher how coal was unloaded and what was being used to bring it to BF that would be brilliant.

 

 

 

The 16t wagons would have been tripped from Llandudno Jnc usually by a class 24 in the 70's 

 

http://www.nwrail.org.uk/bh1977-24091.jpg

 

 

[DCB]

4 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic. I was reading about Blaenau Ffestiniog and it mentions that goods facilities including coal were withdrawn in 1984. How would coal have been handled there where there don't appear to be any obvious facilities for unloading? What would it have been transported in? (I assume that BF wasn't the only small place receiving household coal until late and maybe people can remember how it was done elsewhere - this is one of those small but common operations that I probably saw but took no notice of until it stopped).

Around here Cirencester Glos the Coal traffic was the last traffic before the lines were ripped up, the coal businesses were forced to close or amalgamated and pretty much as they did so the lorries improved and radius of deliveries from coal merchants increased. Of course oil and gas were coming in, and cost of delivery to the household became an issue so the fortnightly delivery from a railhead 3 miles away became monthly from 10 miles and now 25 miles away.  Almost everyone away from major towns burned coal to heat houses in the 40s and 50s, now i my village its about 3%.  We burn about 12.5kg of coal per day in mid winter, probably 2.5 tons p.a in a small house with a very efficient hopper fed antrhacite boiler.

In the 50 the coal delivery was a few sacks per house, now its a pallet of 25 or 50 25kg sacks delivered in a van, and most of the energy comes in oil tankers.  The coal, traffic was killed by BR, it didn't die. 

[Morello Cherry]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Coal unloading in ordinary goods yards never called for any specialised equipment, unless you count a shovel as such. Unloading coal at a dock or raised bank would be an unusual luxury! I would imagine that at most places if the stationmaster caught that going on he would have pointed out that the dock was intended for the unloading of merchandise and ingrained coal dirt would not be welcome.

 

(Of course there are always photographs of exceptions but that's what they are: exceptions.) 

 

Indeed, BF is an exception because it had the former narrow gauge - standard gauge transhipment sidings which had by the 1970s could be used as docks. Although those photos appear to show the coal piled on the ground.

 

Would stations like BF have even had a station master by the 1970s?

[Compound2632]

51 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

Would stations like BF have even had a station master by the 1970s?

 

I was thinking more of the 1870s!

[KeithMacdonald]

Ross on Wye

Ross coal depots and Llewellyn's Coal Yard

http://www.rosscivic.org.uk/index.php?page=ross_541-Old_pictures_and_photos_from_Ross&pg=3

 

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Exhibit #2 M'Lud, coal heaps at Didcot Power Station in 2003. All delivered by a branch from the Great Western Main Line. The white van on the left gives an idea of scale.  The power station burnt something like 3.7 million tons of coal a year. A friend was a quantity surveyor there at the time, IIRC he said they stored enough coal for four weeks operations, so that heap might be c. 300,000 tons.  Not sure how big it would be in OO gauge though.

 

 

 

 

Very low stock level in that photo.  It looked really good whenever there was over 1 million tons of coal on the ground there but the photographer would have been standing under at least 20 feet of the stuff to get that picture.  I think the biggest stock Didcoyt ever amasses was around 1.3 n million tons according to what somebody 'in the know' told me.  They usually aimed to have c.1 million tons on hand at the start of winter.

[The Johnster]

The coal stock at Aberthaw in the late 80s looked as if most of the underneath of South Wales was being stacked up there; it was huge!

[The Stationmaster]

9 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

Possibly OT and in which case I apologise. I have a question - how would coal have been handled in small towns etc towards the end of such traffic. I was reading about Blaenau Ffestiniog and it mentions that goods facilities including coal were withdrawn in 1984. How would coal have been handled there where there don't appear to be any obvious facilities for unloading? What would it have been transported in? (I assume that BF wasn't the only small place receiving household coal until late and maybe people can remember how it was done elsewhere - this is one of those small but common operations that I probably saw but took no notice of until it stopped).

As already explained coal handled in local yards basically need no more than some blokes with shovels plus bags  to fill, and scales to weigh it.  Often done on the back of a lorry if the coal was going to be delivered soon after taking it out of the wagon.

 

BR started to move seriously towards closure of small yards and handling domestic coal at concentration depots in the 1960s but some places - witness BF - hung on for years mainly because they lacked convenient road access to a concentration depot.  Generally, as again previously noted. very often the last freight traffic to disappear from many stations, especially on branch lines - was coal but the sheer cost of moving by rail to an otherwise unused branch line or station yard made it grossly uneconomic to deal with. 

 

The general deal with coal merchants was that if they had handled coal there when a yard was open for receipt of coal by rail they were allowed to rent space after the station had closed for handling freight traffic.  if they used any additional space that was subject to Excess Space charges and they were all regularly monitored.  Sometimes completely new merchants would appear renting space in a disused goods yard - it happened at both the intermediate stations on our local branch line where one of those stations hadn't seen any coal traffic for years.  After the track was lifted a coal merchant moved in renting much of the land and building some very solidly constructed timber pens to hold his stock of coal - he simply went out of business when the market vanished (as it did for most domestic coal merchants).

 

Merchants who stayed on in their old space were required, as part of their rental agreement, to get all of their coal through a concentration depot and were subject to fines if they obtained coal from any other source.  On our regular trips around the area I worked in during the mid 1970s we kept an eye out for - usually bulk load - lorries carrying coal and we caught several merchants playing that game.  But it was far more difficult to catch them out on lines like the former S&DJt where there were no longer any railway staff, such as Signalmen or station staff, about.

 

In some cases former, traditional, coal yards with little or no mechanical handling kit were re-christened as concentration depots and remained as such until traffic began to decline - Merthyr was a good example of this.  The main reason coal traffic vanished had little to do with the railway and was really a consequence of changes in how people heated their homes or looked fora cleaner fuel that was more convenient. 

[KeithMacdonald]

We Need To Talk About Coal

 

An excellent and educational video on the different kinds of coal, where it comes from, and the relevant to our heritage rail industry.