Shared use of bay platforms.

[Andy_197011]

Hi, I was wondering if a adjacent industrial building would ever share the bay platform line for loading wagons? ie. Milk, parcels, boxed goods, etc...

 

The platform is an island with local DMU's and local steam trains using the terminus side, the opposite side from the platform I intend to place a large industrial type building and had the thought, would they be allowed to use the line for loading/unloading.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Andy_197011

[Miss Prism]

No.

 

[Nearholmer]

Why not? Or, put another way, why so categorical?

 

I confess not to be able to think of an example exactly as set-out, but neither can I see any cast iron reason why it shouldn’t be possible.

 

Two ‘nearly’ examples are the bay platform at Seaton (Devon), which doubled as a goods siding, with unloading taking place both onto the platform and on the “off” side, and Vauxhall in London, where milk tankers were emptied at a through passenger platform, the attendant pipe work actually being on the platform. Another ‘nearly’ was Sevenoaks, which had a little newspaper-unloading platform on the “off” side of a through passenger platform, likewise stations on the GC London extension, which had Island platforms accessed down stairs from road bridges, where milk platforms, for churns, were situated at track level on the off-side.

[SirBud]

Seems to me there is no physical reason why it could not be done. Therefore it would come down to a commercial arrangement between the railway company and the industry.   Whether anyone actually did it is a different matter.  And on a model railway rule 1 can always be applied.

[Nearholmer]

The two practical issues would be safety, as in protecting staff from vehicles accidentally being ‘bumped’ during loading, but that is no different from loading or unloading a vehicle ‘on the stops’ on the “on” side at a bay platform, and getting in the way of other uses of the bay, which is a matter of timetabling, length of bay etc.

 

Surely there must, somewhere, have been off-side loading or unloading from a bay, other than Seaton, for things like news, mail, and milk churns. And, what about cattle docks? Some of those were in very odd places.

[clachnaharry]

I believe Thurso bay platform was used for unloading coal to the offside after the parallel cattle dock  siding was lifted.

[phil_sutters]

Surely in the days of horse boxes and carriage trucks travelling in passenger trains, they had to unload the carriage wagons over the buffers in bays in passenger stations, with the horses coming and going over the passenger platforms. Highbridge S&D passenger station had a double-sided bay and an end loading bay, which to me suggests that that side of the station could handle that sort of traffic, parcels and milk churns. If these activities were going on alongside passenger movements, it seems possible that other commodities could have been transferred on the far side of a similar end loading bay, although that doesn't seem to have been likely at Highbridge. At Edington Junction the bay for the Bridgwater trains had the very limited sidings for goods traffic for that branch beside it and must have been used for shunting goods trains. Given the low level of passenger traffic up the branch one could see goods wagons being off-loaded on the roadside of that track, without impeding passenger traffic. Some of the trains using the bay were mixed goods and passenger, but the goods wagons would most likely have been detached and shunted into the adjacent siding for unloading or onward travel.

Edited February 16, 2022 by phil_sutters

[doilum]

You might get a wider response in the prototype section.

[Michael Hodgson]

21 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Surely in the days of horse boxes and carriage trucks travelling in passenger trains, they had to unload the carriage wagons over the buffers in bays in passenger stations, with the horses coming and going over the passenger platforms.

 

Yes, but that would have been done by railway company employees, not by the workers in an adajcent industrial building as the OP seems to have in mind.

[Gordon A]

I would have thought that if the bay platform line was in regular use by the railway company then the answer is no. The factory would have to have it's own siding.

However in the unlikely event that the railway company no longer needed the bay line it might be rented out as a private siding, but they would have to off load on the side away from the passenger side. Health & Safety and clear lines of responsibility.

[Nearholmer]

But, not all private premises loaded/unloaded at private sidings. There were innumerable examples of agricultural merchants (SCATS, Silcock & Colling etc) and others having buildings ranging from large warehouses to small stores that were served by ‘railway’ sidings in goods yards.

 

Now, I get that doesn’t fit the OP’s bill, but the idea that all handling at Railway facilitaties was by Railway staff is way off: every coal merchant, and vast numbers of post office personnel, prove otherwise.

 

Even now ‘health and safety, and clear lines of responsibility’ don’t preclude it, all one has to do is devise a safe system of work that ensures those things. Even in modern times there are examples of outside parties loading goods (felled timber for example) to trains on the main running line in open country, let alone at a bay platform in a station, so SSOW can be, and are, devised.

 

What the OP describes certainly isn’t typical, but I believe it is wrong to say ‘never’.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Nearholmer

[phil_sutters]

43 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Yes, but that would have been done by railway company employees, not by the workers in an adajcent industrial building as the OP seems to have in mind.

I was suggesting that while these non-passenger activities, albeit by railway staff, were not impeding passenger activities or safety, if access to the far side was available, there could be a possibility of unloading by non-railway workers there. That was however only my conjecture.

[Nearholmer]

I know I bang on about Seaton, but that was exactly how it worked there. The bay was only needed for passenger trains on summer weekends, so the rest of the time small goods were offloaded onto the platform, and barrowed to the goods office, which was also on the platform, while large goods and minerals were dealt with on the “off” side.

 

The whole station was on a very narrow site, and when the SR rebuilt it, they designed it with maximum efficiency, and best use of space in mind. The cattle dock was on the engine shed road, for instance.

[Din]

Certainly no logical reason for it to not have happened.

 

However, there's also a logical reason it wasn't so widespread.

 

Generally your post/parcels arrived in one van or wagon on a morning train in branchline situations.

 

Mainline terminii had their own dedicated parcels platforms due to the sheer and utter weight of traffic arriving.

 

Most places had dedicated goods yards, and goods sheds, for the reason of keeping the potentially "dirty" nature of goods away from passengers. As well as them keeping people safer by providing lifting facilities and protecting the mainline from any issues.

[Andy_197011]

Thanks for the replies.

Looking around I couldn't see any examples of private companies using the "Off-side" of the bay platform.

I had suspected H&S would have been a concern during loading/unloading.

 

I think I have now discounted this idea.

[Wheatley]

This isn't a bay, it's a through platform and the only running line so even more unlikely to be dual use, but nevertheless it has a passenger platform one side and the loading dock for a creamery on the other. Sorbie station, Newton Stewart to Whithorn branch:

 

https://www.viewdumfriesandgalloway.co.uk/view-item?i=10081#kS8j0FSe8ewAAAF_PLfjtQ/10081