Unit Loads - Pallets and IBCs
Pallets
Pallets are again not a new idea, in Lancashire,
where the cotton goods once clothed over half the worlds population, a simple
wooden tray called a 'flat bottom' was developed in the mid 1870's. This had a
low lip around the edge and a lifting lug at each corner. These were stacked up
with up to 4 tons of yarn or cloth and loaded into one plank open wagons by
crane (the load was covered with a tarpaulin on the wagon in transit). By the
1920's the 'portable platform' was used by a number of industries both for
shipping goods and also for internal movements at the factory.
What is
new however is the acceptance of a common standard and the use of the fork lift
truck. The fork lift truck was developed by the Americans in the 1930's but was
mainly used as a light mobile crane. The fork lift idea only really gained
acceptance during World War Two when they were used for handling military
supplies. They arrived in Europe just after the war and soon became a feature
of British industrial life.
An early use for standard pallets in
Britain was the movement of bricks during the re-building after the second
world war. Pallets saved considerable time in loading and off loading railway
wagons and British Rail actually built or converted quite a few wagons to
`palbricks' with fixed and braced ends fitted with screw clamps and simple
removable sides. A pallet of bricks is almost a cube, being slightly higher
than it is wide or long. They are strapped down with three or four 'band-it'
metal straps one way and sometimes two or three similar straps the other. The
model on the left is an early version, converted from a 'medfit' (the metal
bodied equivalent of a three plank dropside wagon). On these early conversions
the ends of the wagon body were retained.
Fig___ Models of Palbrick
wagons
The palbricks are no longer used for bricks but you
still see them in marshalling or maintenance yards, painted blue, with the TOPS
codes RGQ and RFQ. They are used as 'match wagons' for allowing loco's to couple
up to wagons which are not fitted with conventional couplings (for example
Freightliner 'inner' container flats).
Today bricks are often not
actually palletised, from the mid 1980's they have been stacked in such a way
that the stack has holes suitable for a fork lift in its sides. The stacks are
then strapped with metal strip called 'Band-it' and, since the mid 1990's, they
have often had a tight fitting clear or printed plastic cover wrapped round
them.
Eliminating the pallet reduces the volume of the stack and means that the
empties do not need returning which reduces the costs. Wrapped stacks can be
modelled from blocks of wood, the shrink-wrap plastic can be represented by
cling film, the printed type by paper wrappers. Up to the mid 1980's these
block-stacked bricks were regularly shipped in low sided open topped
containers, carried on Freightliner bogie flat wagons. The containers usually
have fixed ends about four foot high (half height) and have removable side
panels supported on removable stanchions. Thirty foot long types were the most
common I believe. These were operated as block workings from the London Brick
works at Stewartby to Merseyside and enthusiasts called them 'Brickliner' or
'Fletliner'. The only photograph I have seen is a black and white print which
does not appear to show any special markings but a chap on the uk.railways
newsgroup who signs himself as 'Chippy' advises me that in the 1970s the
removable-sided Fletliner containers were yellow, with the words 'London Brick
Fletliner' on them. He was not able to remember the lettering style or colour,
but quite frequently saw them at Fletton, which must have been near the end of
production there. As far as I am aware no special markings were carried on the
Class 31 diesels hauling the trains. These services ended in about 1985.
Smaller consignments are shipped in open wagons such as the OAA and OBA, the
pallets of bricks are separated with motor car tyres to protect them in
transit, the tyres often showing above the top of the palletised bricks. These
tyres can be made by cutting short lengths from the insulation stripped from
electrical wiring they should be about 4mm or 5mm in diameter and cut about 1mm
thick.
BR has since the 1950's produced a range of vans for palletised
cargo. Early types were modified standard vans or even conversions fitted with
doors large enough to accept a pallet, generally towards one end of the body.
Inside there were rollers on the floor to enable the pallet to be moved along
the wagon. The model shown below is a BR Western Region vehicle made from a
Peco ventilated van kit. See also the section on Post Nationalisation Wagon
Development for photographs of two pure BR plywood bodied pallet vans.
Modelling these vehicles is described in the section on Kit
Bashing.
Fig___ Model of an early BR(WR) pallet van
Later came purpose
built designs, incorporated sliding side sections giving access to the entire
wagon (an example of this being the Peco pallet van). More recently the
air-braked stock has included `curtain sided' vans, which have a tarpaulin side
which can be removed to give access to the interior. Campbell's Soups were an
early convert to rail palletisation and hired a fleet of VDA vans converted by BRT to
sliding-side-doors in the mid 1970's. In about 1981 some of these were converted to curtain-sided vans. The side curtains were bright red with the
company name in white. This idea spread to other users, which adds some colour
to the modern rake of wagons. Unfortunately illustrations of these vans seem to
be thin on the ground, there is a good colour photograph of the Campbell's van
in British Railway Vans Volume 2, published by Cheona publications. In N the
Campbell's vans are available as an etched brass kit from John Grey (see
Available Models section for details). For the colourful Private Owner liveries
sometimes seen on these wagons a computer colour printed side sheet would serve
rather well.
Fig___ Sample 'PO' liveries for curtain sided
air braked vans
Other materials well suited for palletised shipment
are sacks of fertiliser, cement and even dried china clay. By the early 1980s a new type of van was in use, fitted with sides incorporating a section of roof that can slide back to provide easy fork-lift access to the cargo. These vans soon caught on and saw widespread service on palletised traffic.
Fig___ Sliding wall van being loaded
In Europe
today there are three common sizes of pallet in use - Most common is the 1200 x
800mm CEN Standard (also called a Euro Pallet) used mainly for retail business,
industrial users prefer a 1000 x 1200 mm (ISO Standard) but 1200 x 1200 mm is
common for handling vegetable retail business The Euro pallet size (1200 x of
800 mm) is derived from the 'standard transport package' size with base
dimensions of 400 x 600 mm. This basic measurement is used for all European
freight transport and warehousing purposes, it was arrived at on the basis that
an average bloke can lift and stack packages of this size. The Euro Pallet fits
comfortably into road trailers and semi trailers but it does not mate up well
with the ISO container which is slightly too narrow to fill with the pallets.
As a result the ISO container has not found much favour for internal freight
movement in Europe, although it dominates the traffic on deep-sea routes to
America and the Near to Far East. This has lead European shippers to develop
the road-rail 'swap body', designed specifically to carry the standard Euro
Pallet. The swap body is about eight feet six inches wide and cannot be carried
in the standard cellular container ships. This is further discussed in the
section on Unit Loads - Modern Containers, Road Railer, Piggyback and Swap
Bodies
Incidentally wooden planking and beams are these days generally
moved about with fork lift trucks. They do not (usually) use pallets for this
but simply band the wood in metal strip and attach two or three short lengths
to the underside so the fork lift can get under the stack. Bundles of wood,
which are stacked to be as square as possible, can be stacked on top of each
other to save space in the yard.
IBCs (Intermediate Bulk
Containers)
IBC's are basically big sacks, originally developed for
powders such as chemicals and fertilisers. They come in a range of sizes shapes
and colours depending on their intended use. Some are reusable but many are
intended to be disposable. They are fitted with lifting strops sewn onto the
top or sides and are moved by fork lift trucks, sometimes using a specialised
hook if the design of the sack requires this.
Fig___ Moving an IBC using a fork lift truck
Farm equipment can be designed to
take the bag directly without the need for loading an on-board hopper and IBCs
for this use often have a single lifting strop sewn in at the top. This fits on
a raised arm on the tractor and the bottom is attached to the spreading
gear.
Redundant bags of a convenient size and shape were then taken up
by builders merchants as a handy way to deliver sand and gravel and more
recently these low value goods have been supplied in IBC's for ease of
handling. A typical example might be four foot to a side and virtually a cube
shape with lifting loops on the corners and carrying a ton of gravel.
On
the railways IBCs are carried in standard vans, the more modern sliding wall
type such as the BR VGA vans being favoured by users. For materials such as
sand and gravel, where protection from the elements is less of an issue, open
wagons of the OAA and OAB type could be used, but I have not seen any
photographs of open wagons carrying IBCs. The operators of the dispatching and
receiving terminals are responsible for providing the handling equipment.