Railway Freight Operations - Coal
For information on coal merchants yards see the section on Railway Company Goods Facilities - Coal and Heating Oil
Coal has always been the single largest
traffic on the railways, as well as its domestic uses it powered everything in
industry and provided gas for towns. Even in the 1990's coal wagons remained
the largest single category of stock on the railway system and contributed
about half the revenue earned by railway freight.
The domestic gas fire
only really caught on in the 1950's, prior to that most households had regular
deliveries of coal and a small coal bunker, either in the yard or built into
the house itself, was an essential feature of every home. In the early 1960's
it was estimated that about 20% of the household refuse collected by the local
corporations was ashes from coal fires. At that time the small private coal
yard was still part of many station goods yards, at larger stations a separate
coal yard was often provided, independent of the main goods yard. At one of my
local stations (Altrincham, south of Manchester) there were more sidings in the
coal yard than there were in the goods yard although this yard also supplied
coal to the local gas works and handled the coke and chemicals traffic coming
the other way.
Coal has always been moved in open wagons and open hopper
wagons, although the size of the rolling stock has increased steadily over the
years. The original chauldron wagons carried just over two tons, then in the
latter half of the nineteenth century came the first standard open coal wagons
carrying perhaps eight tons apiece. By the 1920's the ten ton wooden wagon was
standard, although older eight tonners survived into the early 1950's. Twelve
tonners were becoming common by the 1940's (this was the basis for the 1923 RCH
coal wagon specification but it appears to have taken some time to catch on
with users) and steel bodied wagons started to become more common at this time.
The early years of British Railways saw a massive building program of 16 ton
steel wagons of various designs and larger capacity twenty one ton and even
twenty four ton steel wagons were also built in some numbers.
Before the
second world war most coal wagons were private owner stock, most had wooden
bodies and they were often rather old and dilapidated. The Southern Railway did
provide some wagons for use in the Kentish coal areas and other railway
companies built stock which they leased to private owners, notably the GWR with
their `Felix Pole' steel bodied 20 tonners and the large wooden bodied hopper
wagons on the North Eastern Railway/LNER.
Block trains of coal were
actually the exception rather than the rule in the pre-BR days, other than
those feeding power stations or running to the docks for export. A colliery
might send out a rake consisting of wagons for several different destinations,
these would be hauled by the railway to the nearest marshalling yard to be
sorted. At the marshalling yard the rake would be broken up and individual
wagons or short 'cuts' of wagons would be attached to mixed goods rakes going
to various destinations on the system. Coal therefore neatly bridges the gap
between block trains and single wagon load traffic.
There was so much
coal moved however that block trains of coal would regularly be seen anywhere
remotely near a colliery. Such a train might consist of as many as 150 or so
wagons in the Big Four era. The main limiting factor was the length of the
loops or refuge sidings provided so the slow coal train could get clear of the
line to allow a passenger service or express goods train to pass. In N gauge
you would need sidings about twenty feet long to accommodate such a train and I
doubt many 'N' loco's could pull such a rake round any typical model railway
curves.
Fig___ British mainland coal fields and associated
ports
Coal was usually
loaded into railway wagons at the mine, however a coal mine, even a small one,
takes a fair bit of space and requires quite a lot of model making (coal mines
are discussed in more detail under Lineside Industries). An alternative is the
remote loading facility, these could deal with coal from a number of smaller
pits or might simply offer a siding with a chute to collect coal from a small
mine (examples of the latter were seen in the Forest of Dean).
Fig___
Remote Coal Loading Facilities
All the sketches in the above
illustration were made from photographs. In the example shown in the lower left
the 'chute' into which the lorries tip was actually a redundant tipper lorry
body, photographed in the late 1970's or early 1980's. The body from the new
Knightwing lorry kit could be used for this, well rusted, and the cab and
chassis could then form a handy wagon load.
A lot of coal was delivered
to local coal merchants, these usually rented space in the local station goods
yard and generally had a siding or two reserved for their use. My local station
in Hale actually had two separate coal yards, operated by different merchants,
but it would be quite possible (though not common) for two merchants to 'share'
a siding. The larger coal yard just up the line at Altrincham was shared by
several merchants, but that was a separate yard with loops and a number of
sidings. The coal merchants yards forming part of the station goods yard are
discussed separately under Freight Operations - Railway Company Goods
Facilities. That section also discusses how the coal was handled by the
merchants.
Prior to the Second World War coal wagons other than in the
North East were mainly private owner stock of simple design dating back to the
early twentieth century. They were usually wooden bodied, loose-coupled, with a
short wheel base and low capacity. Some were end-door types that could be
tipped up to empty them, a practice favoured when feeding docks and larger
industrial users. Many had some form of bottom doors and if a wagon's side door
was damaged these bottom doors might be used to get the coal out with the
assistance of some men with shovels.
Wagons fitted with end-doors could
be tipped up using a section of hinged track and in some locations wagons with
only side doors were emptied by opening the side door and tipping the wagon
over sideways. To hold the wagon in check a heavy chain with a hook on the end
was slipped over the top of the wagon side. This latter system was sometimes
used to feed coal into railway company mechanical locomotive coaling towers.
With the introduction of steel bodied stock came the rotary tippler in
which the wagons are physically turned upside down and this system was widely
used for sand and iron ore traffic in BR days. Fortunately for the modeller the
tippler itself is usually located inside a shed of some form although at least
one working tippler has been built in N gauge.
In the North East there
was a tradition of using hopper wagons although these were themselves wooden
bodied. The disadvantage was that hopper wagons need a raised track or an
excavated pit to empty into, adding to the cost. This made them unpopular with
private traders who would have to build such an arrangement themselves. In the
North East the railway companies built the coal drops and leased these to the
traders.
Following nationalisation in 1947 private owner wagons were
quickly phased out and all coal was moved in British Railways rolling stock,
mainly the British Railways standard 16 ton open wagons. In the North East
however the coal drops remained in use and British Railways actually built a
number of wooden bodied hoppers to a basically pre-1923 NER design to serve
these (see Historical Background section).
The 'Clean Air Act' was
passed in December 1956, following a severe smog in 1952 that had killed about
4,000 people in and around London and another (earlier in 1956) that spread
over several counties. Smog is a fog with a lot of dirty smoke in it, they were
fairly common in towns close by water such as rivers. The Act gave local
authorities the power to establish 'smokeless zones' in which only 'smokeless
fuels could be used. Smoke free zones soon proliferated but the bulk of the
country continued to use bituminous coal and the severe smogs continued for
many years (one quite bad one occurred as late as 1962). The smokeless zones
required smokeless fuels, initially these cost about half again as much as coal
which is why they were not simply adopted by everyone as a matter of course.
Anthracite coal is effectively smokeless but most smokeless fuels are made of
pulverised coke mixed with a binding agent and formed into briquettes about the
size of a bar of soap. As it is based on coke, and hence lighter than coal,
smokeless fuel was often moved in high sided (7 or 8 plank) wagons with coke
rails fitted to increase their capacity. There is a photograph of a private
owner wagon in the Historical Model Railway Collection bearing the livery of a
pre-war smokeless fuel merchant. The catalogue describes the picture as being
of an Ex Suncole Smokeless Nottingham Fuel 13T 8 plk + coke rails P192891
Side and end door. Photo by M.Ruggles. Side view. Date/loc unknown paint date
may be 1948. From which we may deduce that there had existed a substantial
market for smokeless fuels for many years prior to the Second World War. The
first patent on a method of making smokeless fuel actually dates back to 1620
when Sir William St. John devised a process using a 'beehive kiln' to turn coal
into coke. By the 1920's the various agencies in the USA were recommending coke
as a smokeless fuel to reduce smog (they had a range of other fuels, solid,
liquid and gas in use at the time, many of which produced thick smoke). I
believe smokeless fuel was a distinctly marginal industry in the UK until the
Clean Air Act but just how big the margin was, and what special purposes the
smokeless fuel may have been used for, I have not been able to establish.
The pattern of domestic coal distribution changed in the later 1960's, the
transport Minister, Mr. Marples, following the recommendations made by Mr.
Beeching and his team, encouraged a shift toward block working. This saw the
end of deliveries to smaller individual coal merchants sidings, instead the
coal and smokeless fuel was shipped to the new Coal Concentration Depots from
where it was delivered by road, pre-bagged or in bulk, to the local traders.
Some larger coal merchants with large rail served depots (usually on
the site of a former station goods yard) continued to receive wagon loads of
coal up to about 1970. I distinctly remember a couple of coal wagons on the
single siding at a small local station (Heald Green) in the early 1970's,
however these may have been simply abandoned as not worth collecting. The
entire former goods yard was by this time the coal merchant's yard with
substantial stockpiles banked up in pens made of old oil drums and a mechanical
shovel for lifting the coal into the bagging machine. Coal merchants with large
sail served depots such as Charringtons, warranted train load deliveries and
these continue today.
The coal concentration depots favoured the hopper
wagon to reduce handling and British Railways began to use hopper wagons
whenever possible for coal traffic. The standard British Railways coal hopper
design was a 21 ton four wheeler (TOPS coded HTO or HTV) based on a 1930's
design used on the pre-war LNER system. Where there was a shortage of coal
hoppers iron ore hoppers were regularly pressed into service. Long rakes of
hoppers were often seen running to the coal concentration depots as block
trains, a typical depot would take perhaps eight of the British Railways 21 ton
hoppers at a time.
The million or so 16 ton steel end-door wagons
already in service continued to operate, in diminishing numbers, up to the mid
1980's. The steady decline in the use of house coal, coupled with the problems
for the local trader in getting his coal from the concentration depot to his
premises, saw the gradual demise of rail haulage. Today coal is only moved as
block loads, most is block 'merry-go-round' workings en route to power
stations, steel works and the like but some is still carried to coal dealers
yards. (Merry go round services are discussed separately).
Fig___
Coal Drops
In 1970 coal and smokeless fuels made from coal
accounted for about 70 percent of household heating but consumption then fell
quite rapidly. In the later 1970's (following the 1973 oil crisis) the
government encouraged industrial users to switch from oil to coal but in the
early 1980's they were persuaded to encourage a switch to North Sea Gas,
allowing this to be sold at cut rates and even encouraging the building of gas
rather than coal fired power stations.
For air braked services the
standard British Railways for supplying domestic coal distribution centres and
minor industrial users (who did not warrant a merry-go-round service) was the
manually discharged hopper HBA wagon. Although air braked, the original HBA
wagons were piped for working with vacuum braked stock such as the
original BR standard HTV 21 ton hoppers and designed to run at a maximum speed
of 45 mph in line with the existing vacuum brake coal distribution services of
the day. Mixed rakes were common and the vacuum fitted HTV 21 ton hoppers saw
out the 1980's in some locations.
The HBA wagons were also used to
carry coal and coke to some larger industrial locations, notably the steel
works at Scunthorpe, where the large lumps of coke sometimes fouled the doors
on the HAA 'Merry Go Round' type wagons.
A body kit for the HBA/HEA is
available from Taylor Plastic Models, designed to fit the Peco fifteen foot
wheelbase chassis.
Up to 1984 domestic coal was run as block loads, as
the use of coal declined this became increasingly uneconomic. In 1983 and 1984
the HBA hoppers were revamped to run at 60 mph and recoded HEA, this allowed
them to be moved in Speedlink wagon load services. About two thousand wagons
were converted but due to an abrupt change in circumstances caused by the
1984/85 miners strike only fifteen hundred or so ended up in service on
domestic coal duties.
In 1984 the domestic coal traffic, with the new
HEA wagons to carry it (and the scrap metal traffic) were both fully integrated
into the Speedlink air braked wagon load service network. This change meant an
end to vacuum braked wagons and the scrap metal traffic was shifted over to
leased air-braked wagons with (I believe) a few BR built wagons on redundant
air-braked chassis.
The integration of the domestic coal services into
Speedlink was not entirely successful as coal's needs did not fit well with the
Speedlink operational pattern and in the mid 1980's Speedlink worked with the
National Coal Board to establish a domestic and minor industrial user delivery
service using separate block trains made up of dedicated locomotives and rakes
of HEA hopper wagons. This new way of working was fully implemented in 1987,
initially called the Network Coal Initiative it was later rebranded as the
Speedlink Coal Network.
The plan was to offer deliveries of as little
as 100 tons a year to lesser users supplied by a network of forty collieries
offering good quality domestic coal and ten or so collieries and factories
offering smokeless fuels. By the late 1980's, mainly due to the contraction of
business caused by the miners strike, collections were made from only 28
collieries and smokeless fuel plants. These fed a system of seven major
marshalling yards, shared with the train-load coal sector, from which
deliveries were made to thirty seven domestic fuel concentration depots and two
factories with private sidings. The trip workings to customers were usually
once per day, motive power was supplied by pairs of class 20 loco's or later by
single class 37 locomotives.
The 20-25 ton payload of the HBA/HEA
wagons represented a significant improvement on infrastructure use compared to
the older vacuum braked hoppers and steel end door wagons but hoppers require
dedicated discharge facilities. In many cases the old pre World War Two coal
drops remained in use, this was the case at Stockport on the old LNWR line
south of Manchester, whilst in newly built installations conveyors fed from an
under-track pit were provided. In the mid 1980's a machine called an
over-rail-under-loader appeared, this has a pan which can be slipped under the
wagon but above the rails feeding a conveyor belt. These latter were used at
Mossend, Oxford and Bow and possibly at other sites on the system.
The
domestic coal business continued to contract, by 1990 there were no Network
Coal services south of London and the remaining rail deliveries using the HEA
hoppers ceased in 1993.
Coal Containers
Meanwhile in the
mid 1980's a company called Cobra containers had produced a number of coal
containers to standard ISO specifications but with a reduced overall height.
These can be handled using standard ISO container gear (or large fork lift
trucks) but can be moved on standard height railway wagons.
The first
examples were twenty feet long and ran on specially built drop-centre wagons
allowing them to fit under the loading screens at he pits (Coedbach, Onllwyn,
Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen) which had been built to feed the old 21 ton mineral wagons
(TOPS MDO and MDV). An early adopter was Kelly's who used twenty foot
containers in their livery for exports of coal from Wales to Ireland. Kelly's
had the boxes loaded, sitting on the wagons, at the washeries of the Welsh pits
and they went as a block load to the docks where they were loaded onto ships
for Ireland. Cawoods also adopted the twenty foot containers for Irish exports
(and possibly some mainland coal distributions work, but I cannot confirm
that). I do not believe either of these container services ran as wagon load
traffic in Speedlink services, they were both block train operations.
Brian Williams explained to me that coal traffic to Scotland was
important enough to retain, but served too widespread an area to justify
household coal concentration depots as seen elsewhere. Thus a load of surplus
flat (SAA) and van (VCA) underfames were modified to carry reduced height open
ISO style boxes to a number of centres, where the boxes were transhipped to
road for final delivery. The wagons were coded FPA. Due to the reduced height,
the boxes were 30' long, allowing them to carry about the same tonnage as the
twenty foot boxes mentioned above. In 1982 a Scottish firm called Russels
adopted the FPA and its thirty foot container for deliveries to their domestic
coal distribution depots. The earlier type is illustrated below, there was a
second design with less complex ribbing on the lower sides but I have not been
able to find a colour illustration of these. Both Russel 30 foot types are
available from Taylor Plastic Models, see below. All three users operated these
containers in their own house livery. The sketches below are based on my notes
and sketches from my notebooks and may be incorrect in detail.
Fig___
Coal Containers
My note book says
the Kelly's containers were red with possibly yellow markings. Cawoods used
yellow containers with the firms name in black either vertically on the left
hand end or in large letters centrally on the sides. The early type of Russel
containers were all over orange-red, the company name and wagon number are in
black letters on white rectangles. The later type of container is dark grey and
has the firms name in blue on a vertical white patch toward the left hand end
of the container. Brian Williams informs me that the original Kelly's wagons
were sold to the Ministry of Defence in the early 1990's but in 2001 Cawoods
received a grant to refurbish 81 open top containers (size unspecified) with
end doors required for the continuation of coal flows from collieries at Selby,
Clipstone and Daw Mill to Seaforth for onward shipping to Northern Ireland. The
Russel containers were still operating in 2003.
I believe the twenty
foot containers have been used to carry rock salt (moved as a block load with
pairs of containers carried on bogie FLA wagons) and the thirty foot long
('Russel' type) containers have also been used to carry other products,
including beetroot for Baxter's from Ely and animal foods.
Models of
both the original and the more recent Russel type containers and the associated
FPA wagon are available from Taylor Plastic Models. The model runs on the
Graham Farish/TPM four wheeled modern air-braked chassis with an open-frame
insert (so it can be run empty). I believe the maximum height allowable for an
eight foot wide container on a standard chassis is seven feet six inches,
however the Russel containers are only six feet six inches high. Even at this
height they cannot be loaded to capacity as this would exceed the axle weight
of the delivery lorries so they normally carry twenty odd tons of coal. The
Russel type are often stacked (up to four high) in the yard but some are lifted
onto tipper lorries and emptied onto stockpiles in the yard. They are moved
about and lifted on and off the wagons using large fork lift trucks (see also
Railway Company Goods Facilities - Container Handling).
In the later
1980's it would be quite normal to see a domestic coal service train consisting
of ten to fifteen four wheeled FPA (thirty foot) container wagons with ten to
fifteen HBA hoppers tagged on the rear. The containers have a door in the lower
part of one end, they are lifted onto a lorry equipped with tipping gear for
the final road leg of the journey. The hoppers would be routed to a rail served
coal depot or one of the minor industrial users (the latter would travel as
wagon load traffic in a Speedlink trip service).
I believe BR stopped
supplying domestic coal and coal for smaller industrial users in its own wagons
in 1993. The containerised coal traffic continued at that time, although the
remaining Speedlink wagon load services had ended in 1991 so these must have
been operated as block trains until 1993 when some may have been moved in the
new Enterprise wagon load services.
Following privatisation EWS has
invested heavily in new high capacity coal hopper wagons. In 2002 they ordered
a final batch of 300 wagons from the York based wagon supplier Thrall Europa.
This was part of a five year £200 million investment programme for a
package of 2,500 wagons of various types. EWS has purchased a total of 1145 new
coal wagons of various types since 1998. The new hopper wagons haul 40 percent
more coal than traditional wagons in a standard train size and are designed to
operate at 75mph.
The government has set a target of an eighty percent
increase in rail hauled freight by 2010 (although this will remain a small
percentage of the total freight moved in the UK), investment on this scale
makes that target look like a practical proposition.