British Railway Operations

[Tulyar15]

Rolling Stock does seem to get vandalised a lot, especially in London. So I don't think it;s anything to do with unemployment.

I gather the Amman Valley line from Pantyffynon (the line that branches off to the right as you head up the Central Wales line) is to re-open due to one of the pits in the valley re-opening. There's also talk that the Burry Port & Gwendreath Valley line may also re-open again due to a possible mine re-opening. Ironically high oil prices are helping to make these mines viable again. The group who want to preseve the BP &GV line have abandonded their plans to convert it to narrow gauge and instead have set about acquiring suitable standard gauge stock with which to operate. They've bought one of the cut down 03's and I believe the cut down 08's still exist. Dont know what they can do about passenger stock - perhaps use old tube cars like the North Downs railway used to when they were based in Chatham Docks.

[beaulieu]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding
[

Thank you for your offer. I'd hate to make you part with it though. It's quite interesting to read about the differences in Britain than here. In my part of the world, 90% of train cars coming through are hauling rock, or grain, and are pulled by the same pool of GP 38's and GP 39's. Oh to have some more variety. Simon Reed mailed me 3 British Railroad magazines a while back. Railfanning, and railroad publications seem to be pretty popular.
Where abouts, in Wisconsin are you? We go to Duluth and Bayfield every year on vacation.

Thanks

No problem parting with it as I have the other three issues for the year. I have been planning a cull of the older issues, I now buy only one issue per year just to keep up with the changes. Send me an e-mail with your snail mail address.


I am in Grantsburg, halfway between the Twin Ports and the Twin Cities. Depending on which route you take you may pass close by me.

[beaulieu]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Mingin - ahh yes. Can mean a variety of things from awful (hung over) to awful as in well....plain awful.

Part of the inspiration for Blade Runner (the film) came from Port Talbot steelworks. Many moons ago when I worked in the CSDC I had a trip round the thorpe; Immingham and Grimsby and a fun jolly it was too. Incidentally the Aluminium Works at Valley has resurfaced on the weekly outages - does anybody know of a new flow out of there, perhaps to the continent?

Yes it is a weekly movement of Aluminum Billet for Austria, normally leaves the UK in IWA vans on 4431 to Köln-Gremberg.

[Murphy Siding]

Thanks cogload. That was cool, to say the least![:)]

[Anonymous]

Freight flows can vary - however this is a very quick stab (and feel free to add). As one poster said - check Freightmaster.

Oil - Refineries - Immingham, Jarrow, Fawley, Grangemouth, Robeston to various places. Some is moved as locomotive fuel to depots; bitumen (Fawley - Plymouth); Avaiation fuel (Colnbrook) etc. Various depots recieving are Langley, Colnbrook, Westerleigh, Linkswood, Plymouth etc. etc etc.
Coal - the amount of deep mine pits in the UK is dwindling with the major fields of South Wales and Yorkshire basically wiped out. However Strip/ Open Cast is doing a healthy trade. However there is enough coal in the UK (reserve) for about 300years so that will get used when the giants have strip mined the rest - thats if we have a planet left. Most of the ocal is imported from the Ports such as Hunterston, Immingham and Hull. There is a little thru the smaller ports as well such as Ellesmere Port and heads for the power stations. These are subject to EU regulation on Greenhouse Gas emissions and the scrubbing equipment required is very expensive so watch for a few closures in yeasr to come. However the country may shut down this winter which leads to the question of WHY? Still the major stations are at Drax, Ferrybridge and Eggborough. Ratcliffe, Cockenzie, Uskmouth (Fifoots) and Aberthaw to name but a few. They source from domestic and the ports. Pits remaining - Tower (S. Wales); Maltby, Rossington, Thoresby, Welbeck etc etc. There are many open cast pits around and this has become a handy source of traffic for the freight operators.
Metals - yee haaa. Corus traffic from Scunny, Workington (to cease), Corby, Llanwern, Trostre, Dee Marsh, Rotherham and various other places.
Bomb Trains - Nuclear Flask traffic. May increase but famous are amongst others Sellafield, Dungeness (strange and eerie place), Sizewell (Leiston); Bridgwater (cant remember the name of the place). There is also residual traffic to and from military bases.
Ministry of Defence Traffic - containerised, or tanks on flats. From Longtown to Bicester, Ludgershall with Didcot the main point. There are irregular flows to various other locations in the UK.
Stone - A Vast and Big Cash Earner. The Mendip Quarries (Merehead); The Peaks (Tunstead) and Leicestershire (Mountsorrel) to various places. There is also Imported stuff. Too numerous to mention. Donkeys loads and lots of trains. Best place to Ned? Hmm. Leicester prerhaps.
Intermodal/ Swapbodies/ Containers - from the ports to various locations. The biggest port for this is Felixstowe I would reckon and then there is Southampton and there are flows to and from the Chunnel as well. Manchester Trafford Park to Dollandsa Moor is one. Thamesport, Tilbury are used as well. Port capacity is basically reaching a peak in the UK so something must be done to help allieviate the congestion. Ironically the second deepest "deep water" port in the UK is not used at all. The name of that port...Falmouth. There are internal container flows as mentioned above, Daventry being the growth centre for this part of the logistics chain.
China Clay - internal in my home county. And this traffic is slowly dying. This is due to the quality of the clay now being 50/50 split with sand. As a result it is cheaper to strip mine the Amazon and sod the Parrots. However there are various grades of clay (used in paper and the pharmaceutical industry) and 90% of the worlds Ball Clay reserve sits in the Bovey Basin. Untouched and a potential source of future traffic.

There are other traffics of course - Automotive (Bridgend/ Dagenham/ Garston etc.), Gypsum, Timber (Carlisle - Chirk), Chemicals. That is a very brief overview.

[Anonymous]

Mingin - ahh yes. Can mean a variety of things from awful (hung over) to awful as in well....plain awful.

Part of the inspiration for Blade Runner (the film) came from Port Talbot steelworks. Many moons ago when I worked in the CSDC I had a trip round the thorpe; Immingham and Grimsby and a fun jolly it was too. Incidentally the Aluminium Works at Valley has resurfaced on the weekly outages - does anybody know of a new flow out of there, perhaps to the continent?

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by beaulieu

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding
[

What would you typically see in day of train watching at some place like Newport Station? Is this a freight and passenger line, or just freight?

Thanks

Newport Station is one of the premier trainwatching spots in the UK, except for electric powered trains you have an excellent amount of traffic passing through. Both freight and passenger, Also Godfrey Road Stabling point is visible from the platforms and local freight power for EWS is serviced there. If you are interested Murphy I could mail you a copy of Freightmaster, the UK freight timetable. I have a copy from a couple of years ago that I would gladly part with. Discovering that book fired up my interest in UK freight operations. Of course things are in a constant state of flux and some of the services listed are gone, and other new ones started but it would give you an idea of the variety of freight operations in the UK.

Thank you for your offer. I'd hate to make you part with it though. It's quite interesting to read about the differences in Britain than here. In my part of the world, 90% of train cars coming through are hauling rock, or grain, and are pulled by the same pool of GP 38's and GP 39's. Oh to have some more variety. Simon Reed mailed me 3 British Railroad magazines a while back. Railfanning, and railroad publications seem to be pretty popular.
Where abouts, in Wisconsin are you? We go to Duluth and Bayfield every year on vacation.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Martin, I agree - was just pointing out the problems in the area. South Wales isn't exactly bursting with employment opportunities after the closure of most of the heavy industries. Not sure about the coal mines being worked out though - many of them still have good coal reserves according to recent Welsh Assembly reports, and I thought it was more a case of being able to import coal more cheaply than it can be mined here (big mistake - the eastern European coal is nothing like as good as proper Welsh steam coal in my experience). I'd not read about the loco anywhere else either - then again, the person I heard this from is usually pretty reliable.

[mhurley87f]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Railroading_Brit

The Corus business is a bit of a sore point down in South Wales - let's just say the locals are not huge fans of a company that shut down large chunks of one of the main sources of employment in the area. I heard somewhere that one of two Class 60's repainted into Corus silver had a spot of bother when it ran in the area leading to them being put onto other duties - not sure how true it is though the source is usually reliable!

Matt,

The closure of any industry that has offered pay levels significantly better than the local level, and offer good openings for craft apprentices and production grade trainees, can be devastating to a town or area. When our local, and by then, ultra-modern steelworks closed in the early eighties, the drop in retail spending alone was noticable, and it has been a tough twenty years or so to get back to what passes as "prosperity" these days, and I could sympathise with Simon Reed when he recently said his family would be badly affected by Corus' s closure of its Workington plant.

That said, the people working in any steelworks, or mine, or docks, or railway, will be fully aware that they don't have jobs for life. The biggest employer in my home town is Corus's Trostre Tinplate plant, which is the sole survivor out of the three UK plants of roughly equal size that were active as late as the late nineteen eighties. Tinplate workers know all too well that new and emerging packaging products have come along (aluminium, glass, tetra-packs,etc) have seriously affected demand, and thankfully there are foodstuffs that by law have to be "canned" in tinplate and no other packaging product .

Similarly, the few coal miners left are all too aware of their mines' extractable reserves. When they're worked out, it's up sticks and move on to another mine, or another industry.

Ebbw Vale's closure was inevitable in the long run, and we all trust that the town will recover and go on from strength to strength.

Let's also put things in perspective - steel workers and coal miners have been well rewarded for their work, and yes, those jobs come with some pretty serious Health & Safety risks, and their severance package is so much better than the average in our country that many will be queuing up to take voluntary redundancy.

I haven't heard about any locomotives being vandalised - perhaps an urban myth.

All the best.

Martin

[Tulyar15]

The best time to go to Newport as far as freight goes would be on a weekday, though I have seen freight trains running on Saturdays. If you were to go on a Saturday when there's a major sporting event on at Cardiff Millennium stadium (Cardiff the next station!), such as a 6 Nations Rugby Match. You might get lucky and see some loco hauled passenger trains too. Although Wales and Borders are supposedly finishing with their weekday loco hauled commuter trains in the Cardiff area next month, they are going to keep at least one set of passenger cars for such occassions.

[beaulieu]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding
[

What would you typically see in day of train watching at some place like Newport Station? Is this a freight and passenger line, or just freight?

Thanks

Newport Station is one of the premier trainwatching spots in the UK, except for electric powered trains you have an excellent amount of traffic passing through. Both freight and passenger, Also Godfrey Road Stabling point is visible from the platforms and local freight power for EWS is serviced there. If you are interested Murphy I could mail you a copy of Freightmaster, the UK freight timetable. I have a copy from a couple of years ago that I would gladly part with. Discovering that book fired up my interest in UK freight operations. Of course things are in a constant state of flux and some of the services listed are gone, and other new ones started but it would give you an idea of the variety of freight operations in the UK.

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15

I must admit I did not realise any of the Llanwern plant was still functioning. When I travelled to Cardiff recently I noticed the tracks all seemed to still be in use - now I know why. Nearby Newport station is a favourite spot of mine for watching trains. I shall be going over to South Wales for the loco hauled specials on Sunday 4th December.

What would you typically see in day of train watching at some place like Newport Station? Is this a freight and passenger line, or just freight?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

The Corus business is a bit of a sore point down in South Wales - let's just say the locals are not huge fans of a company that shut down large chunks of one of the main sources of employment in the area. I heard somewhere that one of two Class 60's repainted into Corus silver had a spot of bother when it ran in the area leading to them being put onto other duties - not sure how true it is though the source is usually reliable!

[Tulyar15]

I must admit I did not realise any of the Llanwern plant was still functioning. When I travelled to Cardiff recently I noticed the tracks all seemed to still be in use - now I know why. Nearby Newport station is a favourite spot of mine for watching trains. I shall be going over to South Wales for the loco hauled specials on Sunday 4th December.

[owlsroost]

Martin,

Thanks for the correction - I'd checked on the Corus website, but of course it talks about Newport as a manufacturing location rather than calling it Llanwern....

Tony

[mhurley87f]

QUOTE: Originally posted by owlsroost

some of the iron ore wagons used in South Wales

Llanwern steelworks is now closed - the only remaining iron ore trains are Immingham - S***horpe (the equipment/unloading method is the same).

Roger Ford's description (some years ago in 'Modern Railways' mag) of a cab ride on a Port Talbot - Llanwern ore train hauled by a pair of class 37's is one of my favourite reads when I'm feeling nostalgic [:)].

Tony



You're correct in that since the shut down of the "Heavy End " @ Llanwern (i.e. the Coke Ovens, Blast Furnaces, and Steel Converter Plant, trains of imported iron ore and coal are no longer run there from Port Talbot. But the "Finishing End" is very much alive and kicking, and is now fed by 2,000 ton trains of Concast Slabs, again from Port Talbot, where new facilities have been laid out specifically for this traffic, and which can amount to as much as 2 or 3 trains per 8 hour shift.

Not only does Llanwern retain a share of the Corus's Cold Rolled Steel work, but its production of galvanised coil/sheet jumped up on the closre of Ebbw Vale's "Finishing End."

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