Yard Arrivals and Departures: Hertford East

[03piggs]

Hi all,

This is the Arrivals and Departures for the Yard at Hertford East.

This has been recently updated to include changes that I have made to more recent sheets like Whitemoor & Temple Mills.

For a full list of the different locations i have covered, please visit
http://www.stciers.me.uk/home/analysis/ ... _front.htm

All feedback is appreciated.

Stu

[Mickey]

I know it is outside the scope of your 1950s era Stu but I have always been curious about that Hertford East to Fawley working possibly during the early 1970s that I vaguely recall seeing running through Ware station behind a Southern Region class 33 although I thought the train was a 'cement train' but maybe I was mistaken?. The main reason of my interest in this freight working is the Hertford East branch at that time was virtually 100% only used by EMU passenger and ECS trains.

Also around1970 I recall seeing a train of mineral wagons and a B.R.(ER) brake van standing on one of the Up sidings roads to the south of Ware station I believe those mineral wagons may have been full of either coal or coke?.

[WTTReprinter]

Hi Mickey.
We spoke about this elsewhere, didn't we?
The Fawley tanks was a bitumin working for the Printar's tar works at Hertford.
The sidings at Ware went in the late 60's / early 70's and at the end only handled coal traffic for Page's coal merchants.
The only other freight working on the branch in the 70's until the mid 80's was ferry van traffic for Spencer Chapman's siding (south of St Margarets) and Costains concrete sleeper works.
This used to run in the day time but after causing delays with the run round move, it ended up running on nights (much to the disgust of those who liked 5 hours of uninterrupted peace & quiet)
Brian

[Mickey]

Hi Mickey.
We spoke about this elsewhere, didn't we?

Yeah you are correct Brian I have mentioned about that Hertford East to Fawley tanks before and also the mineral wagons full of coal/coke(?) along with it's brake van standing in the Up sidings at Ware circa 1970. That was a interesting bit of railway between Hertford East and just beyond Ware station back in the late 1960s and into the 1970s although I can't say that I was to familiar with it rarely straying to far off the GN main line between 1968-1975.

Interesting Brian that you implied in your post that the three s/boxes at Hertford East, Ware & St Margret's were all staffed on nights at onetime because I do remember hearing possibly around the late 1990s that the 'night turns' in those three boxes on the Hertford East branch were 'done away with' and that the early turn signalmen would sign on maybe about 5:00-5:30am and then work through until maybe 3:00pm and then the late turn signalmen would relieve the early turn signalman maybe at 3:00pm and work through until about 12:45-1:00am the following morning before closing out the boxes thus avoiding rostering three signalmen on 'night turns' (10:00pm-6:00am) at those three s/boxes.