The LNER Encyclopedia

I have seen the odd demonstration goods train on the preserved railways. This usually seems to consist of a short rake of wagons with a brake van at both ends, which just runs backwards and forwards much like the passenger trains. Does any preserved line ever do any shunting, like a pick-up goods might. Dropping a wagon or two and picking up others? I know it wouldn't interest the majority of visitors but I, for one, would love to see (and hear) a loose-coupled freight being shunted.

Chaz

I'm going to the KWVR on saturday Chaz,and if i think on i will ask someone for you.

Yes, Chaz, the Bluebell do, or did, at Horsted Keynes using the Up Sidings and a variety of wagons during special weekends. There certainly is something about hearing those sounds of long ago, albeit that a guards van on a loose coupled train could be the place to pick up a few bruises and cuts if you didn't hang on tight and brace yourself when the driver started to move the train. There was almost inevitably a snatch of couplings to some extent.

Update from a Southern correspondent (a driver on the Bluebell) who tells us: "They normally do a staged thing at the family weekends, but that is just an "up and down" the sidings for the entertainment of the kids. There are plans to move the Thursday shunt turns to a Saturday at HK so there is more likely to be real stuff going on, although quite often it all involves stuff in the Down Yard, which the public don't get to see."

In my youth lying in bed an abiding memory was the sound of a loose coupled goods being restarted on the ECML after having been put inside or leaving Tweedmouth yard. The house where we lived was yards away from the action quite close to where Berwick spotter takes some of his video from. I can hear it now a wheezing V2 with 40 on, the clank, clank, clank down the train as the engine moved off and maybe a bit of fireworks if it was damp and the wheels slipped.

52D wrote:In my youth lying in bed an abiding memory was the sound of a loose coupled goods being restarted on the ECML after having been put inside or leaving Tweedmouth yard. The house where we lived was yards away from the action quite close to where Berwick spotter takes some of his video from. I can hear it now a wheezing V2 with 40 on, the clank, clank, clank down the train as the engine moved off and maybe a bit of fireworks if it was damp and the wheels slipped.

For me the equivalent would have been a New England WD restarting with 60 coal empties on the down slow line at Greenwood in the early 1950s before they widened the line. Plenty of wheezing and clanking though.

Nowadeys the best available locally is when the Mid Hants run their demonstration freight with the resident 9F. It's much too clean to be a New England engine and the train length is not more than about 15 usually. We do get some shunting though as the train includes both fitted and unfitted wagons and with 1 in 60 gradients they need the fitted ones placed next to the engine. The MHR freight is not run too often as the shunting takes up valuable time and delays the revenue-earning passenger service on which income depends.

Frequent shunting at Newbridge NYMR for the works trains throughout the year.
Though we try to keep the noise down so as not to upset the neighbours.

We did have a shunting demonstration one Steam Gala a few years back on the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway. We used the Sentinel pictured and four wagons, a bit like a 1:1 version of Inglenook Sidings rather than as a proper pick-up goods. One downside was that there was not much space (I took the attached from the other side of the running line) and another that not many people came to watch, possibly as we were out of sight from the station, behind the sheds.

Is that thing a genuine LMS Sentinel or is it an industrial masquerading?

Thanks for the info. The Bluebell is not too far away from me so maybe I might get to see a shunt sometime.

Incidentally when I was a kid I saw a Dub-Dee shunting at Welwyn North. A hot summer's day (remember those?), mid-afternoon lull in traffic and the 2-8-0 took its time shunting the sidings on both sides of the line. My memory is a little hazy but I believe the proceedings were only interrupted once, by the passage of an up passenger.

Chaz

chaz harrison wrote:Thanks for the info. The Bluebell is not too far away from me so maybe I might get to see a shunt sometime.

Incidentally when I was a kid I saw a Dub-Dee shunting at Welwyn North. A hot summer's day (remember those?), mid-afternoon lull in traffic and the 2-8-0 took its time shunting the sidings on both sides of the line. My memory is a little hazy but I believe the proceedings were only interrupted once, by the passage of an up passenger.

Chaz

You remember the coal drops in the down sidings at Welwyn North, Chaz? By the 1960s, when I started on the railway there, just a few coal wagons a week - coal merchant Shadrick or something similar? (Mishak, Shadrak and Abednego - as Wally Chapman who was a porter at Welwyn North and lived in one of those cottages north of the station, called him) but we used to get beehives brought up to the station by Messrs Taylors? for loading into the brakevan of a Cravens DMU in the evening, without the bees, of course

52D wrote:Is that thing a genuine LMS Sentinel or is it an industrial masquerading?

An industrial from British Tar Products at Irlam. I prefer the LMS livery though. Unfortunately it's out of ticket, but when it was working, as well as little shunting demos, it was great for providing steam heat for the carriages on Santa Trains.

hq1hitchin wrote: You remember the coal drops in the down sidings at Welwyn North, Chaz?

Yes, I do. There is very little trace of them now. The last time I was there the only evidence was a a few bits of brickwork. I used to cycle to Welwyn North in the evenings sometimes. Trips on my bike were often to Watford Junction, via St Albans but I did like Welwyn N. It was most impressive, with A4s, A3s, V2s, 9Fs etc racing through the old GNR station really close.

Chaz