jwealleans wrote:Mike, I think your first post has lost something in translation - I read it as 'the Scotch Goods was the 15:40, not the 15:40'.
Sorry for the confusion.
After the photo was identified as the Scotch Goods, in The Power of the V2s and it was stated as the 3.40pm down, this would confirm that at this time (1936/38) the Scotch Goods was booked to leave KX at 3.40.
The photo is then reproduced in the Gresley Observer as the 3.35 down No. 1 goods, with no mention of the Scotch Goods. I know that Scotch Goods was never an official title, so even though the departure times are 5 minutes apart, is this the same train? I doubt that they would have run two express goods to the same destination five minutes apart, unless it was duplicated due to capacity.
Best wishes,
Mike
According to 1938 WTT (thanks 2750!) Train 562 No.1 XP Goods departed King's Cross Goods Yard at 3.35pm, with scheduled arrival at Niddrie West at 2.40am. Train 527, also No.1 XP Goods, departed King's Cross Goods Yard at 2.0pm, arrival at Niddrie West at 2.30am. So it is apparent that the latter train was the quicker and hence more premium working.
Quite plausible that timings were forever being adjusted, as this was sensitive, high value traffic. Or was the timing adjusted slightly to allow for the introduction of the Coronation in July 1937 (dep King's Cross at 4.0pm) to ensure it didn't delay the streamliner over one of the double track bottlenecks south of Peterborough?
I read somewhere that 4771's regular working of the train pre-war was only as far as Peterborough. Can anyone confirm that?
jwealleans wrote:Mike, I think your first post has lost something in translation - I read it as 'the Scotch Goods was the 15:40, not the 15:40'.
Sorry for the confusion.
After the photo was identified as the Scotch Goods, in The Power of the V2s and it was stated as the 3.40pm down, this would confirm that at this time (1936/38) the Scotch Goods was booked to leave KX at 3.40.
The photo is then reproduced in the Gresley Observer as the 3.35 down No. 1 goods, with no mention of the Scotch Goods. I know that Scotch Goods was never an official title, so even though the departure times are 5 minutes apart, is this the same train? I doubt that they would have run two express goods to the same destination five minutes apart, unless it was duplicated due to capacity.
Best wishes,
Mike
According to 1938 WTT (thanks 2750!) Train 562 No.1 XP Goods departed King's Cross Goods Yard at 3.35pm, with scheduled arrival at Niddrie West at 2.40am. Train 527, also No.1 XP Goods, departed King's Cross Goods Yard at 2.0pm, arrival at Niddrie West at 2.30am. So it is apparent that the latter train was the quicker and hence more premium working.
Quite plausible that timings were forever being adjusted, as this was sensitive, high value traffic. Or was the timing adjusted slightly to allow for the introduction of the Coronation in July 1937 (dep King's Cross at 4.0pm) to ensure it didn't delay the streamliner over one of the double track bottlenecks south of Peterborough?
I read somewhere that 4771's regular working of the train pre-war was only as far as Peterborough. Can anyone confirm that?
Great reply and thanks LNER 4479.
Pre-war no. 4771 did indeed work only as far as Peterborough on this train and returned on a fast fish working from Hull.
(The Power of the V2s inside jacket header page)
Duchesses are red, A4s are blue, 126 for the A4, Duchess couldn't do!
I hope people don't mind me resurrecting this old discussion. Unfitted trains in the 1930s I understand would, given the common user arrangements, be made up of a real mix of both LNER and other companies wagons. However I also understand fitted wagons became common user later - LMS in 1936 I think. So would it be accurate as far as you guys know that in a depiction of a fast fitted freight such as the scotch goods in the late 1930s to include LMS/GWR vans in the train? Thanks!
There are images of LMS vans in fitted freights from the 1930s, but you need to consider routing as well. A load from the Southern for Scotland might come up through the Widened Lines, into King's Cross Goods and then into one of the LNER services; one from the GWR would most likely go via Banbury and the GC and one from the LMS would, I'd have thought, just go up the WCML.
I've glanced through the prewar V2 + fitted freight pictures I have and the vast majority of the vehicles are LNER. I've found the very odd LMS or SR van in there and no recognisably GW vehicles at all.
Doing a bit more reading round have seen that GWR didn't add it's fitted wagons to the common user pool until 1939 three years after the others. Probably explains the lack of them in the images of pre-war LNER express goods.
There's a further factor in the vehicle make up of van trains: the doors. Of the Big Four, the little two fitted hinged 'cupboard' doors, the Big two (and this of course derived from their constituent's practises) standardised on sliding doors. I am given to understand that the reason was to do with clearances around rail served customer destinations in the North, and especially in Scotland. This need for sliding door vans to serve such customers remained an operational requirement until traditional vanload freight ended in the 1960s, with a fleet of ex LMS and LNER sliding door vans retained specifically for this purpose, as the standard BR replacements were not suitable.
That's interesting. So would LNER and LMS vans have been used for all shipments originating on the "little two" destined for Scotland? Must have been a logistical challenge!
Of the operational detail I too would like to know more. Given that the railway was practised at systematically sorting wagons allocated to specific traffics which ran on regular circuits, such as fish trains, I would guess at a pool of suitable vans retained for the purpose at yards near the loading and off loading locations? And if we really get down to it, what exactly were the traffic flows for which both the Northern going Groups, and subsequently BR regions, found it worthwhile to operate such fast freight services?
That Scotch Goods still ran into the first half of the 1970s at least cos when I was a teenage 'box lad' at Welwyn Garden City between 1972-74 that train which always had a EE type 4 (class 40) on the front and consisting of manly fully fitted box vans and several other odds & sods would come tearing along the Down fast line through WGC usually between about 2:40 & 3:00 pm during the weekday afternoons after being 'turned out' along the Down fast line at Holloway South Down for a 'main line run' unlike since the 1980s where it would have probably stayed on the Down slow line to Wood Green and then no doubt would have been run via the Hertford loop by Kings Cross PSB which was so unlike the GN/LNER tradition of giving a 'fast freight' a main line run!!.
Original start date of 2010 on the LNER forum and previously posted 4500+ posts.
"That Scotch goods"always had an immaculate steam loco (34A) upfront an A4 or V2 witnessed "Green Arrow" a couple of times, not always the case when EEtype4 (green) hauled & already making good time by "the park"what was the return working for the loco?jj
... if we really get down to it, what exactly were the traffic flows for which both the Northern going Groups, and subsequently BR regions, found it worthwhile to operate such fast freight services?
I can't offer a complete picture, but from Mixed Traffic by R. Barnard Way, which I may have mentioned before, comes an account of a journey with the Scotch Goods in (IIRC) 1937. He rode on the leading train of four, possibly five, portions, suggesting there was plenty of traffic which justified the premium rate. The leading portion, which he accompanied, was booked to stop at Sandy and pickup any fruit and vegetable traffic. On the night he travelled this was three wagons.
rockinjohn wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 8:05 am
"That Scotch goods"always had an immaculate steam loco (34A) upfront an A4 or V2 witnessed "Green Arrow" a couple of times, not always the case when EEtype4 (green) hauled & already making good time by "the park"what was the return working for the loco?jj
The return working of the EE type 4 off 'the Scotch Goods' going 'down road' in 'diesel days' of the early 1970s jj?. I don't know I presume it came back 'up road' during the 'wee small hours' if it did at all come back cos I don't recall any EE type 4s coming up road between 6:00 am & 10:00 pm on weekdays when I was a 'box lad' at Welwyn Garden City between 1972-74 although the only EE type 4 that I subsequently knew of coming back up road on a regular working during those years was 'the fish' from Immingham or Grimsby cos that 'stinking train' always had a EE type 4 (or 2000s) on the front and came up through Welwyn Garden City around 2:00 am heading for the Kings Cross Goods yard during the weekdays mornings although I didn't work nights at the box but I subsequently knew that train was hauled by a EE type 4.
All the diesel hauled workings during the early 1970s coming up road towards London were either Deltics, Brush 4s, Brush 2s and a few class 46 'peaks' on the 'Cambridge workings' although that is not to say that EE type 4s never came up road.
Original start date of 2010 on the LNER forum and previously posted 4500+ posts.
