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35 miles of sidings required for redundant stock

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Lankyline

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An article in Railway Magazine suggests that by the end of CP5 (2019) approx 35 miles of sidings will be required to store redundant rolling stock (approx 2500) that are being displaced by new rolling stock.

Amongst the stock listed are,

Mk3 carriages Abellio Greater Anglia,
Mk4's Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC),
HSTs and trailers with GWR and VTEC,
Caledonian Mk3 sleeping cars,
Class 313/507/508 EMUs,
Class 14x ‘Pacers’.
Class 442s (as per thread) warm store with the hope they may find a new user

Whilst numerous threads cover most if not all of the relevant stocks listed,
Is there a real problem looming and if so where would the extra sidings be found ? or simply is it a storm in a tea cup ?
 
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transmanche

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Why would anyone want to store life-expired stock such as 313s/507s/508s or Pacers?.
 

DarloRich

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Why would anyone want to store life-expired stock such as 313s/507s/508s or Pacers?.

sale of spare parts/components, removal parts with future uses, removal of recyclable material, removal of hazadous material, sale of complete units for other purposes ( the RAF always need targets) not to flood the metal market with tons of material thus diluting your price etc etc
 

swt_passenger

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Taken nationally, there are probably far more then 35 miles of empty sidings, if only DBC sent a few dozen men out and about with industrial scale strimmers and mowers...

You can only use so much component recovery for spares though, weren't the Southeastern 508s already broken for spares to support the Merseyrail fleet? There wouldn't be much point in doing it again now...
 

NorthernSpirit

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I'm sure there are loads of lines that are out of use such as Immingham or that line which comes out at Neville Hill TMD. If there's space the Portishead branch could see trains again - although for storage only.

Life expired stock can always come in handy for film and production firms who may be shooting something that is based in the 80's or 90's and require stock from then to use in the final cut.
 

telstarbox

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When Bombardier etc finish a production run, do they run off some extra engines/doors/vestibule stickers to send to the TOCs for spare parts?
 

sprinterguy

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There'll never be a need for that much storage capacity, though. The withdrawal dates of the various train fleets are staggered over a period of a couple of years, and by the time they are withdrawn there will probably be certain fleets which have already been claimed by other operators for future use, and others where immediate disposal is the only logical course of action due to lack of demand (such as the Pacers and mark 3 sleepers). In the latter case the main question is how quickly the scrapyards can work through them.

The ROSCOs will probably want to keep some stock on hand which has potential for future use, as was the case when the Virgin mark 2 and mark 3 fleets were withdrawn from service, and things certainly became crowded at a number of storage locations around the country at the time of the "big bang" withdrawal of slam door EMUs (of both AC and DC varieties) around London & South East at the turn of the millennium, but the situation is unlikely to be anywhere near as desperate as The Railway Magazine appears to be making out.
 
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Harbornite

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This has been discussed briefly in other threads but it deserves its own thread.

I was thinking about potential sites after reading about this in the railway magazine. Off the top of my head, I can think of Eastleigh, Washwood Heath, Small Heath, Saltley, Minehead, Millerhill, Bescot, Bristol and Taunton, among others. Additional track would have to be laid at Saltley and the existing track at other locations isn't fit for purpose but it wouldn't be difficult to solve this as there is the will to do so.
 

Cowley

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Might be a good time to take out shares in scrap companies.
 

RichmondCommu

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This has been discussed briefly in other threads but it deserves its own thread.

I was thinking about potential sites after reading about this in the railway magazine. Off the top of my head, I can think of Eastleigh, Washwood Heath, Small Heath, Saltley, Minehead, Millerhill, Bescot, Bristol and Taunton, among others. Additional track would have to be laid at Saltley and the existing track at other locations isn't fit for purpose but it wouldn't be difficult to solve this as there is the will to do so.

Aren't the sidings at Washwood Heath already full of redundant stock?

Alternatively, start cutting up all those class 60s at Toton and then we've got lots of room for other stuff.
 

Harbornite

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Aren't the sidings at Washwood Heath already full of redundant stock?

Alternatively, start cutting up all those class 60s at Toton and then we've got lots of room for other stuff.

There are quite a few empty sidings there. Some of the sidings nearest to the running lines are occupied by KSA wagons that were once used for Rover component traffic from Swindon to Longbridge. Some of these have been separated from their bogies and placed perpendicular to the tracks.

For those unfamiliar with this yard, Washeood Heath was once used by local coal, automotive and intermodal traffic but it closed in 2009. It looks a but depressing now but the area will look rather different with HS2 running through here. This could affect the viability of using this yard for storing stock, come to think of it.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.5032349,-1.8415006,16z/data=!3m1!1e3
 
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Crossover

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Aren't the sidings at Washwood Heath already full of redundant stock?

Alternatively, start cutting up all those class 60s at Toton and then we've got lots of room for other stuff.

Like the ones in Crewe which are full of rusting old coaching stock - I guess one advantage of it being there is that the land the sidings are on are less likely to get claimed for some other use :P
 

sprinterguy

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Might be a good time to take out shares in scrap companies.
Typical boom or bust of railway rolling stock renewals: Long gone (but not forgotten, in railway circles) names such as Vic Berry's in Leicester, and MC Metals in Glasgow, benefitted out of previous tranches of disposals through the eighties (and into the nineties, for the latter), and it seems that EMR at Kingsbury only came into the picture as a result mainly of EWS' post-privatisation culling of vast swathes of its' inherited BR-era fleet. I wonder whether this latest round of passenger stock disposals will bring any new players into the fold? There should be enough work to go around.
 
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Harbornite

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Typical boom or bust of railway rolling stock renewals: Long gone (but not forgotten, in railway circles) names such as Vic Berry's in Leicester, and MC Metals in Glasgow, benefitted out of previous tranches of disposals through the eighties (and into the nineties, for the latter), and it seems that EMR at Kingsbury only came into the picture as a result mainly of EWS' post-privatisation culling of vast swathes of its' inherited BR-era fleet. I wonder whether this latest round of passenger stock disposals will bring any new players into the fold? There should be enough work to go around.

Back in the 1960s, the big players in the scrap market were Birds of Long Marston, Cashmeres of Great Bridge and Dai Woodhams of Barry.


One of the more unusual sites (IMO) is the Sims Metal scrapyard in Halesowen where a class 50 was scrapped in 2008. Other sites where locos have been scrapped include Barrow Hill, MOD Caerwent and Old Oak Common.

There's also EMR Handsworth which, to my knowledge, hasn't scrapped any rolling stock but it is rail served.
 
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Deepgreen

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Taken nationally, there are probably far more then 35 miles of empty sidings, if only DBC sent a few dozen men out and about with industrial scale strimmers and mowers...

You can only use so much component recovery for spares though, weren't the Southeastern 508s already broken for spares to support the Merseyrail fleet? There wouldn't be much point in doing it again now...

Exactly - large chunks of overgrown sidings all over the place which could be brought back into use for pure storage (i.e. not repeated use of the trackwork, which could be of low quality) very easily. Levels of security against vandalism would depend on individual stocks' projected future uses (if any). Even relaying stretches of sidings to a lower-than-usual quality could be done, subject to dispensation based on storage rather than repeated movements.
 
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The Ham

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I can imagine the headlines: "Mexico buys 142s!" ;)

Only if they are tall enough to form the wall, although I fear there may not be enough to build the whole wall, maybe some 230's could join them (that will please a certain poster on that future uses of those units...).
 

RichardN

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35 miles equates to 2,400 or so 23m vehicles by my back of fag packet calculation. Does that fit with the facts?
 

158747

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There's also EMR Handsworth which, to my knowledge, hasn't scrapped any rolling stock but it is rail served.
I believe they have scrapped wagons there in the past, back in 1984 I saw two departmental wagons, a brake van and a former LNER 12t van dumped in the yard at Thingley Junction with EMR Handsworth listed on their destination labels.
 

Harbornite

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I believe they have scrapped wagons there in the past, back in 1984 I saw two departmental wagons, a brake van and a former LNER 12t van dumped in the yard at Thingley Junction with EMR Handsworth listed on their destination labels.

Thanks, I never knew that.
 

sprinterguy

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Back in the 1960s, thr big players in the scrap market were Birds of Long Marston, Cashmeres of Great Bridge and Dai Woodhams of Barry.
Indeed, surely no better example of the "boom or bust" nature of rolling stock renewal than BRs' wholesale eradication of steam in the mid to late sixties.

Cashmore's (they also had a yard at Newport, as well as the one in the West Midlands) were shockingly efficient at the dismemberment of locomotives at the end of steam, we can only be thankful for the sake of the current preservation movement that Dai Woodham's was not!
 

Harbornite

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Cashmore's (they also had a yard at Newport, as well as the one in the West Midlands) were shockingly efficient at the dismemberment of locomotives at the end of steam, we can only be thankful for the sake of the current preservation movement that Dai Woodham's was not!

Agreed. Just a pity that all those wagons got chopped instead. :)
 

GB

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Taken nationally, there are probably far more then 35 miles of empty sidings, if only DBC sent a few dozen men out and about with industrial scale strimmers and mowers...

You can only use so much component recovery for spares though, weren't the Southeastern 508s already broken for spares to support the Merseyrail fleet? There wouldn't be much point in doing it again now...

DBC have handed back the majority of their yards to NR.
 
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