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Live Animals by Train

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TheSeeker

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I would guess the only way this is possible today is via a lorry on EuroTunnel.

Are there any more movements left? When did they stop?
 
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hexagon789

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I would guess the only way this is possible today is via a lorry on EuroTunnel.

Are there any more movements left? When did they stop?

I think cattle trains lasted until the early 1970s. Not sure about pigeons and others.
 

ChiefPlanner

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I think cattle trains lasted until the early 1970s. Not sure about pigeons and others.

Live cattle imports from Eire ceased (by rail) around the time of our glorious entry into the Common Market in 1973. This was from Holyhead - and there were a good number of localised protests about it.

Traffic was far more trouble than it was worth , with empty "oxfits" sent to Shrewsbury for cleaning etc.

I did see loaded cattle trains at Venice Mestre in or around 1982. Off topic I know.
 

hexagon789

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Live cattle imports from Eire ceased (by rail) around the time of our glorious entry into the Common Market in 1973. This was from Holyhead - and there were a good number of localised protests about it.

Traffic was far more trouble than it was worth , with empty "oxfits" sent to Shrewsbury for cleaning etc.

I did see loaded cattle trains at Venice Mestre in or around 1982. Off topic I know.

Definitely not going to happen on today's railways. I'd guess they may still run in some countries though.
 

ChiefPlanner

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Definitely not going to happen on today's railways. I'd guess they may still run in some countries though.

Very much doubt it - the way forward (and has been for many years) , is slaughtering at source and refrigeration. Observe the convoys of such traffic on the A55 from North Wales , origin Eire.

(we did move in my day , Interfrigo wagons from the continent to Melton Mowbray for Pedigree Petfoods , with frozen Continetal "offal" for petfood. I will not spoil your appetites by describing the contents)
 

randyrippley

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DMUs / EMUs must have put paid to pigeon traffic.
When I was a kid in the 1960's there was always a pigeon van at Weymouth station when we arrived on a weekend morning, with the birds waiting to be released. These must have come attached to the Southern trains from London, as the Yeovil route was converted to DMUs by then. Never saw one after the line was electrified.......but by then we usually went by car anyway
 

Dr_Paul

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(we did move in my day , Interfrigo wagons from the continent to Melton Mowbray for Pedigree Petfoods , with frozen Continetal "offal" for petfood. I will not spoil your appetites by describing the contents)

I read in a Middleton book on local London railways that Hungarian horsemeat used to be delivered to Hampton station yard on the Shepperton branch, for use in cat and dog food. I didn't know there was a pet food factory there until I read that.

You can tell if your pet has eaten horsemeat: an hour after its dinner it still has a bit between its teeth. (I'll get my coat.)
 

ChiefPlanner

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DMUs / EMUs must have put paid to pigeon traffic.
When I was a kid in the 1960's there was always a pigeon van at Weymouth station when we arrived on a weekend morning, with the birds waiting to be released. These must have come attached to the Southern trains from London, as the Yeovil route was converted to DMUs by then. Never saw one after the line was electrified.......but by then we usually went by car anyway

The paraffin and diesel "hot air" heating on modernisation era DMU's would have seen off (literally) any live pigeon traffic.

Again - too much work for too little reward for an increasingly de-staffed railway operation.
 

hexagon789

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DMUs / EMUs must have put paid to pigeon traffic.
When I was a kid in the 1960's there was always a pigeon van at Weymouth station when we arrived on a weekend morning, with the birds waiting to be released. These must have come attached to the Southern trains from London, as the Yeovil route was converted to DMUs by then. Never saw one after the line was electrified.......but by then we usually went by car anyway

Some DMUs hauled a Siphon G van for pigeon traffic as late as 1970 between Bridgend and I think Neath.
 

pdeaves

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I suppose, on a technicality, there are still live animals carried by train. Think about all those who take pets, working dogs, etc. (let's not get on to whether human beings count!).
 

Lemmy99uk

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There was still quite a lot of day old chicks carried in cardboard boxes in the 1980s.
 

Tio Terry

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I’ll guess late 50’s, early 60’s. I can remember, as a child, following cattle from the pens at Trowse, near Norwich, to Norwich Market when it was near the Castle in Norwich. I can also remember the new market being built at Harford.
 

PeterC

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There was still quite a lot of day old chicks carried in cardboard boxes in the 1980s.
Never saw any on the trains but did see them on Crossville buses in the 70s. I remember pigeon baskets at stations in the 60s but always empties being returned.

The upper yard at Romford had what looked very like a cattle dock but as the livestock market closed at least a decade before I started commuting it wasn't in use.
 

RT4038

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It is a business far more suited to road transport - no transhipment, one person (the driver) responsible from beginning of journey to end and more reliable transit times. Much like the majority of freight transport really.
 

AndrewE

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The paraffin and diesel "hot air" heating on modernisation era DMU's would have seen off (literally) any live pigeon traffic.
Not true, I'm afraid. The heaters did run off BR "diesel" fuel but it was actually/technically "gas oil," with a much higher permitted sulphur content.
The 2 types of heaters (Smiths and Dragonaires?) both burnt gas oil in a combustion chamber and then blew it through an air-to-air heat exchanger. Unfortunately the saloon air inlets were below sole-bar level (like the heaters and their exhausts) so when sat in a bay platform at the end of a route (think Crewe, or - even worse - the single track bay at Derby) the trapped suphur dioxide-rich exhaust got sucked in to the saloon air inlet.
I once asked whether the problem was that the heat exchangers were corroded through and was told very firmly that it was not!
 
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There was still a cattle train from Birkenhead to Smithfield in the 1960s; it provided great interest to rail enthusiasts in the Chester area as it was often worked by a Churchward 47XX class 2-8-0.

According to information found using Google, Smithfield Goods depot closed in 1962, so this service must have ended at that time, although I would have thought the train ran more recently; however, as the last 47XX class was withdrawn in 1964, it cannot have been any more recent than that. This service was also interesting as it was hauled over the Met as far as Farringdon by condensing panniers, then over the connection to the Widened Lines to reach Smithfield.

I'm pretty sure that there were still some cattle trains running in the mid-1960s from Birkenhead; many of these were brought over from Ireland in BR-owned ships. From memory, one was called the 'Slieve Bloom', and a Google search shows that this was withdrawn from service in 1965 (it - along with others including a motor vessel named 'Slieve Donard' - used both the Mersey and Holyhead as their English ports when carrying cattle across the Irish Sea); this (sort of!) supports my recollection that cattle trains were still running from Birkenhead until the mid-1960s.
 

Condor7

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Definitely not going to happen on today's railways. I'd guess they may still run in some countries though.

I appreciate the financial viability may be a reason why animals are not transported these days by train but animals are still transported by road, so if it was financially worth it why not by rail?
 

edwin_m

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I appreciate the financial viability may be a reason why animals are not transported these days by train but animals are still transported by road, so if it was financially worth it why not by rail?
If animals are slaughtered relatively locally and the meat transported instead, then the amounts and distances are likely to be too low for rail to be viable.
 

mailbyrail

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Cattle from Ireland were certainly off-loaded at Woodside and also carried onwards by train in 1968. As a child we moved into a house backing onto the Rock Ferry - Chester line in late 1967 and I remember seeing trains of cattle wagons for the first time. At first they seemed quite a common site but didn't seem to operate for long and you don't notice you haven't seen one for a while. It was probably late 1968 when they stopped running from Birkenhead
 

PeterC

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There was still a cattle train from Birkenhead to Smithfield in the 1960s; it provided great interest to rail enthusiasts in the Chester area as it was often worked by a Churchward 47XX class 2-8-0.

According to information found using Google, Smithfield Goods depot closed in 1962, so this service must have ended at that time, although I would have thought the train ran more recently; however, as the last 47XX class was withdrawn in 1964, it cannot have been any more recent than that. This service was also interesting as it was hauled over the Met as far as Farringdon by condensing panniers, then over the connection to the Widened Lines to reach Smithfield.

I'm pretty sure that there were still some cattle trains running in the mid-1960s from Birkenhead; many of these were brought over from Ireland in BR-owned ships. From memory, one was called the 'Slieve Bloom', and a Google search shows that this was withdrawn from service in 1965 (it - along with others including a motor vessel named 'Slieve Donard' - used both the Mersey and Holyhead as their English ports when carrying cattle across the Irish Sea); this (sort of!) supports my recollection that cattle trains were still running from Birkenhead until the mid-1960s.
The livestock trade was transferred to the Metropolitan Cattle Market north of Kings Cross in 1855 and declined in the 20th century until the MCM was closed in 1963. Were they trucking beasts from Smithfield to Caledonian Road, detaching the cattle trucks elsewhere or shipping carcasses?
 

John Webb

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Livestock movement by rail started with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1831 and was the movement of stock imported from Ireland and landed at Liverpool - before then cattle had to be driven 'on the hoof' taking time and losing meat from the cattle as well.
There were also movements of livestock from the East coast, imported from the continent, or internal movements of lean cattle or sheep from hill farms areas to lowland areas for fattening. Livestock movements reached a peak in the 1920s, before losing out to road transport.
BR in 1962 cut cattle facilities from 2,493 stations down to 232, concentrating on the regular traffic, particularly from Ireland - this ceased in 1975.
Pigeon traffic carried on until the 1970s.
(Information mostly from "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History", Simmons and Biddle, OUP 1997, ISBN 0-19-211697-5)
 

hexagon789

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I appreciate the financial viability may be a reason why animals are not transported these days by train but animals are still transported by road, so if it was financially worth it why not by rail?

I'd argue it's cheaper, easier and quicker to load them and drive straight to the final destination than load at farm, deliver to station, unload, load on train, travel, unload, load on vehicle, deliver to destination and unload.

This is also equally applicable to the small deliveries which used to go by rail but went increasingly by road from after the First World War.
 

StoneRoad

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I seem to remember a BTP film about someone flitting between farms, and taking everything including the livestock by train - and didn't some circus concerns use trains (One of the Railway Detective novels - Inspector Colbeck - features a circus train being derailed on the Tyne Valley route in the 1860s)
 

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AlbertBeale

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There was a special category for pigeons on the list of types of goods you had to fill in on the yellow Red Star paperwork when despatching Red Star items.

I used Red Star between St P and Nottingham on a regular basis years ago and had a big pad of Red Star paperwork so I could fill it in before rushing to the station. (I worked a couple of minutes from St P.)
 

etr221

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What about horses ? specifically the racing / sport source ...
That was a passenger rated traffic, ended c1971 - horse boxes (code HB) were non-passenger coaching stock (though they did have accommodation for grooms). Can't remember the status of prize cattle (for which there were special vans).
I seem to remember a BTP film about someone flitting between farms, and taking everything including the livestock by train - and didn't some circus concerns use trains (One of the Railway Detective novels - Inspector Colbeck - features a circus train being derailed on the Tyne Valley route in the 1860s)
The film was 'Farmer Moving South', of 1952

Yes, circuses moved by rail - probably until the 1950s or 1960s - including animals. There were specially designated elephant vans, with strengthened floors. Doubtless HBs for horses and such, don't know about lions and the like: possibly circus (road) cage trailers on (open) carriage trucks. On arrival there would be a publicity parade through the streets from station to circus ground!
 
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