Recollections of past BR Christmas Traffics.

Used to be an awful lot more interesting in the 1970's. From a personal perspective.

Mail and Parcels traffics - immense with pre-planned extras all over , station platforms heavy with stacked mailbags and Brutes - the HST's coming into Swansea High Street had mailbags stacked to the roof of the (small) parcels area , such that there would be a frantic surge to get all inwards bags off , and as much possible on in the booked turnaround. Extra "premium parcels" formed of a 37 or 47 with about 3 vans would be rostered to / from London to cope with the extra business. Even the Heart of Wales early and late trains would have mail and parcels invading the passenger area. In the London area extra "parcels" services would see 313's commandeered , class 501's on the DC lines doing Euston - Harrow - Watford services with the passenger areas commandeered. South of the Thames you had EPB stock running as extras (especially to Redhill and Brighton) with the seat bases turned over and chalk destination information chalked on the sides. Visible sometimes when the sets were back into passenger traffic. Domestic Freightliner services sometimes augmented (Leeds - Stratford , Willesden to Manchester) , with rather smart GPO liveried containers. FL road vehicles used to trunk containers by road where there was no FLL rail service - port bound trains from Stratford carried lots of overseas boxes from LOMO (London Overseas Mail Office)

Passenger "extras" - many long distance routes had "relief" services - Paddington - South Wales with MK1 sets (no buffet car) , shadowing the booked HST services , and often Xmas shopping extras / excursions on Saturdays at bargain rates , typically returning with happy and relaxed customers after 2200 hrs from London. Cross Country services - of which there were ones we no longer see such s Cardiff - Newcastle , Swansea - Manchester with superb loadings and often extra carriages squirreled in from BR's "spare pools". The Cardiff Division ran shopping specials from then freight only routes such as Aberdare into Cardiff , LM did similar from Aylesbury to Milton Keynes.

Freight - pre Xmas extra coal trains - both house coal and Power station. One pre- Xmas week in 1979 when I was "learning" Walnut Tree Junction the coal was pouring out of the Valleys and we had on the late turn some careful regulating to do , with 6 loaded trains stacked up on the permissive relief lines into Radyr. Crews happy enough to earn a bit of overtime - as long as we could supply them with hot water for tea making. We were so busy - we had no time for chat. No meal breaks either we grabbed something to eat in between trains.

Yes - the railway had "slack" - but there seemed to be more to it those days.

There would be huge piles of post office bags at the west end of the Down Relief platform at Taunton, I remember walking amongst them, quite unattended. Don't know if they were waiting to go west, or had arrived from the north and been dumped. Notably, the passenger rush started much later, only a day or two before Christmas itself, when the relief paths used in the summer got activated from London and The North, both day trains and overnight. The station announcer would call "The RELIEF train to Sheffield". Somehow I recall that reliefs on the NE-SW seemed to run before the main train, whereas for the Londons they ran directly afterwards. My mother would go "Christmas shopping" to London a couple of weeks beforehand, and having an absolute fixation about "getting a seat" would thus insist on getting to the station well ahead of time. My comments that this didn't serve much purpose with a train coming through from Plymouth didn't get understood.

Out in the Down side station approach ice cream vans, probably laid up since the end of summer, were reactivated with Royal Mail window stickers. The mail rush started later too and was more concentrated. My father would reminisce back to his own younger years and say he always sent all his Christmas cards on Christmas Eve, and they were all delivered on Christmas morning.

We used to work 5 vans from Curzon Street to Worcester Shrub Hill for ‘Kays’ parcel traffic.
We would shunt them 2-2-1 into the parcel bays, grab a bite whilst they were loaded, reform the train and take them back to Brum.
Can’t remember the booked traction, might have been a class 25.

Lemmy99uk said:

We used to work 5 vans from Curzon Street to Worcester Shrub Hill for ‘Kays’ parcel traffic.
We would shunt them 2-2-1 into the parcel bays, grab a bite whilst they were loaded, reform the train and take them back to Brum.
Can’t remember the booked traction, might have been a class 25.

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An old Scottish Area Inspector told me of very heavy Radio Times (Special Xmas double edition) traffic loaded in vacuum braked shocvans from Hairmyres. Could be quite substantial pre Xmas as you can imagine.

Taunton said:

Somehow I recall that reliefs on the NE-SW seemed to run before the main train, whereas for the Londons they ran directly afterwards.

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We were taught (in Crewe) that reliefs should always run ahead of the parent train wherever possible. The logic being that human nature dictates that people travelling a long distance will get on the first train that arrives, and simply won't accept assurances that "there's a relief in ten minutes that will have plenty of seats".

Regarding Christmas 1966, the steam fleet working the Salisbury and Weymouth lines had been progressively run down, there came the realisation that there was not enough motive power to cover the extra Christmas traffic, so representatives enquired of other regions what they had in the way of recently withdrawn locos. Attention was then turned to what the Southern had recently withdrawn itself, leading to a reprieve for a fortunate few

Saturday 13.12.75, seeing 45131 arrive in the Parcels Dock at Euston with six box vans in tow. It had worked them on a 'special' Parcels working from St. Pancras, just a stones throw along the Euston Road, but had travelled via Cricklewood, Acton Canal Wharf, and Willesden to do it.

Seeing rows of Box Vans stabled in Sidings A and B at St. Pancras (between platforms 2 and 3), and siding 8 between platforms 4 and 5. Brought down from St. Pancras Goods Depot over the Christmas period. The reason, they were sealed Box Vans containing large quantities of stuff like 'Gordons Gin', it was easier for the Transport Police to 'keep an eye on them' from their Office at St. Pancras for a few days rather than having to send someone to look after them at the Goods Depot.

All those 'Big 4' pre-nationalisation Parcels vans still in use, and filled to capacity with all manner of traffic.

6Gman said:

We were taught (in Crewe) that reliefs should always run ahead of the parent train wherever possible.

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One of the WR subterfuges with Reliefs was to break up the services that divided at Newton Abbot for Penzance and for Paignton, advertising the former only for Plymouth and beyond, and the latter for intermediate stations to Newton Abbot etc. The former did make all the stops, basically to pick up only for the far west. This was just an extension of what was done at Paddington anyway when the train was dividing at normal times, passengers for Taunton and Exeter etc would be put in the rear Paignton section by the platform staff anyway. It matched pretty much the demand for the various destinations.

Pre Christmas parcels with class 306 units. Some lively running there....

Replanning the Liverpool St evening peak on Christmas eve to start at 13.00. A chance to put class 309s on some interesting diagrams. In those days City types used to come in for half a day. By 17.00 a more or less a Saturday service would suffice.

Andy R. A. said:

Saturday 13.12.75, seeing 45131 arrive in the Parcels Dock at Euston with six box vans in tow. It had worked them on a 'special' Parcels working from St. Pancras, just a stones throw along the Euston Road, but had travelled via Cricklewood, Acton Canal Wharf, and Willesden to do it.

Seeing rows of Box Vans stabled in Sidings A and B at St. Pancras (between platforms 2 and 3), and siding 8 between platforms 4 and 5. Brought down from St. Pancras Goods Depot over the Christmas period. The reason, they were sealed Box Vans containing large quantities of stuff like 'Gordons Gin', it was easier for the Transport Police to 'keep an eye on them' from their Office at St. Pancras for a few days rather than having to send someone to look after them at the Goods Depot.

All those 'Big 4' pre-nationalisation Parcels vans still in use, and filled to capacity with all manner of traffic.

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That is a great observation - but it saved transhipment from STP - EUS. Love the gin story...

I recall (1981 ?) , the very least move on Xmas Eve at Felixstowe caused a fairly spectacular derailment in the sidings , (FLL vehicles on their sides and no chance of rerailing till after Boxing Day !) - so the BTP had to guard them over the holiday - to say they were displeased is an understatement - containers loaded with what we used to term "vulnerables" )

306024 said:

Pre Christmas parcels with class 306 units. Some lively running there....

Replanning the Liverpool St evening peak on Christmas eve to start at 13.00. A chance to put class 309s on some interesting diagrams. In those days City types used to come in for half a day. By 17.00 a more or less a Saturday service would suffice.

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A Xmas treat for the 306's - to run non-stop somewhere , as opposed to "all shacks to GP or SHFD) - great units , but a bit uncared for at the end interms of cleanliness , their successors in great nick I have to say.

ChiefPlanner said:

That is a great observation - but it saved transhipment from STP - EUS.

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The timing was somewhat unfortunate as the train could've travelled a shorter route, but the North London Incline at St. Pancras closed a few weeks before this working ran. Otherwise it could've gone up the Incline, along the North London Line to Camden Yard (via the Hampstead Road Junction connection), then out via the Ground Frame from Camden Yard onto the Up Fast and into Euston.

One feature of the 1970s BR scene around Manchester was the presence of Class 128 Diesel Parcels Units (DPU).

These single car workhorses led a mundane life scuttering around each day between the larger stations and parcels depots in the vicinity of Liverpool and Manchester. IIRC they mostly seemed to have a daytime siesta in various carriage sidings, came to life about teatime, then spent the evenings and night-time hours about their duties, finishing up around breakfast time.

My memories of seeing these DPUs at work were mostly on long summer evenings whilst lazing in a lineside field - somewhere I wouldn't be hanging about in the freezing cold & pitch darkness of a December evening.

But I do remember certain evening train trips around Christmas-time when a DPU would appear out of the gloom and drizzle at somewhere like Bolton - this time with at least one (possibly more) vans in tow to handle the extra traffic. Maybe some were loaded up with that jumbo Christmas edition of the Radio Times.

Not as interesting a yarn as the full-size, main-line relief trains and exotic transfer moves described above, but for me, DPUs dragging vans was a quirky memory of BR Christmas Traffic.


Image source: Hugh Llewelyn licensed for re-use under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

Really enjoying this thread. Fascinating to hear about the parcels from years gone by. Complete contrast to today.

Springs Branch said:

One feature of the 1970s BR scene around Manchester was the presence of Class 128 Diesel Parcels Units (DPU).

These single car workhorses led a mundane life scuttering around each day between the larger stations and parcels depots in the Liverpool and Manchester area. IIRC they mostly seemed to have a daytime siesta, came to life about teatime, then spent the evenings and night-time hours about their duties, finishing up around breakfast time.

My memories of seeing these DPU were mostly characteristic of long summer evenings lazing in a lineside field - somewhere I wouldn't be hanging about in the freezing cold & pitch darkness of a December evening.

But I do remember evening train trips around Christmas time when a DPU would put in an appearance at somewhere like Bolton - this time with at least one (maybe more) vans in tow to handle the extra traffic.

Not as interesting as the full-size, main-line relief trains and exotic transfer moves described above, but for me, DPUs dragging vans was a quirky memory of BR Christmas Traffic.

Image source: Hugh Llewelyn licensed for re-use under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

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Remember the 128's, my favorite was the gangwayed members of the class. Although never quite understood why the had gangways

ChiefPlanner said:

An old Scottish Area Inspector told me of very heavy Radio Times (Special Xmas double edition) traffic loaded in vacuum braked shocvans from Hairmyres. Could be quite substantial pre Xmas as you can imagine.

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Did not realise there was freight from Hairmyres .

route101 said:

Did not realise there was freight from Hairmyres .

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The printers had a private siding - removed some time in the 1970's - as the RT had a national monopoly near enough , you can image this was good traffic back in the day. Probably at a premium rate also.

ChiefPlanner said:

The printers had a private siding - removed some time in the 1970's - as the RT had a national monopoly near enough , you can image this was good traffic back in the day. Probably at a premium rate also.

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I see , changed a bit round there now. I wonder how frequent the freight was on the branch.

Patricroft station in the 60s had considerable increase in xmas parcel traffic from the Trafford warehouse depot so much so that locomen signalmen guards shunters could work overtime loading parcels paid according to there own grade a good earner.
December 1963 a pcls train from Wigan to Manchester via Tyldesley passed thro Patricroft hauled by 46229 loco minus nameplates the loco had been in store at edge hill and brought into service and I think this pcl train was booked to go through to Oldham rd depot m/c I've never been able to verify weather it arrived at Oldham rd depot,latter 46229 arrived back at patricroft leng to turn on shed turntable and later left coupled to a 2-6-4t for wigan

Some fantastic railway stories from Christmas past on this thread, please keep them coming. The railway was so much more interesting in the 1970s and 80s. So much traffic has gone.

Springs Branch said:

One feature of the 1970s BR scene around Manchester was the presence of Class 128 Diesel Parcels Units (DPU).

These single car workhorses led a mundane life scuttering around each day between the larger stations and parcels depots in the Liverpool and Manchester area. IIRC they mostly seemed to have a daytime siesta, came to life about teatime, then spent the evenings and night-time hours about their duties, finishing up around breakfast time.

My memories of seeing these DPU were mostly characteristic of long summer evenings lazing in a lineside field - somewhere I wouldn't be hanging about in the freezing cold & pitch darkness of a December evening.

But I do remember evening train trips around Christmas time when a DPU would put in an appearance at somewhere like Bolton - this time with at least one (maybe more) vans in tow to handle the extra traffic.

Not as interesting as the full-size, main-line relief trains and exotic transfer moves described above, but for me, DPUs dragging vans was a quirky memory of BR Christmas Traffic.

Image source: Hugh Llewelyn licensed for re-use under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

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I'd completely forgot about these units!
Proper blast down memory lane.

ChiefPlanner said:

A Xmas treat for the 306's - to run non-stop somewhere , as opposed to "all shacks to GP or SHFD) - great units , but a bit uncared for at the end interms of cleanliness , their successors in great nick I have to say.

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... and at the other end of the scale, the 16:50 LST to Lowestoft (always a local trin pretending to be an express to Ipswich),felt something like a travelling office party. The buffet did a good trade in alcoholic drinks and many other festive food items appeared from briefcases, (possible scooped up during real office functions), added to the atmosphere.

AM9 said:

... and at the other end of the scale, the 16:50 LST to Lowestoft (always a local trin pretending to be an express to Ipswich),felt something like a travelling office party. The buffet did a good trade in alcoholic drinks and many other festive food items appeared from briefcases, (possible scooped up during real office functions), added to the atmosphere.

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Another memory recalled - in the days of through peak services from Bromley North to Charing Cross ( a few a day) , there was a well organised "party coach" - whereupon the humble EPB was decorated with bunting etc and a good time had by all. The coach being de- decorated on arrival. Excellent stuff.

Not to forget the superb Great Western Railway Military Band which used to do Friday evening performances at Paddington (despite Railtrack's attempts to cull it - the tradition was (and still is one hopes))

Slightly before 1970, in fact 28.12.68, so Christmas time. M55990 when working on the Midland Lines. This unusual picture taken from a very secluded spot not often seen. It is behind the Signal Box at St. Pancras, and led to a small unloading Dock outside the main roof just north of the old Parcels Office. Could just about accommodate a DPU. These sidings didn't have much time left to go when this picture was taken, being removed the following year. Photo taken from the station pilot 08 standing in the adjacent siding.

I'll throw in another one. There was always an ice show at Wembley in the run-up to Christmas (maybe there still is). And there were special trains to them, invariably from Kings Lynn ! I think it was something to do with skating on the Fens. Some sort of affinity with ice ...

6Gman said:

I'll throw in another one. There was always an ice show at Wembley in the run-up to Christmas (maybe there still is). And there were special trains to them, invariably from Kings Lynn ! I think it was something to do with skating on the Fens. Some sort of affinity with ice ...

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Possibly a connection with their Dutch "neighbours" across the water, - but yes - "pantomime" and Xmas show traffic always featured as a good source of traffic , maybe not to the extent of many specific special trains but certainly for train loading and use of the general excursion services run up to London in the season.

There was a "Disney on Ice" show at the Wembley Arena in November, but I doubt that there were any special trains to get to it!

It took a while to find this, but I knew somewhere I had a copy of the Supplementary Traffic Notice from my last Christmas on the railway - 1984. Here's the cover and the first two pages - the remaining 25 pages list the timetables and formations of additional/amended workings. I can scan the rest on request.

My abiding memory of Christmas are mainly to do with the temps that the Post Office recruited for the Christmas season. I vividly remember working a 12 car peak train to P Hbr. I got the PO at Wloo to load the cage in the centre unit where I would be working the train from, and locked the front and rear cages. At Woking, I was met by one temp who asked if I had anything for him - I pointed at a large pile of bags in a corner and told him to help me get them off. At the same time I noticed more PO staff unlocking the cage in the front unit so I trotted off to see what they were loading. When I got back, the temp taking the bags one by one, walking them off the train and placing them in a neat pile on the platform - watched with amusement by the platform staff. I was already 2 down, so told him very bluntly, that I had 12 cars full of Surrey's finest and they wanted to get home - this was how to offload mail bags and started throwing them onto the platform. 5 late leaving Woking as a result! Strangely, he wasn't there the next day!

I remember the post temps as well. It had traditionally been a standard job for university students once the break started, but as the 1970s progressed and unemployment increased, students returning home and going round to their local post office increasingly found that the temp jobs had already gone to the local unemployed. Of course, all the arch left-wing socialist lot were extremely affronted by this, the fact that someone with a home and possibly a family to support had got the job ahead of them.

Another aspect that has disappeared, quite recently, is the early shutdown on Christmas Eve. In the 1990s there were notices that the last suburban departures from London termini were at about 17.00. Offices all gave up mid-afternoon. Year by year this has pushed back, until nowadays it's pretty much normal time. In Central London by 19.00 it was deserted, and with all shop and office lights turned off as well was an aura you never got at any other time. Nowadays it seems much more normal.

Taunton said:

I remember the post temps as well. It had traditionally been a standard job for university students once the break started, but as the 1970s progressed and unemployment increased, students returning home and going round to their local post office increasingly found that the temp jobs had already gone to the local unemployed. Of course, all the arch left-wing socialist lot were extremely affronted by this, the fact that someone with a home and possibly a family to support had got the job ahead of them.

Another aspect that has disappeared, quite recently, is the early shutdown on Christmas Eve. In the 1990s there were notices that the last suburban departures from London termini were at about 17.00. Offices all gave up mid-afternoon. Year by year this has pushed back, until nowadays it's pretty much normal time. In Central London by 19.00 it was deserted, and with all shop and office lights turned off as well was an aura you never got at any other time. Nowadays it seems much more normal.

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Mail Xmas jobs were well coveted for students - but you had to have inside contacts to get one. I envied my mate who did lates on High St Swansea hoiking bags on and off - periods of frantic activity to turn a HST around. He dropped a "registered" bag on the track one evening and even in those days you could not really pick them up off the line , so he duly reported it to a GPO Inspector who assured him it would be recovered. Next day it was still there when he came back at 1300 , so a Railman got it for him. Not good enough really - one of the "regulars" flung an Exeter bag onto the London , so my mate dived in , dug it out and put it on the right van and was treated as a pariah for not "letting it go".

Freightliner trains used to carry document bags for shipping documents , (in charge of the guard) and the Liverpool - Cardiff , by careful arrangement at the L/pool end carried L/pool shirts bought at the fan store and collected "untouched" at Pengam for the no doubt grateful young fans a few days later. Saved the postage. "one railway"