I started as a 2nd man at Bescot in 1978 so was involved in many of the trains above one not mentioned was 4D50 /4G50 a five set to Beeston and back best day turn at the depot 0920 on dinner in the pub at Beeston then back . One of our jobs was booking on at tea time to put the 2 X 86 or 87 locos together ready to swap over at Bescot standing trying to push the heavy jumper cable boxes home trying not to slip and thinking about the 25kv cables above you once you had done that the most hated job we had awaited you the Handsworth Cement train due to the high level of vandalism you encountered on it .
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Dudley Freightliner Terminal
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ChiefPlanner
Established Member
There must have been some choice work down the (mothballed and half stolen) Dudley - Stourbridge line via Eagle Crossing. A signal box which had repeated vandalism to the communications links that the then AM West Midlands Freight almost pleaded for the cables to be buried about 6 ft deep. The sectors found the money , only for the SB to be burnt to the ground not long after.
Dave W
Member
Which one!? Brettell Lane box was dispatched by the delightful locals (I can say that, I was one - although I didn’t have a penchant for burning down railway buildings), but that wasn’t until about 2003 I think.
I just about remember through trains - but the majority of my memories are standing on the embankment (behind the rather flimsy fence, I might add!) where the railway crosses the Stourbridge Canal overlooking Withymoor, waiting for a Round Oak train. There used to be a semaphore on that embankment, but by the time I was doing my routine it had become a colour light.
Home is a down at heel, post industrial place - some of my neighbours didn’t have the easiest of lives. Still doesn’t justify arson...
Yes we did over this line and the Cannock line must have been a large percentage of the depots work trip jobs to Wednesbury Great Bridge Dudley Round Oak Brierley Hill through trains to Gloucester including 4V73 and there was Stourbridge depot as well mid 80s when they closed it Bescot took over the Pensnett trip.
ex-railwayman
Member
I'm ex-Nottingham Freightliner, Senior Traffic Clerk, worked there from 1977-87 when the terminal closed down, I was the second to last person to shut the gates when we closed forever that year, my Overseer friend snapped the padlock shut for the very last time, I'm sure it was MD Brian Driver who sent us the video tape informing the employees of their demise back in January 1987.
I remember Peter (can't remember his surname now) who was the Senior Traffic Clerk at Dudley, he was fantastic, we had a few laughs over the years, when Nottingham closed down I went to Birmingham Landore Street in an advisory capacity as they took all our customers and train services, I worked with a lot of the old veterans in their Traffic Office such as ''chainsmoking'' Trevor Humphries, Derek Davies, Derek England, Pete Dodd, Phil Spiers (who did the Irish traffic), and a couple of girls (whose names I can't remember now) as well, it was a wonderful office environment, we all got on so superbly.
We had a train from Dudley back in the 1970s up to about 1983, 4D53 inbound and 4G50 outbound, locomotive and crew from Bescot Depot, traffic consisted mainly of Post Office stuff for Peterborough Distribution Centre and Bulmers Cider from Hereford that we delivered to the breweries at Burton Upon Trent, plus a few steelplate jobs for various steel stockholders at Grantham and Newark On Trent. We sent our daily 30ft container from Boots Beeston to Glasgow Gushetfaulds via Dudley, had to run it across by road to catch the 4S88 Dudley Glasgow service, we did it for the 10 years that I worked for Freightliners until they closed Dudley down, we didn't survive very long afterwards, they were good times, very good, it was a decent company to work for and the telephone communications between terminals throughout the UK was very rewarding, we had that ''family'' togetherness, it was something very special and I won't forget the Freightliner family that I enjoyed working with.
If you want anything else I have plenty of stories and anecdotes, etc.
I remember when you had a fire at Dudley FLT back in the early 1980s I think it was, some spare car tyres were set alight and the thick, black, acrid smoke, drifted across to the zoo and frightened all the animals and birds, they had to evacuate the zoo of all patrons and calm the animals down, Freightliners got into a lot of trouble over it apparently, although I'm not sure exactly what happened in the end.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman (Steve).
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edwin_m
Veteran Member
Not to knock your experiences, but your examples do show why terminals such as this one couldn't survive. You have cider going on rail from Dudley (maybe Hereford) to Beeston then about half the way back by road to Burton. And traffic from Dudley to Beeston that was then taken on by road a similar distance to Peterborough. It's not surprising that it usually turned out to be quicker and cheaper to move this sort of load by road throughout.
ex-railwayman
Member
Not to knock your comments, either, Edwin, however, Freightliners Ltd from the mid-1960s onwards built up its reputation for speedy, safe, road haulage combined with the rail movement over vast mileage.
Obviously road hauliers are legally governed as to their drivers hours on a daily basis and they have to have breaks during the day and at weekends etc, etc.
Freightliner trains ran/run daily services from Felixstowe and Southampton to Coatbridge (near Motherwell), for example, it took containers only 10/12 hours to reach their destination by rail, but, 1.5 days by road, which was a massive boon to the shipping companies.
The other thing is that NEARLY all the British domestic terminals had their own road fleets of drivers, lorries and trailers, and they were all NUR union staff and all defended their territories vigorously, if any drivers encroached on our territory regularly then words were exchanged, we delivered Post Office containers to Peterborough to their regional sorting office and then got reloads at Grattans Catalogues just up the street to take by road up to Grattans at Bradford, but, we didn't deliver them, we took them to Leeds Freightliner Terminal for them to deliver, everything was political at the time, if you understand.
We covered a vast geographical area from the Nottingham terminal for deliveries and collections, because we were the only Freightliner terminal in the east of England, we covered from North Lincolnshire to Sheffield to Uttoxeter, then across to Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, south we went into Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire, our major customers included Alcan products from Lynemouth (Newcastle), we delivered goods directly to Alcan at Banbury because we were the only terminal that had a direct train service from Newcastle, and we could get deliveries made before lunchtime for clients, we also handled a vast amount of brewery traffic we had to deliver loads the same day as we received them from trains from Edinburgh and Newcastle and Glasgow from the Scottish & Newcastle breweries, especially at Christmas time and in the summer months, we went daily to S&N Norwich to their regional distribution centre who then delivered kegs of beer to all the holiday resorts across Norfolk and the tourist boating pubs and bars run by Hoseasons and Blakes, for example, it was massive business for Freightliners Ltd; we delivered canned and bottled goods regularly to Schweppes Grimsby, went across to Schweppes Cambridge and down to the Charles Wells Brewery at Bedford with tanktainers full of beer, it was easy for our drivers to get onto the M1 and straight down the road, the same ease with deliveries we made to Carlsberg at Northampton as well.
I'm unsure if a Dudley driver would have had the time to go to Bulmers at Hereford load up then deliver it directly to Burton On Trent and then drive all the way back to Dudley terminal, not in one day, especially, as the local breweries were not renowned for their booked time keeping delivery slots, etc.
All open container loads of bottled and canned beers we had to virtually deliver the day we got them to limit the amount of pilfering from the local hoodlums who lived close by each terminal, it wasn't easy in the UK even going back to the 1970s/80s, I remember it well enough, we had to plan our daily deliveries around these hurdles.
We also had to take into consideration other operational problems within the Freightliner concept, such as craneage, Ipswich Griffin Wharf couldn't handle the flat containers with beer kegs on, etc, they also didn't have a road fleet either and as the only other terminal geographically speaking that could deliver beer to Suffolk and Norfolk was Stratford in East London, but, their drivers didn't really want to have a night out going to S&N Norwich and back, which is about the same mileage as it is to Nottingham, our drivers weren't bothered with nights out as they all made some money out of it with guaranteed overnight expenses, etc, all these things had to be taken into consideration.
The domestic terminals were closed down in 1987 as new Acts of Parliament came into place, in 1988 the Road Traffic Act being an example, Freightliner HQ in London considered that deep sea container traffic would be more profitable in the future than the domestic market customers which were all wiped out and they all then went by road eventually, that's why the Freightliner Group today is still going strong, the management bought the company out in 1995 and they haven't looked back since, and good luck to them.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman (Steve).
Obviously road hauliers are legally governed as to their drivers hours on a daily basis and they have to have breaks during the day and at weekends etc, etc.
Freightliner trains ran/run daily services from Felixstowe and Southampton to Coatbridge (near Motherwell), for example, it took containers only 10/12 hours to reach their destination by rail, but, 1.5 days by road, which was a massive boon to the shipping companies.
The other thing is that NEARLY all the British domestic terminals had their own road fleets of drivers, lorries and trailers, and they were all NUR union staff and all defended their territories vigorously, if any drivers encroached on our territory regularly then words were exchanged, we delivered Post Office containers to Peterborough to their regional sorting office and then got reloads at Grattans Catalogues just up the street to take by road up to Grattans at Bradford, but, we didn't deliver them, we took them to Leeds Freightliner Terminal for them to deliver, everything was political at the time, if you understand.
We covered a vast geographical area from the Nottingham terminal for deliveries and collections, because we were the only Freightliner terminal in the east of England, we covered from North Lincolnshire to Sheffield to Uttoxeter, then across to Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, south we went into Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire, our major customers included Alcan products from Lynemouth (Newcastle), we delivered goods directly to Alcan at Banbury because we were the only terminal that had a direct train service from Newcastle, and we could get deliveries made before lunchtime for clients, we also handled a vast amount of brewery traffic we had to deliver loads the same day as we received them from trains from Edinburgh and Newcastle and Glasgow from the Scottish & Newcastle breweries, especially at Christmas time and in the summer months, we went daily to S&N Norwich to their regional distribution centre who then delivered kegs of beer to all the holiday resorts across Norfolk and the tourist boating pubs and bars run by Hoseasons and Blakes, for example, it was massive business for Freightliners Ltd; we delivered canned and bottled goods regularly to Schweppes Grimsby, went across to Schweppes Cambridge and down to the Charles Wells Brewery at Bedford with tanktainers full of beer, it was easy for our drivers to get onto the M1 and straight down the road, the same ease with deliveries we made to Carlsberg at Northampton as well.
I'm unsure if a Dudley driver would have had the time to go to Bulmers at Hereford load up then deliver it directly to Burton On Trent and then drive all the way back to Dudley terminal, not in one day, especially, as the local breweries were not renowned for their booked time keeping delivery slots, etc.
All open container loads of bottled and canned beers we had to virtually deliver the day we got them to limit the amount of pilfering from the local hoodlums who lived close by each terminal, it wasn't easy in the UK even going back to the 1970s/80s, I remember it well enough, we had to plan our daily deliveries around these hurdles.
We also had to take into consideration other operational problems within the Freightliner concept, such as craneage, Ipswich Griffin Wharf couldn't handle the flat containers with beer kegs on, etc, they also didn't have a road fleet either and as the only other terminal geographically speaking that could deliver beer to Suffolk and Norfolk was Stratford in East London, but, their drivers didn't really want to have a night out going to S&N Norwich and back, which is about the same mileage as it is to Nottingham, our drivers weren't bothered with nights out as they all made some money out of it with guaranteed overnight expenses, etc, all these things had to be taken into consideration.
The domestic terminals were closed down in 1987 as new Acts of Parliament came into place, in 1988 the Road Traffic Act being an example, Freightliner HQ in London considered that deep sea container traffic would be more profitable in the future than the domestic market customers which were all wiped out and they all then went by road eventually, that's why the Freightliner Group today is still going strong, the management bought the company out in 1995 and they haven't looked back since, and good luck to them.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman (Steve).
Last edited by a moderator:
muddythefish
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Thanks for your reply Steve. Fascinating insights into the inland FT terminals and how they worked.
How did the new Acts of Parliaments affect these terminals and led to them being closed down?
I assume from what you say these terminals were profitable but deep sea offered greater profits?
Either way, they were a great loss to the railway. I lived in North London in the early 1970s and used to see the London - Newcastle / Leeds / Edinburgh / Dundee / Aberdeen FT heading north in the evening. They were always well loaded. The KX was so busy with freight then. Similarly, the Nottingham train on the Midland line was a heavy train - I remember seeing it hauled by double-headed class 25s.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
Thanks Steve for the recollections. It was truly a different world back in the 80s. I was in Newcastle in the early 80s and saw those aluminium slabs going down the Great North Road, presumably for loading at Follingsby. And when I joined BR in 1987 I had a day at the former terminal which was for a while a S&T depot. It's now used for loading of switches and crossings from the Progress Rail works in Sandiacre onto Network Rail's tipping wagons to be taken to engineering jobs.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
A very valuable post , and thank you Steve.
I started as a Traffic Management Trainee in 1979 , home station for training (for a bit) - Cardiff Flt - so well familiar with kegged and crated beer from S+N , and the Alcan traffic to and from Rogerstone. The Cardiff traffics must have been 50% domestic and 50% European and Deep Sea. The Alcan traffic was very efficently handled , with your average motor driver doing 3 deliveries in a shift.
Your comment about Ipswich Griffin Wharf is very nostalgic , (44N COPS code , or 49207 in TOPS) , entirely European traffic , and no domestic traffic allowed. I was the grandly titled "Port Agent" - Supervisor "D" before moving onto Felixstowe as MS1 Operations Manager. Tough job with the explosion of traffic at the 1980 period- moved to Cardington St as "Deep Sea" gopher then to Speedlink and other bits of Railfreight. Freighltlner had a very loyal staff and indeed management , and was very much a working community.
Anyway - I had a domestic "N" type container in on the inwards Stratford one day , which turned out to be a cargo of new cinema seats for the local "Odeon" - I had to get special permission from the Port Superintendant to get it offloaded - and hired in a friendly local haulier to make the delivery. I laid it on thick that without this "favour" , there would be no film shows that weekend as the old seats were to be stripped out. All went well. Cannot now remember where it came from ....but no harm done and the locals no doubt enjoyed their seating upgrade. The "N" went back empty to Stratford.
Funnily enough the Port of Felixstowe were OK with dealing with domestic boxes and we used to do odd things like imported Irish peat (Bord na Mona) for local garden centers , 40ft "F" types with Jeyes Fluid from Thetford to Scotland , Cadbury traffic to Norwich and at Xmas extra parcel post boxes from Ipswich - again to Scotland. Seasonal apple traffic from Essex orchards to the Blochairn Fruit Market. (Glasgow) - which I ws told had a Covent Garden style pub (open outside normal hours - which for the truly desperate - I am told - served a pint of "slops" (drip tray and what was left in glasses for about 10 pence)
Personally , I used to like to see the odd Freightliner box in the middle of a load of Deep Sea ? European traffic !.
Question re Nottingham - there was a daily train to Barking - base load being metallurgical coke for Fords at Dagenham ?
I started as a Traffic Management Trainee in 1979 , home station for training (for a bit) - Cardiff Flt - so well familiar with kegged and crated beer from S+N , and the Alcan traffic to and from Rogerstone. The Cardiff traffics must have been 50% domestic and 50% European and Deep Sea. The Alcan traffic was very efficently handled , with your average motor driver doing 3 deliveries in a shift.
Your comment about Ipswich Griffin Wharf is very nostalgic , (44N COPS code , or 49207 in TOPS) , entirely European traffic , and no domestic traffic allowed. I was the grandly titled "Port Agent" - Supervisor "D" before moving onto Felixstowe as MS1 Operations Manager. Tough job with the explosion of traffic at the 1980 period- moved to Cardington St as "Deep Sea" gopher then to Speedlink and other bits of Railfreight. Freighltlner had a very loyal staff and indeed management , and was very much a working community.
Anyway - I had a domestic "N" type container in on the inwards Stratford one day , which turned out to be a cargo of new cinema seats for the local "Odeon" - I had to get special permission from the Port Superintendant to get it offloaded - and hired in a friendly local haulier to make the delivery. I laid it on thick that without this "favour" , there would be no film shows that weekend as the old seats were to be stripped out. All went well. Cannot now remember where it came from ....but no harm done and the locals no doubt enjoyed their seating upgrade. The "N" went back empty to Stratford.
Funnily enough the Port of Felixstowe were OK with dealing with domestic boxes and we used to do odd things like imported Irish peat (Bord na Mona) for local garden centers , 40ft "F" types with Jeyes Fluid from Thetford to Scotland , Cadbury traffic to Norwich and at Xmas extra parcel post boxes from Ipswich - again to Scotland. Seasonal apple traffic from Essex orchards to the Blochairn Fruit Market. (Glasgow) - which I ws told had a Covent Garden style pub (open outside normal hours - which for the truly desperate - I am told - served a pint of "slops" (drip tray and what was left in glasses for about 10 pence)
Personally , I used to like to see the odd Freightliner box in the middle of a load of Deep Sea ? European traffic !.
Question re Nottingham - there was a daily train to Barking - base load being metallurgical coke for Fords at Dagenham ?
ex-railwayman
Member
Yes, the company was Bulkliner, they occupied the other end of our office premises at Beeston Freightliner Terminal, one of the ladies who worked in their Payroll office lived across the road from us at home.
They went out of business when Freightliner HQ London pulled the plug on our terminal, this was one of the negative reactions of their business strategy in closing all the domestic terminals, I'm unsure if any of the Freightliner company directors knew that they threw private businesses under the bus with their sweeping closures across Britain in 1987, it makes you wonder/think who else lost their jobs and businesses outside of the Freightliner corporation at that time due to their decision.
Anyway, I digress, Bulkliner was the company you're thinking about, they ran their own company train every day they had their own 20ft and 30ft box type containers with no roof as they hauled coke and coal to Fords Dagenham and another company in Essex as well, they ran a 15 wagon set every night from Nottingham to Barking which was full on virtually every departure that I ever saw for the 10 years I worked at the depot.
When I first started in 1977 they also used to deliver household coal to a couple of schools and hospitals in the Essex area, but, the supply stopped in the early 1980s and 99% of their traffic then all went to Fords.
I always used to look out for their inbound train when I was on the afternoon shift, or, on nights, as it was always a booked Class 47 from Stratford often with a silver roof, with a Ripple Lane Depot crew and sometimes we had a pair of Class 37s and they used to park them up outside our office block and the guard and driver/secondman used to use our traffic office canteen facilities, sometimes I even used to take them up the street to the local chippy, making sure we bypassed the local pub so they wouldn't get tempted to partake of any liquid refreshment, especially in the warm summer month evenings....lol
Talking about Ipswich, and Dudley, they used to run a special 5 set containing lots of 20ft open containers belonging to Seawheel with Steel Coils on imported from somewhere in Holland I think it was, these were tripped up to Dudley to be delivered to the Round Oak Steelworks at Brierley Hill, and when Dudley closed the train then went into Birmingham Lawley Street, I'm positive I've seen a photograph of one of these trains on flickr, or, certainly on the internet somewhere. At Nottingham we also used to get the odd IFF (International Ferry Freight) container from Ipswich for local delivery by a private haulier, and I think Fyffes Bananas used to be there in the 1970s as well.
And talking about Cardiff, I remember the Manager was Stan Jones and his daughter used to work there with him, I can't remember her christian name now but she used to ring me up every week for some statistics for Scottish & Newcastle Brewery traffic, which I thought was a little odd as the traffic never originated from Cardiff, so, I could never understand why she undertook such a duty, she was very pleasant anyway.
Oh, you mention the infamous words 'Bord na Mona', we had so many containers from Ireland over the years, we even had a Private Haulier who came from Bayston Hill in Shropshire with a 30ft tipper trailer, the drivers name was Mick and he used to be based at Nottingham all week and delivered N type containers all over Lincolnshire and The Fenland counties, another big business from the Freightliner Sales teams!! We had to sweep the containers out and let them dry when they came back to the terminal before we could use them on another job, it was a bit smelly and dirty, not to be utilised on Boots, or, John Player traffic, anyway, I remember.
We also had several years of delivering seed potatoes to hundreds of farmers all over the East of England as well that came down from Scotland, I used to be nicknamed the 'Potato Kid' in the early days, as it was my job to book the deliveries in with the farmers, or, their wives, and find out if there were any restrictions on getting an N type container down their farmtracks, etc, or stuck under any low bridges, we gave the driver a map when they left our terminal so they knew where they were going, the only problem was is that they didn't put the sacks on pallets it was all handball, 18 tons of seed potatoes to be manually offloaded it was back breaking work for them, we ordered a few sack barrows to help the drivers getting the bags from one end of the container to the other, which in a 30ft container was a sweaty job in itself, farmers didn't have forklift trucks to hand so they had to lay on lots of labour to help, some of our drivers even had a night out if they got stuck in the wilds of Norfolk, or, Cambridgeshire.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman. Steve.
They went out of business when Freightliner HQ London pulled the plug on our terminal, this was one of the negative reactions of their business strategy in closing all the domestic terminals, I'm unsure if any of the Freightliner company directors knew that they threw private businesses under the bus with their sweeping closures across Britain in 1987, it makes you wonder/think who else lost their jobs and businesses outside of the Freightliner corporation at that time due to their decision.
Anyway, I digress, Bulkliner was the company you're thinking about, they ran their own company train every day they had their own 20ft and 30ft box type containers with no roof as they hauled coke and coal to Fords Dagenham and another company in Essex as well, they ran a 15 wagon set every night from Nottingham to Barking which was full on virtually every departure that I ever saw for the 10 years I worked at the depot.
When I first started in 1977 they also used to deliver household coal to a couple of schools and hospitals in the Essex area, but, the supply stopped in the early 1980s and 99% of their traffic then all went to Fords.
I always used to look out for their inbound train when I was on the afternoon shift, or, on nights, as it was always a booked Class 47 from Stratford often with a silver roof, with a Ripple Lane Depot crew and sometimes we had a pair of Class 37s and they used to park them up outside our office block and the guard and driver/secondman used to use our traffic office canteen facilities, sometimes I even used to take them up the street to the local chippy, making sure we bypassed the local pub so they wouldn't get tempted to partake of any liquid refreshment, especially in the warm summer month evenings....lol
Talking about Ipswich, and Dudley, they used to run a special 5 set containing lots of 20ft open containers belonging to Seawheel with Steel Coils on imported from somewhere in Holland I think it was, these were tripped up to Dudley to be delivered to the Round Oak Steelworks at Brierley Hill, and when Dudley closed the train then went into Birmingham Lawley Street, I'm positive I've seen a photograph of one of these trains on flickr, or, certainly on the internet somewhere. At Nottingham we also used to get the odd IFF (International Ferry Freight) container from Ipswich for local delivery by a private haulier, and I think Fyffes Bananas used to be there in the 1970s as well.
And talking about Cardiff, I remember the Manager was Stan Jones and his daughter used to work there with him, I can't remember her christian name now but she used to ring me up every week for some statistics for Scottish & Newcastle Brewery traffic, which I thought was a little odd as the traffic never originated from Cardiff, so, I could never understand why she undertook such a duty, she was very pleasant anyway.
Oh, you mention the infamous words 'Bord na Mona', we had so many containers from Ireland over the years, we even had a Private Haulier who came from Bayston Hill in Shropshire with a 30ft tipper trailer, the drivers name was Mick and he used to be based at Nottingham all week and delivered N type containers all over Lincolnshire and The Fenland counties, another big business from the Freightliner Sales teams!! We had to sweep the containers out and let them dry when they came back to the terminal before we could use them on another job, it was a bit smelly and dirty, not to be utilised on Boots, or, John Player traffic, anyway, I remember.
We also had several years of delivering seed potatoes to hundreds of farmers all over the East of England as well that came down from Scotland, I used to be nicknamed the 'Potato Kid' in the early days, as it was my job to book the deliveries in with the farmers, or, their wives, and find out if there were any restrictions on getting an N type container down their farmtracks, etc, or stuck under any low bridges, we gave the driver a map when they left our terminal so they knew where they were going, the only problem was is that they didn't put the sacks on pallets it was all handball, 18 tons of seed potatoes to be manually offloaded it was back breaking work for them, we ordered a few sack barrows to help the drivers getting the bags from one end of the container to the other, which in a 30ft container was a sweaty job in itself, farmers didn't have forklift trucks to hand so they had to lay on lots of labour to help, some of our drivers even had a night out if they got stuck in the wilds of Norfolk, or, Cambridgeshire.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman. Steve.
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ex-railwayman
Member
Yeah, I went past Sandiacre just before Christmas, they are still busy up there.
At Nottingham we also had the honour I suppose you could call it of helping the 'Geordies' to construct the Tyne & Wear Metro back in the 1980s, we sent them train loads of open containers full of tunnel segments from Stanton & Staveley Ironworks, funnily enough I've never ridden on the Metro myself since it was opened, and I doubt if I'll ever do it now as I had Bowel Cancer 5 years ago and keep myself close to home these days. It's all these little things that we fondly remember, such memories......
Cheerz. Steve.
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ex-railwayman
Member
I can't remember the whole story, but, the Transport Act 1976 transferred Freightliners Ltd back under the British Railways Board as a wholly owned subsidiary, in 1988 Freightliners Ltd was told to merge with Railfreight Ltd as BRB wanted all non-bulk traffic flows to come under one umbrella, they could then compete with the import/export traffic flows from Europe when the Channel Tunnel opened in the early 1990s, which was more profitable than domestic traffic, the merge then became known to all as Railfreight Distribution under the new BR sectorisation policy.
There were also amendments to the Road Traffic Act in 1988 and 1990, I can't find the full information, but, from memory it wasn't in Freightliner's best interest so they decided to get rid of much of their home operated road fleets in lieu of private hauliers going to collect/deliver shipping containers from Maritime terminals and ports and docks dotted around the UK and the inland customs clearance depots, such as at Birmingham. It was all very political at the time, Freightliner HQ knew more of what was happening in London/Government much to the detriment of the staff around the nation.
In the summer of 1987 I actually went down to work in FL HQ in London, I had to de-tax all the road vehicle lorries from all the domestic terminals that had closed down, which was a sad job in many ways.
Cheers, Steve.
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ChiefPlanner
Established Member
A few memories rekindled here - Stan Jones at Cardiff was a man of few words , but very astute. He moved onto manage the two Southampton terminals and presumably long retired. I think he had come from Newcastle FLT at some time , so there must have been some S+N legacy from those days as prime contact.
Seawheel - Ipswich based company which gave lots of export traffic via Ipswich of Welsh coil and tinplate to Europe. Very heavy loads with 2 to a wagon as 25 tons or so per wagon. (which needed special checking as the springs were often very compressed on arrival , and the excellent Carriage and Wagon often changed them "just in case" - often the sets worked through from Port Talbot / Llanwern or Ebbw Vale. Some specials ran direct to Canada Dock , Liverpool. Excellent earners. Sending stacks of empties to South Wales (£80 a stack of 5 , terminal to terminal) , stopped road lorries heading west and pretty much guaranteed a return flow. I had the job of specially roping them down , (in case they sprang up and damaged the OLE or structures - a hateful job , but safety related) - proves the point that graduates could and did get their hands dirty.
Seed potatoes - used to get the odd load from Aberdeen to the inmates prison at Hollesley Bay , Suffolk (20 ft L types) - no problem as the prison officers made the "inmates" off load them. The driver stayed in his cab.
I recall running a very rare special Ipswich to Dudley - there was a planned port dispute so they wanted the loaded imports cleared out. 30ft bulk IFF boxes (International Ferry Freight) - due to some awful misunderstanding - the special was sent to Cardiff overnight - and was further specialled via Gloucester etc. Customer not impressed.
pl9
New Member
Lovely to read this - my Dad worked for Bulkliner, in their office in Dagenham. I was too young to know what he did at the time - just that he worked with ships and trains, and my sisters and I used to nag him to take us with him every Saturday. He passed away late last year and I was just searching around for what the company did out of curiosity. Thanks for the info.
Wyrleybart
Established Member
I realise it is not a pleasant thing to mention but the "Black Panther" Lesley Neilson attacked a security man at the Dudley Freightliner terminal.
Chilling memories of serial killer the Black Panther
Right from the start, things went wrong.
Interrupted while laying a ransom trail, Neilson shot a security guard six times near a Freightliner railway terminal in Dudley. Found in a car nearby was evidence which directly linked the driver with the sub post office murders and Lesley's kidnap. The security guard died over a year later.
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