Union St
Member
Hello again Randy, 150219, 30907, Taunton, Chief, Clarence, Snow, IronDuke, etc.
Gents (or perhaps gentle ladies, I don't know), I've been busy with other stuff, but finally got back to some railway research and put together this little passage. Please don't criticize the writing, the finished article will look nothing like this (a lot to add and tidy, passive verbs to remove, etc.), but from a railway-enthusiast perspective, does this look remotely plausible? I'm particularly interested in the relationship between the driver and the fireman(?), the layout of Southampton docks, communication between the station master and the engineer (driver?), any communication while on the journey (between the brake and driver?), and anything I have disastrously incorrect:
""""In 1963, the Union-Castle Line enjoyed an established reputation for bringing well-found ships into the port of Southampton on a weekly basis, running goods, passengers and mail from South African ports. The Harbor Master was familiar with the planned appearance of their ships, typically into berths 35 or 36 where the River Test met the River Itchen, the most southern quays of the port. Apart from a considerable quantity of corn, fruits, non-exotic metals and minerals, sugar, and wool, each ship carried aboard a small, but extremely heavy cargo of gold bullion, protected in the ship’s specie room, heading for the Bank of England and the world dominating London gold market. Everyone involved knew the name of the ship, it’s assigned berth and its projected time of arrival. The stevedores, the agent and chandlers, the ship’s personnel, were all familiar with the procedure at Southampton. A ship arrived early on a Monday morning and the bullion was forwarded from the docks to London Waterloo railway station on a specially-constructed bullion train.
But the Victoria P was not a Union-Castle vessel, and her arrival, although not mysterious, might be considered an irregular event. The port was happy to accommodate her business anyway and she was booked into berth 26 and 27 of the Empress Dock. The Captain’s pre-arranged plan was to discharge as follows;
on arrival, hold # 4 tween-deck to be cleared (three small cargoes). Once accomplished, work on # 4 would be suspended while other cargo was delivered from holds 2, 3 & 5 during daylight hours, while in hold # 4 the bolts, under strict supervision, were to be removed from the large plate cover of the deep tank. Upon the completion of the first day, discharge would then continue from the deep tank in hold # 4 only, while under stringent security precautions.
The day of the vessel’s arrival began at 8:00 AM for the forces of law, both the local constabulary and the British Transport Police, given the task of patrolling the docks and the railways. This operation was one of their core responsibilities. An important task being to collect the radio equipment and transport it to the sixty-four-foot-long, blue and grey bullion van once bought onto berth 26 at the conclusion of the day. The radio was a mobile base set fixed into a large metal case powered by a car battery contained within an old military ammunition box. Once on board the aerial would be rigged and the radio tested by calling Hampshire Police Control Room at Winchester.
During the journey it would be their role to provide location and situation updates to the Police Control Rooms along the route while protecting the cargo should there be an attack. At the dock, the Southampton Police created a small cordon with portable barriers at the east and west ends adjacent the vessel when the bullion was to be handled. A few officers had visible side arms.
The delivery of the bullion occurred by first raising each pallet of wooden boxes from the deep tank by the ship’s derrick wire, supervised by the Chief Mate and the company Port Captain, hand-guided by selected stevedores, carefully directing each pallet through the plate cover opening into the tween deck. Once there, the pallet was hoisted by one of the smaller fifty-ton electric dock cranes from the hold and deposited adjacent the bullion van. This was the time for special attention by the police, but there were the usual onlookers; the Captain, the agent and Harbor Master, and a very well-organized Special Services planning team which had liaised with docks and local railway operating management. It was in everyone’s interest for the operation to run smoothly and without incident. Each pallet held ten rope-handled wooden boxes secured with steel bandits. Each box was removed individually from the pallet and transferred to the inside of the van. The weight of each required two men to carry so as to restrict the chance of any one man running away with a box.
Southampton docks were busy like any other day. A 1940s American-built S100 class shunter passed the Empress Dock pulling a few open wagons, while a Standard Class 5 came past hauling passenger stock in green livery. A much older Class E1 hauled some wagons about the docks and another tank shunted vans past a lonely Ford Cortina, and then reversed back toward a dock crane. To the west was the RMS Queen Elizabeth at the Ocean Terminal and beyond that the massed ranks of cranes at the New Docks. A 'Battle of Britain' class locomotive set off below the large building at the northside with luggage vans behind a tender, and the 'West Country' Combe Martin departed, visibly slipping.
It was decided that the van should remain on berth 26 until the appropriate time. That time arrived late in the evening when the S100 Tank growled and hissed into the Empress Dock and backed onto berth 26 and coupled up to the bullion van. There was a general mingling about as men from the Harbor Master’s Office and Transport Police checked the security of the van again. Two unarmed Transport policemen would remain with the van until London.
The S100 set off forwards pulling the bullion slowly from in front of the warehouse on Brazil Road, shunting the gold northwest along Central Road, passing the old Inner Dock, exiting the port, crossing Canute Road alongside Southampton Terminus Station while the local police held the non-existent traffic of the night at bay. The shunter and van crept under Central Bridge, stopped, and backed south to connect to three mail vans and a brake waiting for a trip north to London.
Reggie Wellmeadow had been a locomotive engineer for a long time, but two days earlier he had been confronted by a strange event at the Nine Elms shed. He could not shake the event from his mind as he walked toward the Oliver Bullied-designed engine sitting lonely in the siding, the ‘West Country’ type locomotive, 34007 Wadebridge. He’d driven her before and was happy to handle her again this late evening. And, most importantly, he was heading north, back to Waterloo and then returning the engine to her, and his, home at the Nine Elms shed in Battersea.
He climbed up and shook hands with the engineer(fireman?) who’d begun warming through the engine. The water level was high enough to cover the inside roof of the firebox, but not so high as to reduce the space available for steam storage. The fire was still low, but with a good bed of coke so as not to test the safety valves. He didn’t know the engineer, but he’d seen him at Nine Elms a few times. They exchanged a few pleasantries then continued with the routine procedures; "counting the parts", oiling around, refilling the lubricator, checking for warm bearings, and otherwise making sure everything was as it should be. The blower was on just enough to keep air moving. The fire door was kept closed as much as possible, so only heated air entered the flues.
They spent another hour shoveling coal, cleaning as the steam built and oiling around in preparation to move. Reggie’s instructions were for a 1:00 AM move back to Southampton Terminus and pick up three Post Office vans, a bullion van and a brake: collectively the 1:10 AM Southampton to Waterloo Up-mail.
Right on schedule a short, sharp whistle and Reggie guided the ninety-ton, sixty-seven-foot-long locomotive back towards the Southampton Terminus, steam issuing, the smell of oil, coal and fire, pistons slowly stroking. From his left-hand position, Reggie looked over to see the boiler pressure edging back to near 240 PSI. The vacuum brake pressure was good as well. There had been a slight feeling of slip in the chilly night, but a little sand had solved that. He liked the almost enclosed cabin of the Bullied, sitting back, sliding open the window, and leaning out, then back in, balancing the regulator and reverser, he slowed and edged the Wadebridge toward the waiting mail and bullion vans.
Waiting at the platform, he thought back to that conversation again. They were friendly enough, the two big men, but the intent behind their questions and instructions were obvious for Reggie to understand. The conversation remained cordial, but then he was attentive and accommodating. Had he argued or feigned consternation, he couldn’t be so sure of their cordiality.
At 1:38 AM, given clear to depart by the station master, he gave a short whistle and allowed the steam to flow creating so much pressure that the rods connected to the driving wheels of the locomotive began stroking back and forth, and the train stirred slowly north. He listened to the locomotive make its rhythmic sounds; the engine's huffing resonance of smoke and exhaust gas being emitted through the stack, the hissing of the air pump creating pressure for the brakes as Reggie began working her up to what’s known as “line speed” (the safe speed for the line). Thick black smoke spewed from the locomotive temporarily as she lugged her small load slowly forward, a sign that the firebox wasn’t burning efficiently, but they soon sorted that problem. Reggie loved the sound of trains, real steam trains. Once on the run north he, the engineer and the engine settled into their routine, the men monitoring pressures and watching the signals.
But his mind wondered again as his actions became automatic. Why had those two men needed to know the timing of his departure? Leaving Southampton, entering the countryside after Eastleigh, he took the distinctive, air-smoothed “Spam Can” as they called it, up to seventy miles per hour, all the while eager to see the line of green lights leading into the distance. He shuddered to think what might happen at a red, but no one could make a green light red, right?
Near Farnborough, Police Control was informed from the bullion van of the transfer from Hampshire to Surrey, while Reggie kept the Wadebridge chugging at a good pace, worrying all the time of just what those two men wanted! Near Wimbledon the Surrey police and the Metropolitan Police were alerted of their imminent arrival into Central London. A sense of relief came over Reggie as the train entered the congestion southwest of the great city and he slowed the mighty steam locomotive.
He drove the Wadebridge into Waterloo Station at 3:45AM. The station, although the largest and busiest in England came about by the strange extension of the Nine Elms terminal of the London and Southwest Railway late the in the nineteenth century, and never intended to be a terminus, the plan being to cross the River Thames into central London, but that never played out.
By 1963, long after rebuilding, it had become a place for important arrivals and departures, whether city commuters, holiday makers, Epsom race goers or the armed forces, and had twenty-one platforms and a large, wide concourse under a huge ridge-and-furrow roof. Widely praised for its architecture, the new curved building to the front of the station housed offices and facilities for passengers including a large Georgian style booking hall, but it was quiet that morning.
Reggie led the Wadebridge alongside platform 11, between which and platform 12, lay an indoor ‘street’ upon which mails would be unloaded. """""
Just out of interest at Waterloo I will have two Security Express Commer Walk-thrus waiting for the bullion.
Thank you in advance. Any comments welcome.
Union St, DC
Gents (or perhaps gentle ladies, I don't know), I've been busy with other stuff, but finally got back to some railway research and put together this little passage. Please don't criticize the writing, the finished article will look nothing like this (a lot to add and tidy, passive verbs to remove, etc.), but from a railway-enthusiast perspective, does this look remotely plausible? I'm particularly interested in the relationship between the driver and the fireman(?), the layout of Southampton docks, communication between the station master and the engineer (driver?), any communication while on the journey (between the brake and driver?), and anything I have disastrously incorrect:
""""In 1963, the Union-Castle Line enjoyed an established reputation for bringing well-found ships into the port of Southampton on a weekly basis, running goods, passengers and mail from South African ports. The Harbor Master was familiar with the planned appearance of their ships, typically into berths 35 or 36 where the River Test met the River Itchen, the most southern quays of the port. Apart from a considerable quantity of corn, fruits, non-exotic metals and minerals, sugar, and wool, each ship carried aboard a small, but extremely heavy cargo of gold bullion, protected in the ship’s specie room, heading for the Bank of England and the world dominating London gold market. Everyone involved knew the name of the ship, it’s assigned berth and its projected time of arrival. The stevedores, the agent and chandlers, the ship’s personnel, were all familiar with the procedure at Southampton. A ship arrived early on a Monday morning and the bullion was forwarded from the docks to London Waterloo railway station on a specially-constructed bullion train.
But the Victoria P was not a Union-Castle vessel, and her arrival, although not mysterious, might be considered an irregular event. The port was happy to accommodate her business anyway and she was booked into berth 26 and 27 of the Empress Dock. The Captain’s pre-arranged plan was to discharge as follows;
on arrival, hold # 4 tween-deck to be cleared (three small cargoes). Once accomplished, work on # 4 would be suspended while other cargo was delivered from holds 2, 3 & 5 during daylight hours, while in hold # 4 the bolts, under strict supervision, were to be removed from the large plate cover of the deep tank. Upon the completion of the first day, discharge would then continue from the deep tank in hold # 4 only, while under stringent security precautions.
The day of the vessel’s arrival began at 8:00 AM for the forces of law, both the local constabulary and the British Transport Police, given the task of patrolling the docks and the railways. This operation was one of their core responsibilities. An important task being to collect the radio equipment and transport it to the sixty-four-foot-long, blue and grey bullion van once bought onto berth 26 at the conclusion of the day. The radio was a mobile base set fixed into a large metal case powered by a car battery contained within an old military ammunition box. Once on board the aerial would be rigged and the radio tested by calling Hampshire Police Control Room at Winchester.
During the journey it would be their role to provide location and situation updates to the Police Control Rooms along the route while protecting the cargo should there be an attack. At the dock, the Southampton Police created a small cordon with portable barriers at the east and west ends adjacent the vessel when the bullion was to be handled. A few officers had visible side arms.
The delivery of the bullion occurred by first raising each pallet of wooden boxes from the deep tank by the ship’s derrick wire, supervised by the Chief Mate and the company Port Captain, hand-guided by selected stevedores, carefully directing each pallet through the plate cover opening into the tween deck. Once there, the pallet was hoisted by one of the smaller fifty-ton electric dock cranes from the hold and deposited adjacent the bullion van. This was the time for special attention by the police, but there were the usual onlookers; the Captain, the agent and Harbor Master, and a very well-organized Special Services planning team which had liaised with docks and local railway operating management. It was in everyone’s interest for the operation to run smoothly and without incident. Each pallet held ten rope-handled wooden boxes secured with steel bandits. Each box was removed individually from the pallet and transferred to the inside of the van. The weight of each required two men to carry so as to restrict the chance of any one man running away with a box.
Southampton docks were busy like any other day. A 1940s American-built S100 class shunter passed the Empress Dock pulling a few open wagons, while a Standard Class 5 came past hauling passenger stock in green livery. A much older Class E1 hauled some wagons about the docks and another tank shunted vans past a lonely Ford Cortina, and then reversed back toward a dock crane. To the west was the RMS Queen Elizabeth at the Ocean Terminal and beyond that the massed ranks of cranes at the New Docks. A 'Battle of Britain' class locomotive set off below the large building at the northside with luggage vans behind a tender, and the 'West Country' Combe Martin departed, visibly slipping.
It was decided that the van should remain on berth 26 until the appropriate time. That time arrived late in the evening when the S100 Tank growled and hissed into the Empress Dock and backed onto berth 26 and coupled up to the bullion van. There was a general mingling about as men from the Harbor Master’s Office and Transport Police checked the security of the van again. Two unarmed Transport policemen would remain with the van until London.
The S100 set off forwards pulling the bullion slowly from in front of the warehouse on Brazil Road, shunting the gold northwest along Central Road, passing the old Inner Dock, exiting the port, crossing Canute Road alongside Southampton Terminus Station while the local police held the non-existent traffic of the night at bay. The shunter and van crept under Central Bridge, stopped, and backed south to connect to three mail vans and a brake waiting for a trip north to London.
Reggie Wellmeadow had been a locomotive engineer for a long time, but two days earlier he had been confronted by a strange event at the Nine Elms shed. He could not shake the event from his mind as he walked toward the Oliver Bullied-designed engine sitting lonely in the siding, the ‘West Country’ type locomotive, 34007 Wadebridge. He’d driven her before and was happy to handle her again this late evening. And, most importantly, he was heading north, back to Waterloo and then returning the engine to her, and his, home at the Nine Elms shed in Battersea.
He climbed up and shook hands with the engineer(fireman?) who’d begun warming through the engine. The water level was high enough to cover the inside roof of the firebox, but not so high as to reduce the space available for steam storage. The fire was still low, but with a good bed of coke so as not to test the safety valves. He didn’t know the engineer, but he’d seen him at Nine Elms a few times. They exchanged a few pleasantries then continued with the routine procedures; "counting the parts", oiling around, refilling the lubricator, checking for warm bearings, and otherwise making sure everything was as it should be. The blower was on just enough to keep air moving. The fire door was kept closed as much as possible, so only heated air entered the flues.
They spent another hour shoveling coal, cleaning as the steam built and oiling around in preparation to move. Reggie’s instructions were for a 1:00 AM move back to Southampton Terminus and pick up three Post Office vans, a bullion van and a brake: collectively the 1:10 AM Southampton to Waterloo Up-mail.
Right on schedule a short, sharp whistle and Reggie guided the ninety-ton, sixty-seven-foot-long locomotive back towards the Southampton Terminus, steam issuing, the smell of oil, coal and fire, pistons slowly stroking. From his left-hand position, Reggie looked over to see the boiler pressure edging back to near 240 PSI. The vacuum brake pressure was good as well. There had been a slight feeling of slip in the chilly night, but a little sand had solved that. He liked the almost enclosed cabin of the Bullied, sitting back, sliding open the window, and leaning out, then back in, balancing the regulator and reverser, he slowed and edged the Wadebridge toward the waiting mail and bullion vans.
Waiting at the platform, he thought back to that conversation again. They were friendly enough, the two big men, but the intent behind their questions and instructions were obvious for Reggie to understand. The conversation remained cordial, but then he was attentive and accommodating. Had he argued or feigned consternation, he couldn’t be so sure of their cordiality.
At 1:38 AM, given clear to depart by the station master, he gave a short whistle and allowed the steam to flow creating so much pressure that the rods connected to the driving wheels of the locomotive began stroking back and forth, and the train stirred slowly north. He listened to the locomotive make its rhythmic sounds; the engine's huffing resonance of smoke and exhaust gas being emitted through the stack, the hissing of the air pump creating pressure for the brakes as Reggie began working her up to what’s known as “line speed” (the safe speed for the line). Thick black smoke spewed from the locomotive temporarily as she lugged her small load slowly forward, a sign that the firebox wasn’t burning efficiently, but they soon sorted that problem. Reggie loved the sound of trains, real steam trains. Once on the run north he, the engineer and the engine settled into their routine, the men monitoring pressures and watching the signals.
But his mind wondered again as his actions became automatic. Why had those two men needed to know the timing of his departure? Leaving Southampton, entering the countryside after Eastleigh, he took the distinctive, air-smoothed “Spam Can” as they called it, up to seventy miles per hour, all the while eager to see the line of green lights leading into the distance. He shuddered to think what might happen at a red, but no one could make a green light red, right?
Near Farnborough, Police Control was informed from the bullion van of the transfer from Hampshire to Surrey, while Reggie kept the Wadebridge chugging at a good pace, worrying all the time of just what those two men wanted! Near Wimbledon the Surrey police and the Metropolitan Police were alerted of their imminent arrival into Central London. A sense of relief came over Reggie as the train entered the congestion southwest of the great city and he slowed the mighty steam locomotive.
He drove the Wadebridge into Waterloo Station at 3:45AM. The station, although the largest and busiest in England came about by the strange extension of the Nine Elms terminal of the London and Southwest Railway late the in the nineteenth century, and never intended to be a terminus, the plan being to cross the River Thames into central London, but that never played out.
By 1963, long after rebuilding, it had become a place for important arrivals and departures, whether city commuters, holiday makers, Epsom race goers or the armed forces, and had twenty-one platforms and a large, wide concourse under a huge ridge-and-furrow roof. Widely praised for its architecture, the new curved building to the front of the station housed offices and facilities for passengers including a large Georgian style booking hall, but it was quiet that morning.
Reggie led the Wadebridge alongside platform 11, between which and platform 12, lay an indoor ‘street’ upon which mails would be unloaded. """""
Just out of interest at Waterloo I will have two Security Express Commer Walk-thrus waiting for the bullion.
Thank you in advance. Any comments welcome.
Union St, DC
. You always have to have the firebox fully covered.
) I found the proposed extension of Waterloo here: 
)
