Evening folks.
I’ve got a few photos to add relating to freight workings to and from the yard in the last few years of operations...
These have all come from various books on the line that a friend that I’ve got to know recently has passed on to me.
Needless to say none of these are my photos and some of them are screenshots from various books, so thank you to the authors and I’ll apologise in advance for the iffy reproduction quality, but I reckon they’ll be of some interest. They’ve certainly helped me to get an understanding of what was going on during the period I’m particularly interested in - circa 1985 to 1994:
A triple grey Railfreight class 47 shunting wagons into the siding after leaving some other wagons on the main running line.
(I think?) A different class 47 in the same livery also shunting wagons into the siding.
I’m assuming that these are both Tinsley allocated Distribution 47s?
A photo from inside the actual yard showing the rather ‘rural’ unloading methods...
A split headcode Dutch 37 doing some shunting in the early 90s after detaching its train in the station and reassembling its load for the onward journey.
Here’s something that I’m unsure about though..?
Up until the run around loop at Barnstaple was taken out it seems that anything dropped off or picked up at Lapford seemed to have only been done in a northbound direction...
The train would pull in, do some shunting, and then continue north to drop other wagons off in the yard at Barnstaple before heading south again later with whatever was going that way.
I think that this was partly due to the yard arrangements at Lapford, but also due to the fact that most of the freight trains had wagons bound for the very busy (in the mid 1980s) yard at Barnstaple.
However, Barnstaple yard and the run around loop in the station at Barnstaple (Junction) had been removed BEFORE the fertiliser traffic had finished at Lapford which raises some interesting questions about how these trains were accommodated in the last couple of years?
Did they then run around in the loop at Lapford? I’ve been told that this wasn’t necessarily possible, but surely it was the only option available?
The more I look into it the more I learn...
I’m not sure if any of the very helpful contributors to this thread have any answers to that question, but it’s been a very interesting thread none the less and I’d like to give thanks to those that have added to it as it’s been incredibly useful to me.
I leave you with this rather interesting photo of the largest amount of one ton dumpy bags that I’ve ever seen in one place:
This is a view that I hadn’t seen before, looking down the siding towards the station building.
What a fascinating little place it was back then...
