Railway Containers - why did Van traffic persist ?

[drmditch]

I am currently reading a quite interesting and well written book by Simon Bradley 'The Railways, Nation, Network and People'. He does make a couple (that I have found so far) technical errors. One is about NER electrification, but the other is reporting containerisation as only happening with modern ISO Shipping containers.

So, seeing as I am babout to build some more containers, I thought it might be interesting to start a new thread.

1. Why did not the Big 4 attempt to replace more of their van traffic with containers?
2. Why did customers not see the advantage of containers?
3. Why did the same kind of leasing schemes used for modern container traffic not get established in the 1920's/30s?
(after all, the concept of 'thirling' wagons for particular companies traffics had been operational in Scotland since the 19th century.)

Now I must go and finish off an LMS fitted 12 ton van!

[65447]

1. Why did not the Big 4 attempt to replace more of their van traffic with containers?
2. Why did customers not see the advantage of containers?
3. Why did the same kind of leasing schemes used for modern container traffic not get established in the 1920's/30s?
(after all, the concept of 'thirling' wagons for particular companies traffics had been operational in Scotland since the 19th century.)

Answer 1 - quite simply the railways were 'common carriers' and had to take any traffic between any points on the network - containers only worked for 'full loads' between places that could handle them (exactly as with ISO containers today);

Answer 2 - customers did, that's why large numbers of containers were built and new types developed for special purposes, additionally, marketing of them was quite intense. The first (of that generation of) containers were only introduced after Grouping by the LMS and then in 1928 by the LNER. Remember too the depressive economic effects of the coal miners and national strikes that lasted into the mid-1930s - in fact that adoption of use of containers was counter-intuitive to the decline in general traffic volumes during this period;

Answer 3 - because that is not quite how the railways worked at that time - think of all the costs associated with empty mineral wagons being returned to pitheads - but containers were allocated to certain traffics and could be branded with the name of the hirer, so not that much different in concept.

[drmditch]

Thank you. I'm not sure that modern container traffic relies on 'full loads'. I understand that for sea transport, the weight of containers is expected to 'average out'.

Could not the same principle have been used by the railways? The deal with the customer would have been - 'You pay for the transport of the container, loaded (or not) up to a certain weight'. After all, a large number of fish vans traveled with only small consignments in them. That's already a lot of empty space (and tare weight) being hauled up the ECML!

[Postman Prat]

Shipping companies do carry Less than Container Loads (LCL). The point being that the containers are loaded with a number of small consignments at one depot in the place of origin and unloaded fully at another at the destination point. In between the container is treated as a Full Container Load (FCL).
I've never heard of the weight 'averaging out', probably because I've never needed to know. The only interest I had was 'is the cargo, container and lorry weight combined road-legal'. For example in my last shipping job we used to import solid timber exterior doors (among other things). Quite often we would have 2 full 20ft containers to one delivery point where the entire load could be got into a 40ft box but it would be overweight by a very large amount.
Hope this helps

[65447]

Thank you. I'm not sure that modern container traffic relies on 'full loads'. I understand that for sea transport, the weight of containers is expected to 'average out'.

Could not the same principle have been used by the railways? The deal with the customer would have been - 'You pay for the transport of the container, loaded (or not) up to a certain weight'. After all, a large number of fish vans traveled with only small consignments in them. That's already a lot of empty space (and tare weight) being hauled up the ECML!

Perhaps 'single source' loads would be a better description? Regardless of quantity the shipment would be loaded at point 'A' off the railway network or at a rail-served location, transported by road to railhead if necessary, carried by train to wherever, transported to destination by road if necessary and offloaded at point 'B'. Central Wagon Control (on the LNER) was initially responsible for the distribution, use and return of containers and no doubt would actively seek 'backloads' as road hauliers have done for years, except that a container never had to return to the originating depot but could carry a load to point 'C' then 'D' and so on. Some traffic was circular in that e.g. the product packaging was shipped in and the same containers then used to transport the finished product. Those railway companies that made use of containers also co-operated on facilitating inter-company services.

Don't forget that those containers were not stackable and had to be suitable for lifting by local yard crane and transported on flat-bed trailers hauled by not very powerful tractor units. In the 1930s the Railway Clearing House took charge of standardising designs to suit the traffics of the time. It is nonsensical to try and apply today's container shipment systems components and business models to a very different state of affairs some 70 to 90 years ago.

You can speculate as much as you like but you cannot change history.

[Hatfield Shed]

[...Don't forget that those containers were not stackable and had to be suitable for lifting by local yard crane and transported on flat-bed trailers hauled by not very powerful tractor units...

I feel that's a very germane point, combined with the generally poor state of the UK road network at the time. For not a few potential customers of containerised transport, these factors may have made adoption of this system anything from inadvisable to impossible.

Somewhere I have seen a picture of one of the B type containers on a single horse dray, with about 2 feet of the container off the end of the dray bed. The drayman does not look impressed...

[drmditch]

As 65447 says above, the lack of specialist craneage must have been a major disincentive.

When looking at pictures of containers being swung about on yard or mobile cranes, I keep wondering how and by whom the slings were attached?
I haven't seen any information about LNER containers having steps or handrails.

However (according to Mr Tatlow Vol4b) some of the steel containers to Type BSS did have strengthened sides and bearers and guides to accommodate stacking. I wonder what cranes they used for that?

[john coffin]

Another important thing to consider is that there was not the same amount of mass production that we see now, until after WW1, so the loads in these containers were much less constant than now. Also as we know many stations were up to 3 miles from the local village/town so the journeys had to be planned.

After WW1 of course a lot of ex ROD lorries became available quite cheaply, but they were not that reliable, so could not go very far on regular journeys on our then pretty rubbish roads. Of course the other thing was then that lorries often had quite high floors which railway cranes were not actually designed to reach. Also a number of the ex ROD lorries had canvas rooves which made loading of these containers difficult.

What the railways did not think to do was have another depot in each location for removing the goods and making it easier for the recipient for handle.
If you have been to Beamish, you will know how low many of the goods yards around the shops are, and rather like Arkwrights back yard, stuffed full of their existing stock.

Certainly feel for the cart driver and horse.

Paul

[drmditch]

You can speculate as much as you like but you cannot change history.

Well, you are a brave man to say that history cannot be changed! After all, that is what Historians are for, and not just in the revisionist,'untold story' sensationalist stuff of which we see too much on television.

This is exactly why it is interesting to discuss such things, to assess what actually happened and what source material survives, and to speculate why things were not different. I am afraid I have launched several threads in this forum for exactly these purposes!

As you say, when discussing railways, it is too easy to forget the overall technical and economic position.

However, back to containers and wagon loads. I wonder whether the difficulty (relative to more recent times) of communicating loadings, destinations, end customers,and load descriptions might have imposed more restrictions than we would now expect?

Presumably, the composition, content, and varied destinations even for a fast-fitted freight would be unlikely to be known at its destination before the actual train arrived. Perhaps the advent of the telephone and improved control arrangements in the 1920s amd 30s did help, but it would take a while for the effect of these to work through the entire chain of supplier, railway agent,loading facility, train planning, etc etc.

I understand that the LNER administrative system was complex. I think I have read somewhere that Invoices had to have seven copies. Then all the waybills etc etc. Then what would happen if a label fell of a wagon, or got singed by the flames from a 'hot box'?

[65447]

You can speculate as much as you like but you cannot change history.

Well, you are a brave man to say that history cannot be changed! After all, that is what Historians are for, and not just in the revisionist,'untold story' sensationalist stuff of which we see too much on television.

Of course history cannot be changed but there are those who seek to modify the perception, record or interpretation of it!

In the 1960s my father was working in Commercial at GN House, King's Cross, under Gerry Fiennes. I was a trainee in the Chief Civil Engineer's. Communication was still by typed correspondence (carbon copies for file), telex or by pre-printed forms. The rotary dial telephones (the few that there were) were connected to manual switchboards and calls had to be put through the railway's own network internally or via the railway's own network to the nearest point for external calls, to reduce costs.

My father joined the LNER on demobilisation and had never learnt to drive. After Beeching had proposed terminating the common carrier requirements, Commercial had to drum up bulk loads and my father was taught to drive at the railway driving school so that he could go out on the road as a sales rep - his potential customers included London Brick Co and Nabisco amongst others. I remember him coming home late and hand writing up his reports of calls and preparing costings for sales proposals without the aid of a calculator.

At that time the old type containers were still in use as were van trains for parcels and so on. At King's Cross these were unloaded onto platform 1, below the eastern range of offices (York Way) where the Chief Civil Engineer's offices were located. Walking past a train of vans being unloaded, anyone would see packages come flying out through the van doors to land on the platform or barrows without any regard for the contents. I suspect that that disdainful attitude was as much responsible for the demise of van traffic as Beeching was, and of course it coincided with substantial government investment in the national road and new motorway network.

Later on my father was promoted to management and was given the task of costing the new freightliner service. I remember him spending hours at home in the evenings playing around with the standard tariffs and trying to devise a whole new costing and charging model that had no real precedent.

So as you might now realise, it was not the LNER but BR in the late 1960s and early 1970s that had to face up to the new reality that you posit.

[65447]

When looking at pictures of containers being swung about on yard or mobile cranes, I keep wondering how and by whom the slings were attached?
I haven't seen any information about LNER containers having steps or handrails.

You're thinking in terms of modern-day health and safety - don't assume! The height of the sides of the Type 'A' and 'B' containers was a tad over 6' to the sling loops, so within reach of a person stood alongside. No doubt there were short sections of ladder kept handy in goods yards, not least for climbing up into vans and wagons from rail level.

[john coffin]

Ladders were often used to clear out Coal Wagons in many yards which did not have even hand cranes.

As for the containers, I do not think the management of either the GNR, or the LNER really understood enough about the product they had got
and although they were both very good at creating markets for a single product, like bananas, orchids etc even the Economiser, the container business was much more complex, and frankly they were unable to afford the proper infrastructure to take advantage of its potential.

Were the railways a modern invention, rather like motor cycles, and motor racing, they would not be allowed,but they were so we can now at
a distance enjoy the impact they had and have on our life.

Paul

[drmditch]

You're thinking in terms of modern-day health and safety - don't assume! The height of the sides of the Type 'A' and 'B' containers was a tad over 6' to the sling loops, so within reach of a person stood alongside. No doubt there were short sections of ladder kept handy in goods yards, not least for climbing up into vans and wagons from rail level.

Have sent you a PM.

Thank you for you for interesting notes, but are you not assuming an assumption on my part? One of the major reasons for studying/teaching history is to try to get people to avoid projecting what they think are current attitudes,opinions and behaviour into what they think is the past.

Having spent some time working with slings and cranes and heavy items, I don't think the basic mechanics have changed in 70 years or so.
Heavy objects swinging were and are extremely dangerous; and dangerous places though railway yards were people have always tried to find ways of doing things which are as safe as possible. (Unless, of course they are tempted to take short-cuts, either for personal reasons or because of financial inducement. There are always accidents of course, whether owing to inattention, accident, or equipment failures.

Also, if I may be so bold, would not the height to the top of a container on a railway wagon/flat have been about 10' from rail level?

Yes,one would think that there must have been ladders available. Curiously however I haven't noticed them in photographs. I will have to scan my library again!

[drmditch]

After checking through (some of) my library I haven't found many pictures of containers being loaded/unloaded.

The NRM collection does have a small number.

Undated, LNER

Attributed as St Pancras, 1933, LMS

(I would be interesting to know how the man on top of the container got there! There is only one way that I can see. Perhaps he was an ex-seaman!)

Attributed as Stoke-on-Trent, 1936, LMS

(Perhaps the man in the trilby hat is supervising - for the photograph at least!)

Attributed as Switzerland, 1942, LNER

So, obviously some furniture removal containers did make it across the sea. I wonder if it traveled all the way on the same railway vehicle, (and if so what type - not one which I have discovered), or was loaded/unloaded at the dockside. The caption says it was stranded as a result of the war. There has to be a good story there!

Since there are many pictures of fast fitted freights going north on the ECML with several loaded container wagons, then there had to be some container handling facilities at the London end. The methods illustrated above would be very slow. Were there overhead cranes in any of the goods yards?
The only ones I've seen are ex-Midland or ex-LYR.

I still have an outstanding project to make some steel containers, but I keep getting distracted!

[Dave]

I have a drawing of a Type B container, a note says -
This writing is for containers built after April 1st 1935 which are not to be used for international traffic.

It would seem containers were expected at one time to travel abroad.