Speedlink: early 90's question

[Stokestation12]

Hi all,

Hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas.

I have a question about speedlink formations.
I have a load of speedlink rolling Stock and I was wondering what configurations/rakes to go with that would be accurate. My layout is going to be early 90s, just before speedlink died off.

I have the following:
9 speedlink haa hoppers
10 speedlink steel carriers
8 HEA hoppers
5 speedlink ferry vans
6 speedlink vda box vans
1 speedlink guards van

Would the mixed livery hea hoppers have also been included in rakes of speedlink hoppers or would they be separate. Wasn't sure if a rake of mixed haa and hea hoppers would be accurate.

Would there have been much mixing of speedlink hoppers with non-coal wagons, such as the box vans or steel carriers? Or would it just be coal wagons only for the merry go round?


Thank you all!!

[Bigmet]

Simple enough, 'MGR' coal traffic was completely separate from speedlink freight. Even the locos! For MGR operation sets of the hopper wagons hauled by locos with dedicated low speed control gear for the load and unload operations were required, and they ran on fixed circuits, mine to power station.

Out on the rail network, speedlink trains made up of any of their vehicles, dependent on the freight loads. A brake van would be a rare sight at the end of speedlink operation, the guard usually riding in the rear cab once all freight was continuously braked.

[stuartp]

Agreed, no HAAs in Speedlink services* and the brake van would only be used with certain categories of dangerous goods, or if there was a propelling movement en route and those were vanishingly rare.

*Not sure how HAAs were moved to and from wagon repair shops, that might be an excuse to include one or two but I don't ever remember seeing that.

[Stokestation12]

Right....I think I've misremembered my hoppers!!

So this, isn't speedlink?

[Lofty]

Right....I think I've misremembered my hoppers!!

So this, isn't speedlink?

As far as I know HAA hoppers did appear in Speedlink livery, but as already stated they were dedicated to merry-go-round workings.

[stuartp]

Speedlink was the air-braked wagonload distribution network operating from 1977 onwards, Speedlink services carried traffic to and from several different customers but on a much restricted network compared to the old steam age wagonload operation.

HAA merry-go-round hoppers were part of the trainload operation which operated block trains of a single consignment for a single customer, eg coal from pit to power station. The red 'Railfreight' livery was common to both, previously both had been brown.

It got (a bit) clearer on Sectorisation in the 1980s when the various freight sectors and subsectors got their own branding, but Speedlink was operating before that. It was wound up in the early 1990s in the run up to privatisation (it never made a profit but hung on in the hope of revived Channel Tunnel freight traffic) but reappeared on and off under a couple of names eventually ending up as EWS's 'Enterprise' service.

[Bigmet]

...Not sure how HAAs were moved to and from wagon repair shops, that might be an excuse to include one or two but I don't ever remember seeing that.

When I was last at the Shildon site of the rail museum, there was quite a lot of information about the construction, maintenance and upgrades of the HAA vehicles. If I recall correctly the maintenance inspections were on the MGR routes, ahead of the loading points, with any requiring works attention dispatched from there to Shildon. Very much a dedicated closed loop system as described.

[stuartp]

That would make sense, thanks.