In the era of private-owner wagons the movement of mineral wagons could be complex as coal was moved around the British rail network to wherever it was needed. Different users required (or preferred) different grades of coal, and not all the
coalfields of the United Kingdom produced all the grades. Even areas with large-scale mining activity could also receive coal from other areas of the country, and there was also a large export market – around a quarter of coal mined in Britain was sent abroad. Users ranged from large heavy industry and power generation sites to a single coal merchant selling coal for domestic users in a single rural village. In the major coal mining areas, the large collieries (or companies that owned multiple collieries) would privately own several hundred mineral wagons. In
South Wales, where large quantities of coal were shipped directly to docks such as
Cardiff and
Barry, trains consisting of long rakes of colliery-owned wagons (sometimes even with one train consisting entirely of wagons from a single owner) ran between the coal mines and the docks. Coal mines might also deal directly with large customers buying coal in bulk. While such orders would commonly be shipped from the colliery to the customer in colliery wagons, some users had their own fleets of mineral wagons to collect coal from whichever colliery was supplying. There were also businesses acting as
coal factors of various sizes, buying coal from collieries and selling it to users. Again, some factors maintained their own fleet of mineral wagons to both collect and deliver coal, others received coal in colliery-owned wagons and distributed it in their own and some merely acted as intermediaries, arranging for the shipment to be delivered either in the colliery wagons or with wagons supplied by the customer, the railway or from a wagon hirer. Britain had thousands of coal merchants, all but the largest of which purchased coal from factors and then sold it to the end user which was usually smaller businesses and domestic customers. While large cities may have supported several large coal merchants operating from multiple sites, most were small enterprises serving their immediate local area. Merchants would receive coal in the goods yard of their local railway station. Some merchants rented yard space from the railway to store, sell and distribute coal but others had their premises elsewhere, unloading their coal direct from the wagon to a cart for transport to its final destination. While the collieries and large coal factors could ship hundreds of wagons of coal per day, a local merchant serving a rural village may only receive one wagon per week. Some merchants operated their own wagons, since this avoided fees for using the wagon and meant only paying the railway for the use of the siding while the wagon was occupying it. Smaller retailers usually received coal in wagons owned by the colliery or coal factor, which also avoided wagon charges payable to the railway company. Many of these private 'owner' wagons were actually leased – wagon builders often arranged lease and maintenance deals with customers, and other firms specialised in the lease and hire of wagons. The wagons of even small local merchants could sometimes range widely over the railway system depending on where the owner had sourced his next shipment of coal. Coal was by far the largest single traffic on the British network, with trains of mineral wagons being assembled, moved, split up, reassembled and broken down again as coal moved around the country between the source, the intermediary buyer(s) and the end customer. Mineral wagons fitted with continuous brake gear (which could be controlled by the driver on the locomotive) were virtually unheard of prior to the 1930s. Mineral wagons were therefore classed as 'unfitted', since their only brakes were a handbrake applied and released manually from the trackside. The only
braking system therefore available to mineral trains consisted of the steam brake on the locomotive and the manually applied mechanical brake on the
brake van at the rear. When descending steep gradients the train would be brought to a halt (or slow to a walking pace) and the crew would apply the handbrakes on enough of the wagons to keep the train under control. The train would then have to stop at the bottom of the gradient for these brakes to be released. The guard in the brake van would aim to operate his brake to maintain a slight drag on the train to keep the couplings between the wagons taught, but not so much drag as to cause unnecessary load on the locomotive or risk breaking a coupling. Due to the lack of stopping power, and because coal was a low-value bulk good that did not lose value with time as it was transported, mineral trains travelled at low speeds – rarely more than and often significantly less. The basic design of the wagons, with two axles and a short fixed wheelbase plus the widespread use of wheel bearings lubricated by grease or tallow in the pre-1914 era, also discouraged travel at higher speeds. When smaller numbers of mineral wagons were required to travel to a location, they would often be added (with a brake van) to the tail of a freight train consisting of general goods wagons fitted with a continuous brake. The extra braking power and control allowed the train to travel at up to . In the 1930s, the LNER began fitting a small portion of its steel-bodied wagons with vacuum brakes, so that a small number of these could be marshalled at the front of long trains of otherwise unfitted mineral wagons to increase the braking abilities and allow slightly faster running speeds. ) empty wagon service, almost certainly destined for Toton in Nottinghamshire. Ex LMS Fowler 0-6-0 4F 44458 passing Water Orton Station Junction and on to the main lines to Kingsbury with a train of empty 16T mineral wagons In BR days, there were unfitted mineral trains run at express freight speed, locally known as "the Annesley Cutters" or "Windcutters", exclusively running on the ex-GC line. These ran from Annesley, a collection yard for the collieries of
Nottinghamshire served by the ex
Great Central Railway, to
Woodford Halse and then onwards to major destinations across southern England. These trains have been recreated on the preserved Great Central Railway, using over 30 of these wagons purchased in 1992 by readers of
Steam Railway magazine. Whilst there were many equivalent empty wagon trains run by the Midland/ LMS/ BR LM Region, they were never run at express speeds, nor did they attract any nickname such as Windcutters.
Withdrawal Mineral wagons were phased out by BR in the 1970s, following reduction in demand for household coal and the development of
merry-go-round trains, which used much larger (and braked)
hopper wagons. Two batches of 16-ton wagons were bought by
CC Crump in 1971, hired to
ICI in
Runcorn for the transport of
soda ash, and subsequently scrapped in 1979. The rusty BR survivors were transferred to Departmental use, under TOPS codes ZHO (unfitted) and ZHV (vacuum braked). Used by
civil engineers for general works, the greater weight of stone necessitated holes being cut in the wagon sides to avoid over-loading. According to TOPS records, 3,600 ZHVs were in use by 1987, 26 in 1992, and 4 by 1999. == See also ==