Traffic Movements on the Stour Valley, 1961-1962 (Part 2)

My original notes appear in italics with minimal editing, followed by my recent comments attempting clarification. In some posts where a number of movements are only briefly described, numbers in brackets have been added to assist in locating entries.

There's an introduction to Watery Lane (with a signalling diagram) here.

Watery Lane Tuesday 17th October 1961

At 2.23 p.m. T347 is offered from Tipton. Great fun! The up express is right behind him. What nit loosed this joker onto the main line? T258 was already in the Up Loop and 347 was far too long to be sent in behind 258. T347 arrived with 'Western Star' and put off 18 wagons on the front road of the down sidings. He then drew the remainder of his train forward over points 30 and reversed it through the crossover onto the down main. By the time the whole train was across, the brake van was almost at Tipton's crossing gates. Since T347 had a van to put off at Dudleyport, we despatched the train 'bang road' on the Down Loop to Dudleyport. [Wrong direction movements were authorised on the Down Loop to Dudleyport]. The express was stopped at Bloomfield Junction only for about 4 minutes. Pretty swift working! Cheers for 'The Team'.

Watery Lane Saturday 4th November 1961

T200 goes up the loop with the irate guard, Billy Cook, complaining 'We're right away Albion!' The loop points are put back to allow us to pull off for the following express 1G20. The signal lever comes half-way over (dropping the Block Stick) but the signal detectors hold the lever back. [The Block Stick Relay ensures 'one needle, one pull' to minimise the risk of a confused signalman ending up with 'two in a section'. The signal detectors at the points prevent the signal from being cleared if the point blades or facing point lock are not fitting-up accurately]. Oh well, display a green flag, the Black 5 chugs past. When the train has cleared the section, we attempt to free the signal, obtaining a fresh 'Line Clear' from Dudleyport so that we can test the signal. But, to no avail. The whole thing is failed and flag working was instituted on the Up until 8.00 p.m.

Traffic Movements on the Stour Valley, 1961-1962 (Part 1)

My initial interest in railways developed around signalling and traffic movements, as described in Visiting Signalboxes. I spent a lot of time on the Stour Valley Line, which still connects Birmingham and Wolverhampton and in this series of articles I'll try to reconstruct some of the events I witnessed 50 years ago.

Working Time Tables of the period are a valuable starting point but, at present, I've not sourced this period. There's some general information in a post on Railway Working Time Tables.

Signal box Train Register books can give a mass of information. When I visited signal boxes, I had my own Train Register book in which I copied the details from the official Train Register each time I was unofficially working the box. The 'Remarks' column would have explanatory notes to clarify what was going on. Although I've now located my train register book for a later period, I've not found the one for 1961.

Encouraged by the interest of some of my friends in this period, I have found various notes from the period which I called my 'Occurrence Book' in which I tried to write more detailed explanations of the movements. The notes frequently refer to times in the Train Register (which we don't have) so interpreting these notes is not straightforward but I hope these articles will be of some help.

So, all I have to do now is transcribe the notebook and write an intelligible description of the movements. Watch this space.

You can find all my posts describing Traffic Movements on the Stour Valley and South Stafford Line in the steam era here.

[Link to all 'Traffic Movements' posts added 10-Nov-2015]