London Banter - View Single Post

Martin Smith · January 20th 07, 04:33 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:47 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), Colin Rosenstiel
wrote:
In article .com,
(Henry) wrote:

martyn dawe wrote:
...
Although there is (well, was 10 years ago) a turntable in the
[W&C] depot, but not big enough for a whole carriage.

What's the point of that, then?
...
The turntable was a for coal wagons when the line had a coal
fired power station, the wagons cam down on a separate lift.

I can just just about believe you might need to turn coal wagons
round, if the coal has to be tipped out of one end... but I can't
believe said power station would need the coal to be delivered
along the Drain!

Have I missed something, or are you winding us up?

Surely just for local heating in the depot? we tend to forget nowadays
just how much infrastructure there was for delivering coal to domestic
and business properties until about 40 years ago or less.

Indeed in the 1960's I worked for BR and spent many an hour copying
out "Wagon number" "Gross wt" "Tare wt" for all the coal wagons that
passed through our full load freight yard at East Croydon. Furthermore
when I meekly suggested we might us a photocopier to transfer the info
I was regarded as some kind of alien