As a junior fireman in the 50’s,in the days of steam,I worked in all these area,shunting wagons etc.I remember the first shunting diesel arriving at STJ as this made me redundant.I served a year as an adult cleaner,eight pounds a week,and then I left.I know the driver discussing the badge design with his friend,he lived in Portskewette.My uncle,my cousin and my brother were drivers,another uncle used to light the engine fires and me and my other brother were fireman.Happy Days.
I lived about 2 miles from this in Undy when I was a child. When my parent's house was built they had an extra window put in the side so Dad could watch the railway. I have fond memories of of Severn Tunnel Junction. Thanks for posting and all involved.
Just seen this. I used to be a shunter at cockshute shunting yard, Stoke. It shut in the early 80s. 30 odd sidings and points box to navigate them. They were the best years, using shunting pole, working the box, or chasing wagons with a brake stick. Every colleague was a character. Different place i know. But thanks for bringing back fantastic memories.
Have just found this wonderful video. I spent many an hour in the early to mid 60s trainspotting at STJ and was always fascinated by the marshalling yard. Thanks for such evocative scenes.
I think I enjoyed reading the comments as much as I did this fantastic video. Amazing to think that these marshalling yards were once the last word in efficiency and modernity. Really enjoyed the narration of Mr. James as well. Thanks for the upload, I've subscribed on the back of this! Best wishes
Superb footage of the old yard at Severn Tunnel Jcn. It is great for anyone wishing to model the demise of BR before the split and privatisation occurred as it shows load of prototype examples that can be modelled using modern RTR examples from Bachmann etc. as a base.
Thanks fomr sharing, my Dad worked there, then moved on to Newport when it closed, sad. The lines that are left will soon be electric, so ugly pilons and cables everywhere. Never the same.
Remember doing a over nighter here in the mid 80's with the lads from the Leicester railway wagon society ,next morning we were given free range of the yard and a fry up !!!!
Good archive, thanks for sharing, spent many a shift working to the tunnel, even the odd shandy in the railway club if we were delayed. I remember the first we new about the Tunnel closing was when it was announced on news at ten, such a waste.
I’m only 26 years old and I am amazed at this what used to happen back then which can’t be done now and the relief line today used to be a siding yard then the car park today used to be the yard amazing thanks for showing this very interesting indeed
Very much the end of an era, must have been an anachronism at the time these videos were shot. All so different now of course, reduced to the four running lines. Lovely film.
Great video. Pity it had to close down. We visited the railway station there in about 1993, hoping that the ridings were all still there but of course there were only a few just left and we stood on the bridge I remember.
Really excellent, great that you took the time to film this. I assume on VHS? It is still pretty good quality too. I spent some time on the road bridge between the depot and the station in the early '80s, it was such a busy spot and like many people I was shocked when I heard it was closing. Also, way back in my spotting days of the early 1970's, this was the only place I saw "Falcon" from a moving train.
I remember going up to Undy Hump on nights to watch the shunters at work. Some nights they were so busy, they used to eat their sandwiches whilst riding on the wagons! Where did it all go?
As I recall it was a locally run facility so the lady serving the tea could charge what she liked but probably less than an "official" café. It was on the up platform and clearly is long gone.
Hello Mr. Ray. Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year. Many thanks for this interesting information. I am from India, what is the reason that many of the sidings in great Britain have closed down over the years, despite handling varied mix of cargo, with high rail coefficient. Thanks
That fly shunting is awesome. Love seeing the cars rolling into the yard and stopping with a crash. My question is, once the cars roll into the rest of the cars, does a workman have to come and manually couple them, or do they have a way of coupling automatically?
Those wagons would be coupled up manually. At 5:20 you can see the shunter reaching in with his pole to hook the chains on as the brake van and wagon are just about to meet. I guess they would also have to go back and connect up all the air brake pipes once the train was complete.
new severn bridge to be excact, but ye your right, still rubbish. lol. ace video, as a Bristol boy, we would save up for a 33 bash to severn tunnel on a Saturday morning. back in the days of pilning seing more trains aswell.
Housing estate on what was the upside sidings and offices. We still have an office on that side for the Operations Managers and a siding for the emergency gators for the Severn Tunnel. Couple of small buildings remain on the up side that now form part of the OLE depot and there some maintenance storage but nothing like you see in the video. On the down side there is nothing, all back to nature, the spare land was sold off and the boundary fence brought in closer to the Down Relief
No, it was because the Mines closed, without the coal trains to marshall it lost its purpose, this yard was no use to handle pallet and container freight that is the majority of trucked freight.
A great film and commentary. We can't fail to be angry at yet another of Thatcher's economic and social crimes. Money counts more than people and their livelihoods. At the same time as this closure in East Germany for example there was full employment and a properly functioning railway system still using mainline steam.
Nothing to do with Thatcher, a change in railfreight was the cause. Bulk loads were the way forward as speedlink made massive losses, that we, the tax payer had to pay for . It was tried again in 1997 and failed again . Coal was in decline in the 1960's I worked in a few rail yards and depots and saw the decline first hand . We had 120 locos based at Canton, same amount as the whole UK now . The class 66 have done nearly a million miles each since new. 23 years old. I worked at Radyr, STJ , Canton, Tidal sidings, AD ,East Usk, and Margam over 47 years .
No, no, no! Health and safety was always a consideration by the people doing the jobs. And, knowing where the danger was, they would act accordingly. When they had become expert at their profession they would do things with their acquired extra efficiency so easily that it might LOOK unsafe to a lay person. The shunters' art is a good example. I think a lot of younger people believe that when older ones complain about 'health and safety', they're talking about the things themselves, i.e. about health, and about safety; and implying that those things are not very important. That's not at all what they're saying. They're using those words as short for 'The Health and Safety Executive', the government body that began to interfere, especially at the end of the 1900s, and to this day, with good natural health and safety practices, producing in the process a lot of very stupid and wasteful regulation, that notoriously makes workers' lives unnecessarily difficult and frustrating.
@@MSmifffy Thanks Mark - and well said. I'll concede one thing to you: the new legislation has forced some - what shall I say - 'rogue' employers to behave better. There are always some who want to get away with shortcuts, to add to the profit margin, and some of them will browbeat employees to go along with less safe practices. This didn't matter so much when I was young when you could just tell them to sod off and then go and get another job fairly easily: it was your own fault if you stayed. Now of course it's much more difficult to get a new job. May I just add that I was born in 1949 and have had lots and lots of jobs, and seen the different ways by which the matter of safety can be approached. What I've learned from it all is that the best results come from an individual's own intelligent appraisal of risks, and their clear understanding of what practices are necessary to ensure safety - rather than unthinking obedience of 'one-size-fits-all' [which they don't] rules imposed by authority. Sensible training is of course always part of it; that tended to be done informally, and as required, not by special courses, as nowadays. I don't know your age, or even if that's relevant to anything discussed here; but many of my generation have seen over the years a steady movement away from a society comprising many sturdy independent characterful individuals to a much greyer world of unprotesting yes-men, afraid to voice any opinion, and it's under this rubric that we see these new 'Health and Safety' attitudes - as just one sub-division of the general dumbing-down of life. We used to be a nation of people who were clever AND had 'common-sense'; now we're merely clever. That's enough from me! No doubt you won't agree with much, but my ideas might resonate with other folk, and be of use in that way. Best Wishes.
An unpowered wagon cannot proppel itself it can only be proppelled. The typical BR brakevan is a ballast plough brake van of TOPS code ZUV and would only be used on ballast trains. The actual brake vans were of TOPS cide CAO/CAP/CAQ/CAR/CAV - the brake van seen was of TOPS code CAR and could be found on any freight train that did not have sufficient wagons connected to the locomotives automatic brake system, passed through train crew operated level crossings, or had a proppelling movement longer than a short shunt in reverse. The engineers had their own brake vans of TOPS codes ZTO/ZTP/ZTQ/ZTR for all other engineering trains requiring a brake van. Only in the last ten or so years have brake vans finally disappeared from the national network.a
disgusting absolutly disgusting i do not like large diesels small and medium only but that aside i think killing any yard /station/coaling facility/locomotive depot steam that is is an abonimation. and it should be made law that it should not be allowed to happern.
i couldnt agree more those who say steam depots and other steam related buildings /track and other steam related facilities that are to be destroyed should be put away at the magisties pleasure for life and THAT MEANS LIFE STEAM RULES THE RAILWAYS and nought will change that. and i mean nothing .
Why are you replying to your own comment? You're clearly deluded, the railway exists not for the benefit of anoraks, but to move people and goods about. If a yard is not needed then it shouldn't be kept open for no reason. Anyway, steam traction is outdated.
oh thats right steam is outdated thats why people are rebuilding new steam locos like tornado/beachyhead /a patriott/a grange /an ivatt262 ect get ya facts right sonny steam will never be out dated because it rules the rails long live steam .
As a junior fireman in the 50’s,in the days of steam,I worked in all these area,shunting wagons etc.I remember the first shunting diesel arriving at STJ as this made me redundant.I served a year as an adult cleaner,eight pounds a week,and then I left.I know the driver discussing the badge design with his friend,he lived in Portskewette.My uncle,my cousin and my brother were drivers,another uncle used to light the engine fires and me and my other brother were fireman.Happy Days.
Nothing more relaxing than watching a spot of shunting. Nice film.
I lived about 2 miles from this in Undy when I was a child. When my parent's house was built they had an extra window put in the side so Dad could watch the railway. I have fond memories of of Severn Tunnel Junction. Thanks for posting and all involved.
Just seen this.
I used to be a shunter at cockshute shunting yard, Stoke.
It shut in the early 80s.
30 odd sidings and points box to navigate them.
They were the best years, using shunting pole, working the box, or chasing wagons with a brake stick.
Every colleague was a character.
Different place i know.
But thanks for bringing back fantastic memories.
Have just found this wonderful video. I spent many an hour in the early to mid 60s trainspotting at STJ and was always fascinated by the marshalling yard. Thanks for such evocative scenes.
I think I enjoyed reading the comments as much as I did this fantastic video. Amazing to think that these marshalling yards were once the last word in efficiency and modernity. Really enjoyed the narration of Mr. James as well. Thanks for the upload, I've subscribed on the back of this! Best wishes
well done you for recording it. I can't imagine how anyone could dislike this video, many thanks.
Great video - STJ was an occassional Sunday afternoon visit in the early 80s. Always good for a bit of a mix.
Lovely video, thanks for sharing.
Wonderful insight into a now lost but not forgotten yard from the Speedlink era!
37901 what a beast. Great days back then. All but a memory now. 👍😎
A fascinating video. Great to see it as it used to be. M4 yet to be built.
Superb footage of the old yard at Severn Tunnel Jcn. It is great for anyone wishing to model the demise of BR before the split and privatisation occurred as it shows load of prototype examples that can be modelled using modern RTR examples from Bachmann etc. as a base.
Thanks fomr sharing, my Dad worked there, then moved on to Newport when it closed, sad. The lines that are left will soon be electric, so ugly pilons and cables everywhere. Never the same.
Remember doing a over nighter here in the mid 80's with the lads from the Leicester railway wagon society ,next morning we were given free range of the yard and a fry up !!!!
Absolutely stunning Ray, been behind in my viewings and still trying to catch up...Best wishes...Bob
Good archive, thanks for sharing, spent many a shift working to the tunnel, even the odd shandy in the railway club if we were delayed. I remember the first we new about the Tunnel closing was when it was announced on news at ten, such a waste.
I’m only 26 years old and I am amazed at this what used to happen back then which can’t be done now and the relief line today used to be a siding yard then the car park today used to be the yard amazing thanks for showing this very interesting indeed
KeoShiareev
Amazing! Looks so different now. My grandad worked there as a shunter in the early 80s I have many photos of the yard.....Jordan
Superb film of a forgotten age! We don’t have many yards now.
I remember watching the hump shunting there in 1986.......so busy, the shutters ate their lunch on the go!
Working on a renewal this weekend (in a tunnel) side tippers and auto Ballesters with 66552 Maltby Raider named after the colliery now gone
Lived in the village (Rogiet) in the 70s. Fond memories watching this.
I last went there in 1966, and enjoyed a cup of tea in the station café!
How much would it have been to get a cup of tea in a train station in 1966?
Probably 6d, but I'm too old to remember :)
Stan Patterson ul
KeoShiareev
awsome, i was once "stuck" on the platform .... there for 4 hrs... going back to Portsmouth from Cardiff...
Very much the end of an era, must have been an anachronism at the time these videos were shot. All so different now of course, reduced to the four running lines. Lovely film.
Great video. Pity it had to close down. We visited the railway station there in about 1993, hoping that the ridings were all still there but of course there were only a few just left and we stood on the bridge I remember.
Really excellent, great that you took the time to film this. I assume on VHS? It is still pretty good quality too. I spent some time on the road bridge between the depot and the station in the early '80s, it was such a busy spot and like many people I was shocked when I heard it was closing. Also, way back in my spotting days of the early 1970's, this was the only place I saw "Falcon" from a moving train.
All those cars outside the office block are classics today. Was that a blue Morris Marina estate?
Sad to think 400 jobs went there after closure.
Loved watching the fly shunting.
I remember going up to Undy Hump on nights to watch the shunters at work. Some nights they were so busy, they used to eat their sandwiches whilst riding on the wagons! Where did it all go?
As I recall it was a locally run facility so the lady serving the tea could charge what she liked but probably less than an "official" café. It was on the up platform and clearly is long gone.
Such fab video. :)
03141 & 03144 were resident here ! was my shunter
Hello Mr. Ray. Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year. Many thanks for this interesting information. I am from India, what is the reason that many of the sidings in great Britain have closed down over the years, despite handling varied mix of cargo, with high rail coefficient. Thanks
A very sad sight,,as witnessed some twenty years previously with the Beeching axe
Remember to upload in grainy 240p. We all love that out of focus look, don't we boys and girls?
That fly shunting is awesome. Love seeing the cars rolling into the yard and stopping with a crash. My question is, once the cars roll into the rest of the cars, does a workman have to come and manually couple them, or do they have a way of coupling automatically?
Those wagons would be coupled up manually. At 5:20 you can see the shunter reaching in with his pole to hook the chains on as the brake van and wagon are just about to meet. I guess they would also have to go back and connect up all the air brake pipes once the train was complete.
I love a look at a good old marshallin yard me
Screw couplings or hook over no screw in middle?
wow amazing.. whats there now .. don't tell me .. houses..!?
Judging by Google Maps, which isn't known for it's up-to-dateness I know, it's a place people go to fly tip...
new severn bridge to be excact, but ye your right, still rubbish. lol. ace video, as a Bristol boy, we would save up for a 33 bash to severn tunnel on a Saturday morning. back in the days of pilning seing more trains aswell.
Housing estate on what was the upside sidings and offices. We still have an office on that side for the Operations Managers and a siding for the emergency gators for the Severn Tunnel. Couple of small buildings remain on the up side that now form part of the OLE depot and there some maintenance storage but nothing like you see in the video.
On the down side there is nothing, all back to nature, the spare land was sold off and the boundary fence brought in closer to the Down Relief
What would health and safety say about vehicles moving under their own devices?
Are they allowed to loose/fly shunt like this now?
Was this filmed in one day (STJ), if so what sort of date ? I noticed that nearly all the Halls/Manors were sans name plates !
What a shame this has all gone ....
Its a shame the yards got shut down
Such missed memories
So Sad ...I worked STJ 1960-4 ...Signal Box & Fireman,Great memories
!!!! ......
So sad..........😞
This is why are roads are full.......🙄
No, it was because the Mines closed, without the coal trains to marshall it lost its purpose, this yard was no use to handle pallet and container freight that is the majority of trucked freight.
@@grahamariss2111 Magaret Thatcher....
the poor people who lost there employment back in 87 i hope they found work elsewhere.
Timothy Smith some went to Bristol Bath Road, Newport High Street, Gloucester Horton Road, Cardiff Canton, Barry, Margam and Worcester
A great but sad video, bloody tories
A great film and commentary. We can't fail to be angry at yet another of Thatcher's economic and social crimes. Money counts more than people and their livelihoods. At the same time as this closure in East Germany for example there was full employment and a properly functioning railway system still using mainline steam.
Nothing to do with Thatcher, a change in railfreight was the cause. Bulk loads were the way forward as speedlink made massive losses, that we, the tax payer had to pay for . It was tried again in 1997 and failed again . Coal was in decline in the 1960's I worked in a few rail yards and depots and saw the decline first hand . We had 120 locos based at Canton, same amount as the whole UK now . The class 66 have done nearly a million miles each since new. 23 years old. I worked at Radyr, STJ , Canton, Tidal sidings, AD ,East Usk, and Margam over 47 years .
teds rogers on the ground frame
Hit ‘em up
Closed by the Thatcher Gov
should have reverted it back to steam might have took some doing but not impossible .
not impossible - ridiculous and pointless !
Stupid wanker comment...are you for real ?
Got to love the fly shunting - health and safety not a consideration back then.
No, no, no! Health and safety was always a consideration by the people doing the jobs. And, knowing where the danger was, they would act accordingly. When they had become expert at their profession they would do things with their acquired extra efficiency so easily that it might LOOK unsafe to a lay person. The shunters' art is a good example.
I think a lot of younger people believe that when older ones complain about 'health and safety', they're talking about the things themselves, i.e. about health, and about safety; and implying that those things are not very important. That's not at all what they're saying. They're using those words as short for 'The Health and Safety Executive', the government body that began to interfere, especially at the end of the 1900s, and to this day, with good natural health and safety practices, producing in the process a lot of very stupid and wasteful regulation, that notoriously makes workers' lives unnecessarily difficult and frustrating.
@@robwilde855 I don't agree with any of that, but that's cool, we're all entitled to our opinions 😃
@@MSmifffy Thanks Mark - and well said.
I'll concede one thing to you: the new legislation has forced some - what shall I say - 'rogue' employers to behave better. There are always some who want to get away with shortcuts, to add to the profit margin, and some of them will browbeat employees to go along with less safe practices. This didn't matter so much when I was young when you could just tell them to sod off and then go and get another job fairly easily: it was your own fault if you stayed. Now of course it's much more difficult to get a new job.
May I just add that I was born in 1949 and have had lots and lots of jobs, and seen the different ways by which the matter of safety can be approached. What I've learned from it all is that the best results come from an individual's own intelligent appraisal of risks, and their clear understanding of what practices are necessary to ensure safety - rather than unthinking obedience of 'one-size-fits-all' [which they don't] rules imposed by authority. Sensible training is of course always part of it; that tended to be done informally, and as required, not by special courses, as nowadays.
I don't know your age, or even if that's relevant to anything discussed here; but many of my generation have seen over the years a steady movement away from a society comprising many sturdy independent characterful individuals to a much greyer world of unprotesting yes-men, afraid to voice any opinion, and it's under this rubric that we see these new 'Health and Safety' attitudes - as just one sub-division of the general dumbing-down of life. We used to be a nation of people who were clever AND had 'common-sense'; now we're merely clever.
That's enough from me! No doubt you won't agree with much, but my ideas might resonate with other folk, and be of use in that way.
Best Wishes.
elf and saftey man "rips hairout" what are you doing
A very poignant recording, with wonderful commentary
An unpowered wagon cannot proppel itself it can only be proppelled.
The typical BR brakevan is a ballast plough brake van of TOPS code ZUV and would only be used on ballast trains. The actual brake vans were of TOPS cide CAO/CAP/CAQ/CAR/CAV - the brake van seen was of TOPS code CAR and could be found on any freight train that did not have sufficient wagons connected to the locomotives automatic brake system, passed through train crew operated level crossings, or had a proppelling movement longer than a short shunt in reverse. The engineers had their own brake vans of TOPS codes ZTO/ZTP/ZTQ/ZTR for all other engineering trains requiring a brake van. Only in the last ten or so years have brake vans finally disappeared from the national network.a
Dickhead rivet counter.
Why can't you run the trains back again you need them now put them back in service and pump out milk in those barrels✨🌈🌄🦺🚂🚃🚃🌹🌹♥️♥️💯💌✨✌️✨
Squandered assets
disgusting absolutly disgusting i do not like large diesels small and medium only but that aside i think killing any yard /station/coaling facility/locomotive depot steam that is is an abonimation. and it should be made law that it should not be allowed to happern.
i couldnt agree more those who say steam depots and other steam related buildings /track and other steam related facilities that are to be destroyed should be put away at the magisties pleasure for life and THAT MEANS LIFE STEAM RULES THE RAILWAYS and nought will change that. and i mean nothing .
Why are you replying to your own comment? You're clearly deluded, the railway exists not for the benefit of anoraks, but to move people and goods about. If a yard is not needed then it shouldn't be kept open for no reason. Anyway, steam traction is outdated.
oh thats right steam is outdated thats why people are rebuilding new steam locos like tornado/beachyhead /a patriott/a grange /an ivatt262 ect get ya facts right sonny steam will never be out dated because it rules the rails long live steam .
@@timothysmith8300 Are you allowed back on the Internet yet, or are you still chewing crayons? 😂😂
You are an absolute tool.
My dad in law worked there 70s I think ,Terry monk.