Turntable in unknown industrial location c1926

[eastdyke]

article about the site
http://www.woodlanebicc.co.uk/docs/chapter two.pdf
note the map doesn't show the turntable so it looks like that was a later addition - presumably to turn the power cars as suggested above

I am struggling with some aspects of the article!
The map shows the buildings on an east-west axis, those on the postcard are north-south. The railway lines don't match up and the text states that the chimney was demolished in 1958. The picture 'exterior of works' is also inconsistent with that on the postcard.
The buildings now seem to be known as the Dimco Buildings (after a subsequent occupier used them as a machine shop), from the London Architecture website:
https://www.londonarchitecture.co.uk/Building/1320795850/The-Dimco-Buildings.php
This 1929 picture on Britain from Above shows the buldings near the top edge:
https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW031078
[zoomable with account login]
Note the 2 chimneys at the north ends of the buldings.
A 1931 picture again shows the buildings near the top edge:
https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW036474
The 2 chimneys have gone.
Perhaps someone can kindly put me 'back on track'?

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

https://maps.nls.uk/view/103313276

The 25" OS map (Revised in 1913/4 - published 1938(!)) shows the layout. The surviving Dimco Buildings, formerly Wood Lane Power Station, are nothing to do with the CLR Power Station but are to north on an E-W axis as you say. Unfortunately a later edition of the map is not available to see the subsequent situation, but the car sheds and CLR power station are now well beneath Westfield!

 

[eastdyke]

https://maps.nls.uk/view/103313276

The 25" OS map (Revised in 1913/4 - published 1938(!)) shows the layout. The surviving Dimco Buildings, formerly Wood Lane Power Station, are nothing to do with the CLR Power Station but are to north on an E-W axis as you say. Unfortunately a later edition of the map is not available to see the subsequent situation, but the car sheds and CLR power station are now well beneath Westfield!

Many thanks - yes!
Had just got into the 25" OS map and the Dimco buildings are the survivors of the of the CLR Generating Station.
The other facility, the Kensington and Notting Hill Power Station, is as you say 'under Westfield'.
From the article linked up-thread, this latter became laboratories for Callender's Cables, later BICC.
Thank you again!

 

[Taunton]

.

Very well done.

Wood Lane OS map of the era showing the turntable position. And its the CLR generating station.

 

[randyrippley]

.

..................... And its the CLR generating station.

Yeah.......when I posted the link in #30 I hadn't realised there were two power stations there

 

[theageofthetra]

I still can't see why the steeplecabs or the new multiple unit motor coaches needed turning. Was there only one motor coach at one end of the train? -in that case it makes perfect sense

 

[krus_aragon]

I still can't see why the steeplecabs or the new multiple unit motor coaches needed turning. Was there only one motor coach at one end of the train? -in that case it makes perfect sense

Or perhaps there was only one set of driving controls per motor coach (like a class 43 in a HST)? Having a motor coach at each end would be fine for regular service, but you'd want to be able to turn some motor coaches if you were remarshalling sets after maintenance.

 

[Taunton]

The only remaining mystery is what was a household coal merchant's wagon, just one, doing at the CLR power station.

Turntables were installed at various Underground depots, Neasden had another, to perform various turning tasks. However the motor coaches (and trailers) were not practical to turn, because the various Underground lines had their electrical stock "handed", that is the car connections were only on one side of the stock, and similar. That meant that half the motor cars had to be built one way round, and the other half the other way round, as there was no normal way the stock could get turned in normal operations. To quite an extent this approach continues to this day, and can be seen in Underground aspects like even-numbered driving cars on a line all face one way, and odd-numbered cars face the other. Thus if you have two even-numbered spare motor cars facing the same way, even turning one of them on the turntable means youi cannot couple them up. Resolving this would mean a complete works rebuild to the "opposite hand", and likely renumbering as well.

 

[eastdyke]

..... there was no normal way the stock could get turned in normal operations. .....

Paul Godwin of TfL suggested otherwise in his talk 'White City Development 1900-2010' given to the London Underground Railway Society at Toynbee Hall on Tuesday 13 April 2006. An account can be found here:
http://www.lurs.org.uk/documents/pdf 06/nov/white city.pdf
In particular:

The White City Depot
The early design of the Central London Railway, with a loop at its western end at Wood Lane, and sidings and crossover at the east at Liverpool Street, meant that railway cars could end up wrong way round on occasion. The Caxton Curve, the tightest radius curve on the Underground, was originally a single track connection beyond the crossovers of Shepherd’s Bush to the depot.
The curve subsequently became the eastbound line, crossed over by the westbound, and this accounts for the right hand running of trains in the area.
The depot at Wood Lane had a turntable to solve the problems of wrong facing cars .....

 

[Taunton]

Ah, OK. A line with a loop at only one end plus handed cars must have been a right nuisance. You have to wonder why they did it this way in the first place. Of course, the normal way to get a train turned round would be to run it round the loop and shunt back, taking a few minutes. Breaking up a train, turning each car on the turntable, and putting them back together again must have taken the best part of a shift.

 

[30907]

Ah, OK. A line with a loop at only one end plus handed cars must have been a right nuisance. You have to wonder why they did it this way in the first place. Of course, the normal way to get a train turned round would be to run it round the loop and shunt back, taking a few minutes. Breaking up a train, turning each car on the turntable, and putting them back together again must have taken the best part of a shift.

Do we know that the original CLR stock was handed? It was built for loco haulage so I would have thought not - and the motor coaches were AIUI built to go with the existing trailers so would have conformed electrically.

 

[Shrewbly]

Excellent investigative work! There is one further thing that puzzles me though - the 1926 photo shows the centre rail, but the earlier photo of the new rail car appears to show overhead wiring and no centre rail. Did the CLR use an overhead power supply before converting to the centre rail? Or is there some other reason for the overhead wiring?

 

[randyrippley]

Excellent investigative work! There is one further thing that puzzles me though - the 1926 photo shows the centre rail, but the earlier photo of the new rail car appears to show overhead wiring and no centre rail. Did the CLR use an overhead power supply before converting to the centre rail? Or is there some other reason for the overhead wiring?

according to this Wiki article the first CLR locos were third rail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_electric_locomotives#Central_London_Railway (see the data panel to the right).
Only a guess, but maybe the yard had overhead cables for safety purposes: the Southern did the same in some depots.

 

[Taunton]

A couple of the locos, retained for shunting, did have overhead collectors fitted for use just in this yard. I'm surprised the associated wires are not in the original photo. Otherwise on an all electric railway you could not get a vehicle off the turntable without using a string of match wagons to reach it.

 

[eastdyke]

A couple of the locos, retained for shunting, did have overhead collectors fitted for use just in this yard. I'm surprised the associated wires are not in the original photo. Otherwise on an all electric railway you could not get a vehicle off the turntable without using a string of match wagons to reach it.

CLR wasn't quite an all electric railway in 1900.
The line had 2 1899 Hunslet 0-6-0 dual fuel steam locos (oil/coal).
I have seen somewhere that they also had 2 sets of buffers, one set for moving tube stock, the other for shunting coal wagons supplying the generating station.
The locos where also unusual in that the centre set of wheels were flangeless, Hornby Dublo style, a prototype for everything!
Wikipedia has quite a lot of info in this instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_tube-gauge_steam_locomotives

The Central London Railway obtained two small steam locomotives from the Hunslet Engine Company in 1899, to assist with the task of equipping the tunnels once the civil engineering work of building them had been completed. They were numbered 1 and 2, and were of 0-6-0 wheel arrangement, but only the outer wheels had flanges, which enabled them to negotiate curves of 150 feet (46 m) radius. They appeared to have very large side tanks, but of the 1,250 imperial gallons (5,700 l) of water carried, only one fifth was used for feeding the boiler, and the rest for condensing the steam. Boiler pressure was 150 psi (10 bar), which gave them a tractive effort of 12,300 lbf (55 kN).[1]

Although the cabs were wide, headroom was extremely limited, and consequently they were oil-fired, so that they could be operated by one man rather than two. Fuel tanks holding 50 imperial gallons (230 l) of oil were fitted into the bunker, which could also hold 0.75 tons of coal, since the grate was designed so that either fuel could be used. Oil was always used in the tunnels, but coal was often used above ground. Once the railway opened to passengers in July 1900, the locomotives were seldom used in the tunnels, but did occasionally go into them.[1] They were mainly used for shunting in depots[2] and for moving coal wagons at Wood Lane power station, which operated until March 1928. However the two locomotives were scrapped in 1923.

 

[30907]

according to this Wiki article the first CLR locos were third rail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_electric_locomotives#Central_London_Railway (see the data panel to the right).
Only a guess, but maybe the yard had overhead cables for safety purposes: the Southern did the same in some depots.

Just to add to that: when trains were loco hauled there would have been little point in having 3rd rail into the actual car shed, but I imagine once the motor cars came in it would have been simpler (if less safe!) to lay the rail, and eventually the trolley wire would have been redundant. The photo I linked looks like a publicity shot, probably before entering service.

 

[theageofthetra]

CLR wasn't quite an all electric railway in 1900.
The line had 2 1899 Hunslet 0-6-0 dual fuel steam locos (oil/coal).
I have seen somewhere that they also had 2 sets of buffers, one set for moving tube stock, the other for shunting coal wagons supplying the generating station.
The locos where also unusual in that the centre set of wheels were flangeless, Hornby Dublo style, a prototype for everything!
Wikipedia has quite a lot of info in this instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_tube-gauge_steam_locomotives

Fascinating. Do any pictures or works drawings exist of them?

 

[eastdyke]

Fascinating. Do any pictures or works drawings exist of them?

Have not come across any, despite looking.
A good source might have been the Leeds Engine Builders website:
http://www.leedsengine.info/leeds/default.asp
Sadly whilst they acknowledge the building of the locos in their Main List for Hunslet Engine Co. (HE code to do a look-up) they give no details beyond the numbers, 695/1899 and 696/1899. There is not much activity recorded in the text for the period of their construction:
http://www.leedsengine.info/leeds/histhe.asp
Hunslet is now a part of Wabtec but no history section that I have found from them.
The Works Manager in 1899 was James Campbell but I have found nothing further down that route either!

 

[randyrippley]

the Hunslet archives appear to be distributed around three locations
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F188281

 

[Taunton]

Just to add to that: when trains were loco hauled there would have been little point in having 3rd rail into the actual car shed, but I imagine once the motor cars came in it would have been simpler (if less safe!) to lay the rail, and eventually the trolley wire would have been redundant. The photo I linked looks like a publicity shot, probably before entering service.

Now I found a few days ago, while looking for detail for this post, a picture of the inside of the carshed in that era, which had overhead wire in a trough suspended from the rafters. It also said that the electric driving cars could not be fitted with pickups for this, as these would have infringed their tight tube clearance, even if retracted, so they must have been shunted in/out by the couple of electric locos fitted with overhead pickups (no idea if pantographs or trolley poles) for this very purpose.

 

[randyrippley]

Interesting comment from http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/Woodlane whitecity.htm

"Trains entered the depot via the depot access road on a 1 in 44 gradient up to the tunnel portal, where the line curved sharply west and ended in a siding with the buffer stops adjacent to Wood Lane. Trains had to be shunted back into the sheds from this siding. Documents from the period suggest that this was usually done by fly shunting the train. When it arrived in the siding, the locomotive was uncoupled and then pushed the train back until it had sufficient speed to coast into the shed, where it was stopped by the guards using handbrakes. This was done because there were no current rails in the yard apart from on the tracks leading into the loco shop."

and

"n 1903, only three years after the opening of the line, the passenger car fleet was converted to multiple unit operation and the locomotives were replaced by new motor cars,..........
The vibration caused by the locomotives caused so many problems to properties along the route that this radical action was considered the only solution. To accommodate the extra cars, a new shed, called the "Wood Lane Sheds" in official literature, was built west of the existing sheds and, as suggested in the title, next to Wood Lane ............ The new shed was reached via the loop road which ran round the outside of the main sheds. All sheds were 360 feet long and were designed to take 7-car trains. However, 6-car sets were the norm for the line. By this time, current rails had been laid in the yard and trains could move around under their own power."

 

[30907]

Do we know that the original CLR stock was handed? It was built for loco haulage so I would have thought not - and the motor coaches were AIUI built to go with the existing trailers so would have conformed electrically.

As a PS to this thread:
I have just borrowed Bruce and Croome, "The twopenny tube," LUL 1996, which states (p16) that the locos were "handed" with the driving position always on the north side of the line - the 1903 motor cars followed suit.
The overhead wires in the depot were removed 1908.