Question regarding Freight services in timetables.

Freightmaster, friends in the know, YouTube, fansites, Flickr... even satellite imagery has been useful at times!

I'm using the Freightmaster website (and Timetable book) and the forum there is useful for getting some 'gen' on what is running.
Another tip, if a train in your Timetable also appears in another timetable that has already been released then have a look there.
My biggest question tended to be the consist (how many wagons and the length) but there are ways to find this out, just takes a bit of research.

GeoffM in post 127095 said:

Freightmaster, friends in the know, YouTube, fansites, Flickr... even satellite imagery has been useful at times!

I guess 'making it up' so to speak or having an 'educated guess' but within the realms of realism is fine? Because obviously, I'd imagine freight consists are different everyday?

Because obviously, I'd imagine freight consists are different everyday?

haydenrobertson said:

Because obviously, I'd imagine freight consists are different everyday?

Not necessarily. You might have an imbalance of wagons at source and destination points otherwise.

In BR days when I worked for the BRB at McMillan House, Paddington(Director of Operations) in the BRB control room there was a section in there called the CWA[Centrl Wagon Authority]. They would be responsible for the deployment of the various wagon fleets. I was responsible for thw wagon Tagging table for TOPS. Freight train tagging was responsible to where the wagons once emptied were destined to go by picking up a TOPS Stannox which would advise the yard staff where in the country the wagon is destined to go & that is still the system in use today.

58050 in post 127121 said:

In BR days when I worked for the BRB at McMillan House, Paddington(Director of Operations) in the BRB control room there was a section in there called the CWA[Centrl Wagon Authority]. They would be responsible for the deployment of the various wagon fleets. I was responsible for thw wagon Tagging table for TOPS. Freight train tagging was responsible to where the wagons once emptied were destined to go by picking up a TOPS Stannox which would advise the yard staff where in the country the wagon is destined to go & that is still the system in use today.

Down in the yards, of course, the tags pretty much equated to shunting instructions. Each region (I think?) had a freight trains marshalling booklet which showed how portions were to be marshalled, from the loco. The only one I can recall off the top of my head is 6O88, the morning Hoo Junction/Dover we used to clear excess ferry traffic. Memory no longer serves perfectly. It was either 88P-889-89F or 88P-89F-889. 88P was the Plumstead paper, a premium traffic that came down from Corpach class 4 overnight (Pascal, you may remember... does 4M74 sound right?). 89F was 'Dover Ferry and Town Yard', in other words train ferry traffic. 889 was anything to be marshalled at Hoo Junction, sent rough. 889 often included a few 100t scrap wagons for Sheerness Steel; you didn't want to be in the way when a cut of them was sent off down 15 Road! There would also be empty cement tanks for just-about anywhere in Kent. 88P came off the front of the up Mossend as a block, shunted on to the front of the made-up train, and the cl33 that was usually waiting tied on to depart ASAP; if we were really pushing, we'd sometimes get the Southern men to tie on to the front of the arriving train on 17 Road as soon as the AC loco was clear, and they would do the shunt themselves, especially if the alternative was that they would get to Longhedge after the block went on for the morning peak and have to cool their heels for a couple of hours rather than get off nice and early after a 'job and finish'.

With some trains, length would be the limiting factor; I recall getting Control authority to run the Bescot (6M92 if I remember rightly?) overlength (80SLU vice 60) was by no means unknown. Others would be up to weight long before the length became an issue. But there would be other days when trains would go out with barely half a load. No rhyme or reason I could ever discern, that was just the traffic we had that day.