Constructed by the L&SWR to aid the flow of freight to and from other railways and provide efficient distribution on its own network around the dormitory towns southwest of London, ‘Swedebasher’ delves into operations at this key location in BR steam days.
It may seem strange to describe the quiet suburban town of Feltham as a border point, but that is precisely what it was since it was the location, only six miles in from the boundary with the London Midland, through which impressive tonnages of goods from the other regions – the manufacturing north, the coal-producing Midlands, and East Anglia – was accepted, remarshalled and forwarded on to the dozens of small dormitory towns which formed the huge south-western quarter of Greater London.
Estimating the population of this area at about three million people, this equates to 1.2 million households, shops and business premises, each of which demanded a thousand and one commodities, of which the most regular was probably coal, and indeed up to about 60 years ago a coal fire was as much a feature of the living room or office as a television screen is now. With the exception of the small East Kent coalfield, which had little or no effect on supplies to the southwest area of London, most coal, domestic and industrial, had to be moved in from the Midlands and the North and the general line of route was into the London marshalling yards of the principal northern main lines to be worked across north-west London to the London & South Western Railway’s marshalling yard at Feltham. The chief exception was coal from the South Wales coalfield and this was worked by the Great Western Railway to Moreton Cutting yard at Didcot and then taken forward by the L&SWR via Reading. Coal was far from being the only traffic that was worked into Feltham but it was the most significant in terms of tonnage; to simplify matters, in this text reference is made using pre-Grouping titles irrespective of post-1923 changes – in fact the railways continued to be administered as they had been prio
