David Ratcliffe looks back to the days of local freight trains before the demise of Speedlink.
In contrast to the railfreight scene of today, which is dominated by block train workings, prior to the demise of Speedlink services in July 1991 the network still hosted a considerable number of mixed wagonload freights. Some of these ran between the main yards, while others comprised simple feeder trips from a yard to a single customer, but a handful of workings had rather more involved itineraries.
Amongst these was the daily Speedlink that ran from Warrington to Horwich and back via Wigan and Westhoughton. Booked to leave Warrington’s Walton Old Junction yard at 07:55 each weekday, the freight, whose reporting number was changed from 6P83 to 6P82 in 1987, would head north, leaving the West Coast Main Line (WCML) just south of Wigan North Western at Wigan Station Junction where it stopped briefly for a crew change. Joining the former Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) line from Manchester, the new crew would then take 6P82 on through Wigan Wallgate station and under the WCML before diverging at Wallgate Junction onto the Southport line and coming to a halt a short distance further on at Douglas Bank Sidings.
Here the locomotive would run round and any traffic for the nearby Prescott Street Electrification Depot and the GKN Reinforcement’s Douglas Bank works would be detached, with one of the four Class 08s based at Wigan Springs Branch arriving light engine later in the morning to shunt both locations. During the early 1970s, the depot at Prescott Street, on the site of the former L&YR’s Wigan locomotive shed, had been very busy, but once the electrification of the WCML from Crewe to Glasgow had been completed, traffic there declined and by the 1980s it would only receive the occasional wagon, carrying such loads as fabricated steel gantry components, cases of insulators, OHL tensioning weights, and cable drums of wire.
In contrast, the GKN works continued to receive a steady delivery of steel rod and rod coil by rail, both from Cardiff and occasionally from the Continent, until the traffic ceased in about 1987. GKN used their own Fowler industrial locomotive for shunting and so the Class 08 was
