Long lost freight: Cattle trains

November 30 marks the 45th anniversary of the last cattle train to run in the UK. Steve Morris takes a look back at these interesting workings, with a focus on the trains operating out of Holyhead, the last part of Britain to be involved in such traffic.

THE movement of livestock by rail had started as far back as the Liverpool and ManchesterRailway in 1831, transporting cattle from Ireland that had been landed at Liverpool. Other early workings included imports from the continent to the East coast ports, and internal movements of lean cattle or sheep from hill farms to low lying areas for fattening.

In the early 1900s, the principal flow was cattle for slaughter after being shipped from Ireland. By 1913, the ports with lairage for handling imported cattle were at Holyhead and Birkenhead from Dublin; Heysham, Fleetwood, Glasgow and Ayr from Greenore; and Bristol and Cardiff from Rosslare – the main objective being to keep the sea crossing as short as possible.

The main parts of this cattle traffic required the use of block trains from Holyhead and Birkenhead to London and other major cities, although livestock facilities existed at many stations throughout the countryside for handling smaller numbers of cattle, horses, pigs and sheep from markets on behalf of local farmers.

DEDICATED WAGONS

By the late 1920s there were more than 18,000 cattle wagons operating in the UK, with almost 12,000 inherited by British Railways at Nationalisation in 1948. BR then continued to build them for several years; an example of a later build being the 12-ton capacity two-axle BR ‘Oxfit’ Van, of which a batch of 1100 were built at Derby and Shildon during 1949/50.