Goods and freight traffic in Britain changed completely in the 1970s. Prior to that, the majority of traffic moved in individual wagons which were loaded at various stations and warehouses, mostly by hand. Afterwards, traffic moved either by container load or in block trains. This was the outcome of Dr Beeching’s two reports: “The Reshaping of British Railways” in 1963 and “The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes” in 1965, which were published by the British Railways Board.
Apart from the much-publicised cuts in routes, he recommended a move away from wagon-load traffic and the introduction of liner trains. These became known as Freightliner and its successor is still a major part of goods and freight traffic in the UK and around the world. The current ISO shipping container was standardised between 1968 and 1970 by the International Maritime Organisation and this was adopted by British Rail’s Freightliner from the outset.
For the modeller, deciding what traffic to run and when perhaps marks the transition from simply playing trains to something more serious. Timetabling block trains, be they oil or container traffic, is relatively easy and usually fills slots between passenger trains. Deciding when to run individual wagons for traditional wagon-load traffic is more challenging. If you are modelling post-Beeching and are not interested in wagon-load traffic, then Wagonflow is not for you. For pre-Beeching modellers, Wagonflow can help you.
There are several traditional ways to generate traffic, some deal cards or throw dice to make up trains of wagons, others work out a schedule of moves that uses all available wagons in various turns and these are recorded on a card system. They then work through a long and complex schedule of moves, get one wrong and the whole thing can descend into chaos.
Wagonflow allows you to operate your traffic like a prototypical railway. With clients who want regular and varied freight. With industries that want sensible deliveries of the raw materials they need, and forwarding of the products they turn out. In other words, traffic generation that asks for sensible sorting and shunting. Wagonflow can also deal with passenger or freight trains that only run on weekdays, or market days, or during the harvest, winters, holidays or other seasonal periods.
Have you thought of these? Of course you have! But manual systems are hard work or simplistic and some computer software can be heavy on admin. But Wagonflow takes away the hassle and only needs about 5 minutes per hour of running to bring you terrific operation. You don’t even need a computer in the railway room if you don’t want to.