GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Moor Street Station: gwrms1729

In 1901 Elder Dempster & Co. established a base at Avonmouth Docks, near Bristol for their West Indian liners and by 1904 this had developed into fortnightly service from Port Limon, Costa Rica. The liners carried large consignments of bananas and by 1904 the imports of bananas amounted to 350,000 bunches. To handle the traffic, Elders and Fyffes, constructed a transit shed at Avonmouth from which the Great Western Railway loaded covered wagons (with as many as 400 being required for a single cargo), which were ran in special trains as required.

By the 1930’s a fleet of thirty six vessels were operating in to Avonmouth, which was ranked the biggest banana importing centre in Europe. Three ships arrived each fortnight and in 1930 approximately 1 million banana bunches were imported. At Avonmouth an extensive electrical elevator plant was installed to reduce handling and the Great Western Railway provided a fleet of vacuum fitted, steam heated railway wagons specifically for this banana trade. Routes were also reserved in the Service Time Tables to allow these special steam heated trains to reach the major UK cities. The Birmingham banana train ran as required (RR) under an express freight (C) headcode taking 4 hours, 20 minutes:

The new covered banana wagons were conversions of standard 10 ton wooden Minks (diagram V16), three hundred of which had been insulated and fitted with vacuum brakes for use as meat vans (diagram X6) towards the end of WW1, under order No.1060 of May 1918. These had received little use and after converting some back, instructions were given to fit the rest out as banana vans (diagram Y4), under order No.F428 of October 1922. This involved the provision of steam heating and a single shuttered louvre ventilator between the stanchions at each end. These modifications allowed the bananas to be kept at the desired temperature of 56degF (11degC) in winter and summer respectively. As V16 wagons they had two bonnet vents at each end, but these had been blanked-off internally when converted to Meat Vans, however, the external bonnet vents were not always removed. Running numbers for converted wagons are difficult to accurately specify, but they were all five figure numbers, prefixed with either 93 or 95. More detail can be found in the GWR Magazine Article New Wagons for Banana Trafficand a photograph can be found at gwrrj2765.

Robert Ferris

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