Tinsley Marshalling Yard

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Class 37 locomotive no. 37019 at Tinsley TMD open day, 1990

Nameplates of locomotive no. 47375

Tinsley Marshalling Yard is a near-derelict marshalling yard located near Tinsley in Sheffield. It was opened in 1965 as a part of a major plan to rationalise all aspects of the rail services in the Sheffield area, and closed in stages from 1985 with the run-down of rail freight in Britain. It was also the site of Tinsley TMD, which was closed and demolished in the mid 1990s.

1 History of the yard
2 The yard
3 Decline and closure
4 External links
5 References

[edit] History of the yard

In the early 1960s, a tenth of the rail-borne freight in Britain originated in the Sheffield district. However, as with many areas, the provision of freight facilities had grown through cramped, piecemeal developments associated with the various operating companies that built Britain's rail system. With the region being one of the main heavy industry heartlands of Britain, government money was made available to remedy this situation. Central economic planning and economic self-sufficiency were government policy; the situation was seen as a major limit on Britain's economic growth.

The plan called for the replacement of the majority of the marshalling yards in the Sheffield area with one large yard. A location on the Sheffield District line was chosen and work started in 1963 with the digging out of a tunnel. The location allowed easy access to the brand new central Sheffield goods transhipment depot at Grimesthorpe, and the new Freightliner terminal on the old Canklow sorting sidings in Rotherham, both of which were complementary parts of the Sheffield rail rationalisation plan.

By 1965 the yard and loco depot were ready for use. New diesel locomotives moved in from a temporary home in the old Grimesthorpe steam locomotive depot. The Sheffield electric locomotive depot was moved from Darnall to Tinsley and the Darnall Steam/Electric locomotive depot closed to become a wagon-repair depot. Other steam locomotive depots at Millhouses and Canklow were closed and the last steam locomotives based in the Sheffield area were scrapped, along with many redundant sidings dotted about the area.

[edit] The yard

The yard was designed along the lines of large US rail freight yards. It featured gravity-assisted shunting and a computerised system of wagon control. Incoming trains were split in the 10 arrival sidings, propelled over the hump in the yard, from where the individual wagons rolled down a slope and were automatically sorted into new trains on the Yard's 50 main sorting sidings. The yard even had its own dedicated class of shunting locomotive (British Rail Class 13) for this purpose. Each of the sidings was fitted with computer-controlled retarders to slow the rolling wagons down before they hit other wagons already on the siding. There was an express freight yard of 10 sidings used for through freight trains that did not require reforming, and a 25 road secondary yard for longer term wagon storage.

The Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electrification was extended into the yard to allow electrically hauled trains to the Manchester area to be handled. Unlike similar electrified marshalling yards, to save on costs the main body of the sorting sidings was not electrified: a half of the arrival sidings was electrified and departing trains for electric haulage were drawn out of the main sorting sidings by diesel locomotives into electrified departure roads where the electric locomotives were attached.

Alongside the yard stood Tinsley Traction Maintenance Depot (TMD) which could handle both electric and diesel locomotives. At its peak 250 locomotives were allocated to this depot.

[edit] Decline and closure

Tinsley Yard in 2005 with trees and weeds.

By the nineteen-eighties, the amount of freight transported by rail in Britain was declining fast, in particular the wagon-load freight that required large hump-yards.

In 1981 the electrification was removed with the closure of the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath system.

In 1985 the arrival sidings and hump were closed, the wagon-control system removed and the remaining Class 13s scrapped. The associated Freightliner depot and goods transhipment depot had closed by this time (the latter never properly reopened after a major fire in 1985, but was still used in a limited manner until 1995). The yard connections were relaid to allow easier handling of block-load trains which now dominated rail freight in Britain.

By 1995 the decline in British heavy industry meant that this type of traffic had also declined massively. This resulted in the closure of the locomotive depot. The eastern connection to the Midland 'Old Road' fell into disuse at this time, the western connection to the Midland Main Line and goods depot at Grimesthorpe was lifted, and the rest of the yard progressively fell into disuse over the next ten years.

In 2006 only the main sorting sidings remain: a part of these appears to be used to stable steel trains, the rest of the remaining sidings are used to store surplus-to-requirements rolling stock in a poor state of repair. However there are plans in place to regenerate some of the yard: a new distribution centre is to built on the site; some of the sidings will be retained for shunting.