N.C.B. Landsale Facilities - What were these?

[Andy873]

I've come across the mention with regards to coal traders and one goods yard with several coal traders operating out of there, The line and goods yard is to close and a note is made by BR that by agreement with the N.C.B. no new landsale facilities will be granted by them (the NCB) - What does all this mean please? Could someone explain what landsale facilities are / were? The closure happened in the 1960's if that's any help.

Was the railway goods yard a landsale facility granted by the NCB to BR? or was this granted to small traders and/or companies dealing in selling coal?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Think it was an arrangement whereby coal was sold by loading up lorries (on site) at the actual colliery. Anyone able to confirm?

 

[Gloster]

I am not entirely sure and suspect that the term may have had a number of related meanings, but I think that in railway use it meant that the coal was immediately taken away by the purchaser from the wagon. Whereas some coal would arrive in wagons, be unloaded and stored in the yard by the merchant before being sold to customers, landsale coal would be unloaded from the wagon into the purchaser’s lorry and immediately taken out of the goods yard. I think that this could apply to coal merchants, but only to ones who stored their coal elsewhere.

 

[Andy873]

I wonder if this was some sort of agreement with each coal trader and where specifically the coal could be delivered to? One of Beeching's plans was to concentrate deliveries of coal (from smaller stations which are to close) to larger stations / goods yards (he called them Depots). What is clear, BR note that some of the coal traders are indicating once the yard closes they won't be taking part in this concentration scheme.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

More historically, "land sale" coal was originally sold locally (tax-free) from smaller, less economic collieries, whereas "water sale" coal was shipped off, in bulk, by canal or by sea, to places like London, but would have incurred port duties, adding to the cost.

 

[Acathater]

A landsale yard is discussed in this thread relating to Alveley colliery

Stottesdon Heritage - Coal Mining

In that example it says

The “Engine House”, the new museum for the Severn Valley Railway, is built on the site of the former Highley Mining Company sidings, opposite Highley Station. This was latterly a landsale yard for coal from Alveley Colliery, although it was constructed in the early 1880’s when Highley Colliery was first opened

The Landsale Yard

Many readers of the Highley Forum will be aware that opposite Highley Station are a pair of metal gates, leading into an area of waste ground, also visible from the footpath leading from the Country Park to the Station. Some of us can even remember when that was part of Highley Colliery and was served by a railway track that went across the road into a siding (I can only just remember it!). The area was originally developed as the sidings for coal wagons from Highley Colliery and it finished its working life as the “landsale yard”, effectively a coal yard where the local coal merchants could pick up coal for delivery by lorry.

So it seems to be a yard / collection of sidings from which coal was directly sold from the pit to local merchants
I presume any sidings within the yard were part of the collieries own internal rail system

 

[Andy873]

So it seems to be a yard / collection of sidings from which coal was directly sold from the pit to local merchants

That's very interesting, thanks.

I presume any sidings within the yard were part of the collieries own internal rail system

Guess it could be, but not in this case, the yards were BR's own.

This agreement between BR and the NCB, could this have been a way to try to force coal traders to go along with the coal concentration scheme and get their coal say five miles away at a bigger station rather than just down the road? If so, any trader walking away from this scheme might have to then get the coal from a third party, that means more expensively which I'm sure would have been passed onto the public etc.

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

Many collieries had a landsale yard.
Their purpose was to enable coal to be sold directly from the colliery to local merchants, industries and even individuals.
They were particularly handy for customers who didn't need a full wagon (or train) load, and also for local mills etc that were not rail served.

Why there was an agreement for no new facilities in your area of Lancashire I don't know; possibly BR were trying to protect the business of the then-new Blackburn Coal Concentration Depot at King Street which would have been opening around the same time??

 

[Gloster]

I wonder if it was tied up with who hired the wagon. If the coal was loaded at the colliery into a wagon hired by the NCB and then transported to the goods yard it is still in the ‘care’ of the NCB. If it is then sold directly out of the wagon onto the the merchant’s/customer’s lorry, it might have been seen as legally the same as landsale from the gates of the colliery, which was common even well into late NCB days.

 

[Merle Haggard]

My recollection from childhood in the earlier 1950s that a household was registered in some way with a coal merchant, who all received coal only by rail. A coal supply was ordered from the merchant by the householder but delivery wasn't quick - usually a supply for the whole winter ordered in August or September. The price might have been set by th NCB - there was no variation between merchants as I remember.
Around 1956 this seems to have been relaxed. A lorry loaded with coal would drive slowly up our street with either shouting or knocking on doors by the crew to offer supplies. It seemed from conversation that the lorry owners collected coal direct from the colliery, which would be an example of 'land sale'. I have an idea that the NCB did not encourage this avoidance of the status quo/cartel.
The lorries used always seemed in my recollection to be ex-Army 4 wheel drive Bedfords.

Perhaps someone can add more details to my imperfect recollection.

 

[Helvellyn]

If landsale took place at a colliery could an agreement between BR and the NCB about no new facilities in part be part of prepping for MGR traffic, where a more highly mechanised set-up was going to be needed?

 

[Acathater]

there's actually a wiki entry for the term, but it seems to have an older concept

Landsale - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The landsale or land-sale system was a rental or tenement system occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries in Great Britain, named after the practice of local selling of coal and operation of small-scale "land sale" collieries. This was in contrast to the larger scale, and highly mechanized "water-sale" collieries exporting coal by sea and later canal to southern England.

Land-sale coal was free of tax, and so coal users in coal producing areas could obtain coal free of duties for "water-sale coal" shipped by sea or canal, such as duties paid at the ports of London.[1] The smaller local "land-sale" collieries were less productive, but also had lower costs as they paid lower wages to miners, or were rented by self-employed tenants.[2] While winter weather affected all mines the smaller land sale collieries were more prone to lying idle. In the unusual case of the Wear Valley and South Durham land-sale miners were able to seasonally migrate to work on bigger water-sale collieries during part of the winter.[3]

The landsale tenement system involved the renting out of coal rights on land to smallholders to operate mines for rent. In Decisions of the Court of King's Bench 1793 it was stated that a "land sale colliery" was a "term well known in the coal mining areas" and understood as including not only the rental or tenement on the land to be mined, but also the required stock of horses, gins, ropes, and other things necessary for working the mine.[4] Though whether the rent on the horses and gins were included was disputed in at least one case.[5]

Examples of landsale operations or rents under the landsale system include Brandon, County Durham where John Shaw was operating a landsale pit in 1836 using a whim-gin, usually employing horses or a bull, to raise the coal, Ushaw Moor Colliery where in 1858 a drift mine was established selling coal on this system, and Bedford Colliery at Guest Street where there was a landsale yard.

 

[oldman]

It seems that in some cases coal merchants went on using their premises on railway land after rail deliveries had ended. A lengthy article from 'An overview of railway freight operations for modellers
(from around 1830 to about 2010)' here includes:

Often the coal siding was run into a separate area owned or leased by one or more local traders.
...
The coal trader had to make his own arrangements for road delivery [from the coal concentration depot to his own depot, this meant many traders simply switched to road delivery direct from the NCB. They did tend to continue to use their existing premises however

It is not clear how merchant, NCB and BR fitted together. Possibly BR owned the land, could not evict the merchants but would not want any new merchants setting up.

 

[Gloster]

Coal merchants‘ depots at stations were normally rented from BR by the merchants. This could be just the ground on which to erect a hut and storage facilities, or it could include the right to stable one or more wagons for as long as they wanted without paying standage. (If the wagon containing your delivery of coal was stabled on a bit of siding owned by BR, you had three days to unload or you would have to pay a daily fee for using the siding. (Fat chance, in my experience.) If you leased the siding, even if it was on BR land, this didn’t apply: it could be a specially designated bit of track or just the right to stable one/two/any specific number of wagons in a part of the yard.)

If you were a merchant would you want to move your whole operation from a (probably) central and reasonably priced location to a new one? The merchant would probably prefer to retain their existing premises as long as BR would allow them.

Generally the NCB didn’t have much to do with the coal once they had despatched it from their colliery in a wagon, although there were exceptions. The area covered by the former North Eastern Railway was, I think, the main one.

EDIT: demurrage changed to standage as a @Taunton correctly pointed out.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Coal merchants‘ depots at stations were normally rented from BR by the merchants. This could be just the ground on which to erect a hut and storage facilities, or it could include the right to stable one or more wagons for as long as they wanted without paying demurrage. (If the wagon containing your delivery of coal was stabled on a bit of siding owned by BR, you had three days to unload or you would have to pay a daily fee for using the siding. (Fat chance, in my experience.) If you leased the siding, even if it was on BR land, this didn’t apply: it could be a specially designated bit of track or just the right to stable one/two/any specific number of wagons in a part of the yard.)

If you were a merchant would you want to move your whole operation from a (probably) central and reasonably priced location to a new one? The merchant would probably prefer to retain their existing premises as long as BR would allow them.

Generally the NCB didn’t have much to do with the coal once they had despatched it from their colliery in a wagon, although there were exceptions. The area covered by the former North Eastern Railway was, I think, the main one.

I also remember in the weekly Commercial Circular (I think that was the title) there were routine instructions for Area Managers to arrange to have 'excess space' occupied by merchants to be measured. I'm not sure what the outcome was, but getting them to pay standage and demurrage was usually hard going.

 

[stuving]

On "landsale facility" specifically, I've found a news report from 1978 of the NCB placing an order for "a new coal preparation plant at Hatfield Colliery, near Doncaster.
The plant will produce power station fuel and have a landsale facility."

More relevant to the query here is a long report from 1964 of a speech by the president of the Coal Merchants Association of great Britain. He was complaining that the tenancies by which merchants rented depot site is railway yards (and had done since the early days of railways) were in jeopardy, and BR were treating coal traffic as captive business. He was appealing to the NCB to give them landsale facilities "to provide the spur of competition, coal concentrations will just result in putting up the price." He would ask the board to lay on road loading facilites and "not to send coal merchants into the ring with one arm tied behind their backs".

It would appear from Andy's question that BR had managed to get the NCB's guarantee that they would not be doing that nearby.

Another report, from 1959, refers to the closure of Horsley yard and coal merchants having to go to Woking or Leatherhead instead. The complaints included the extra distance to travel (4-5 miles) and there being too little space for new coal merchants at these centralised stations. Again, they were hoping for a competitive supply direct from collieries, provided the NCB would make land-sale facilities available. I wonder how competitive that would have been, given that there was a distinct shortage of collieries near Horsley.

 

[Taunton]

Coal merchants‘ depots at stations were normally rented from BR by the merchants. This could be just the ground on which to erect a hut and storage facilities, or it could include the right to stable one or more wagons for as long as they wanted without paying demurrage. (If the wagon containing your delivery of coal was stabled on a bit of siding owned by BR, you had three days to unload or you would have to pay a daily fee for using the siding. (Fat chance, in my experience.)

Demurrage was a charge for a wagon, rather than for the land/siding. You were given these few days to unload it and report so, otherwise there was a daily charge. It was to encourage circulation of wagons.

Coal merchants of course developed their own workarounds, to keep wagons for longer as free storage, and to avoid their own costs of double handling it onto the ground, and then into weighed delivery bags ("sacks"). This especially once the daily pick-up goods train became less than daily. So if it ran on Monday and Thursday, you received it on the Monday run and gave advice by phone to BR coal control to pick it up at about 5 pm on Wednesday. This was just after the waybills for the Thursday pickup goods had been produced and given out, so it would go down for the following Monday run, giving you several more free days of storage.

 

[Merle Haggard]

I am fairly sure that the sidings used by coal merchants were Public Delivery Sidings not Private Sidings. In my distant memory I can recall the document that listed station facilities which would show this, but I can't remember its title. it was the successor to the 'Handbook of Stations'.

Larger customers had the benefit of wagon detention being charged under the 'standage' scheme rather than the 'demurrage' one. the former looked at the overall rate of detention rather than individual wagons.

Coal Concentration Depots were introduced to make serving coal merchants more efficient. They had hopper discharge facilities to speed up wagon turnaround time. Usually fitted 21t hoppers with lettering on the upper side.

 

[Andy873]

I wonder if it was tied up with who hired the wagon. If the coal was loaded at the colliery into a wagon hired by the NCB and then transported to the goods yard it is still in the ‘care’ of the NCB. If it is then sold directly out of the wagon onto the the merchant’s/customer’s lorry, it might have been seen as legally the same as landsale from the gates of the colliery, which was common even well into late NCB days.

This sounds plausible to me, it could well have been the situation.

It seems that in some cases coal merchants went on using their premises on railway land after rail deliveries had ended.

It does indeed seem that way, my L&Y Society book mentions at Simonstone station after it closed (2 November 1964) the coal trader, a limited company carried on there in the goods yard. In fact, when the yard went up for sale, the company bought it along with the wooden goods shed, which by the way still stands today.

If you were a merchant would you want to move your whole operation from a (probably) central and reasonably priced location to a new one? The merchant would probably prefer to retain their existing premises as long as BR would allow them.

Correct, you wouldn't want to move

BR were trying to protect the business of the then-new Blackburn Coal Concentration Depot at King Street

For this one, I had to go back and read the minutes of a meeting held in May 1964 between management and staff concerning the closing of the loop line. In it, BR state that the coal traders (of Gt. Harwood station) would be given facilities at Taylor St and King St depots in Blackburn. Now going back to the closure documents as I call them, there is a note by management that they think possibly as many as a half of the traders (ten in all) might not transfer to Blackburn.

More relevant to the query here is a long report from 1964 of a speech by the president of the Coal Merchants Association of great Britain. He was complaining that the tenancies by which merchants rented depot site is railway yards (and had done since the early days of railways) were in jeopardy, and BR were treating coal traffic as captive business. He was appealing to the NCB to give them landsale facilities "to provide the spur of competition, coal concentrations will just result in putting up the price." He would ask the board to lay on road loading facilites and "not to send coal merchants into the ring with one arm tied behind their backs".

Interesting, and I think we can see the point being made by the Association here. It seems the coal traders actually had a bit more power than we might think. To demonstrate this, there was a national agreement with the coal merchants and BR of being given three months notice that a yard was going to close. In this case the DM (Divisional Manager), Preston makes a mistake, he sets a closure date of 7 September (1964) when the new winter timetable comes in, but this is less than 3 months notice and BR, including BRB! have to eat humble pie and move it to 2 November.

Coal merchants of course developed their own workarounds, to keep wagons for longer as free storage, and to avoid their own costs of double handling it onto the ground, and then into weighed delivery bags ("sacks"). This especially once the daily pick-up goods train became less than daily. So if it ran on Monday and Thursday, you received it on the Monday run and gave advice by phone to BR coal control to pick it up at about 5 pm on Wednesday. This was just after the waybills for the Thursday pickup goods had been produced and given out, so it would go down for the following Monday run, giving you several more free days of storage.

A crafty work around!

I had a thought this morning, what would the BR Estates department do with a yard whilst waiting for someone / council to buy the land? I know they did lease land to a local council outside one station, perhaps some coal traders were allowed to continue using the yard? The Estates Dept would probably prefer to get some money in?

 

[ThirteenArches]

At least one landsale wharf was built to allow competition with another colliery, and to cut out the need for transport via the mainline system. Bridgewater Wharf at Newtown, Pendlebury (now in Salford, Greater Manchester) seems from old maps to have been built sometime between 1907 and 1927 to supply the area from Sandholes Colliery, despite Newtown Colliery being already producing just a couple of streets away. Newtown was run by the Clifton and Kearsley company, Sandholes by Bridgewater. There must have been a serious demand in the area beyond domestic sales - and I think the coal- hungry cotton mills in the area would have been the main customers. The line was part of the Bridgewater Collieries railway complex, centred on Walkden shed, and lasted till the early 1960s. I can't remember it being in use, though the line down to the Tyldesley Loop was still very much in use in the 60s, with Giesel fitted Austerities and North Stafford 0-6-2 tanks (one in full NS livery) providing spectacular displays pulling wagons up the incline from the exchange sidings. Pity we didn't keep the photographs. That's kids for you.

 

[Gloster]

I am fairly sure that the sidings used by coal merchants were Public Delivery Sidings not Private Sidings. In my distant memory I can recall the document that listed station facilities which would show this, but I can't remember its title. it was the successor to the 'Handbook of Stations'.

Put simply, it would depend on who owned the land. If the merchant had bought the land and had the rails run into it, then it was a private siding and there would be an indication of the boundary between BR and the merchant’s yard. Unless there were agreements, BR would not let anything other than wagons destined for the merchant pass the boundary…in theory, anyway. If the the merchant had merely paid for the right to stable one or wagons in the BR yard, either at a specific point or just somewhere, it was not a private siding as the land was still BR’s property.

I had a thought this morning, what would the BR Estates department do with a yard whilst waiting for someone / council to buy the land? I know they did lease land to a local council outside one station, perhaps some coal traders were allowed to continue using the yard? The Estates Dept would probably prefer to get some money in?

I should think it was based on the balancing up of a number of factors: the revenue from existing tenants, the length of time that would be needed to to get them to quit, the likely interest from prospective purchasers that the site would receive, additional costs and liabilities of the options, etc. No point in kicking out merchants who could continue to pay more rent than the site’s costs if it was unlikely to attract purchasers at a worthwhile price.

Another report, from 1959, refers to the closure of Horsley yard and coal merchants having to go to Woking or Leatherhead instead. The complaints included the extra distance to travel (4-5 miles) and there being too little space for new coal merchants at these centralised stations. Again, they were hoping for a competitive supply direct from collieries, provided the NCB would make land-sale facilities available. I wonder how competitive that would have been, given that there was a distinct shortage of collieries near Horsley.

At Horsley coal was still stored at the back of the yard into the late 1960s and probably well into the 1970s. (Makes you feel old finding that maps of where you lived as a teen are now out of copyright.)

 

[Taunton]

Most coal merchants I recall were in station yards, owned by the railway but they had a hut/office, often with their name prominent, and a telephone line, key for receiving orders from customers, placing orders with the NCB, and co-ordinating wagons with the railway, often run by an older woman who knew it all in their head. A second hut as a mess room for their coal men, who might not be allowed beyond the public window of the first hut. A public window because some customers still had no telephone. Standage for lorries, and equipment for weighing and bagging up. This was all land rented from the railway.

 

[Andy873]

I'm quite sure now I've worked out why BR were going on about landsale agreements in relation to the coal traders, at least at Gt. Harwood anyway...

A couple of years ago as I was starting to compile my list of bridges on the loop line I noticed that the 1956 OS town map sheet showed surprisingly few buildings in the goods yard, apart from some toilets and the goods shed there were only four small buildings, one of them was the weighbridge office. Now 10 coal traders into 3 small buildings doesn't go. The only possible explanation is this landsale agreement with the traders, where by they place orders with the NCB, it gets delivered to the goods yard and the trader's truck(s) come and collect it then promptly leave again. Does this sound like the answer?

 

[Dr Hoo]

A belated contribution from me: (I worked in the Coal section at BRB HQ for a couple of years in the early 1980s and was amazed at how complicated 'coal' was. Like any subject, I suppose, the less you know, the easier it appears.)

It's probably work keeping in mind that 'land' is a very important asset and driver. Originally coal was generally extracted from land belonging to a rich landowner. (Yes, I know that there were exceptions such as local surface outcrops.) The challenge was that you couldn't change where the coal actually was, in relation to either means of transport or demand. Initially if you weren't close to a navigable river or the sea it would be almost impossible to compete with a source that was nearer. The only thing that you could do was to sell it at the pit head to local people who would turn up with a small cart. This became landsale. There were far fewer roads suitable for large carts, 'wains'. Before turnpikes there was great difficult in negotiating the wayleaves over other people's land for a 'wainway'. Wayleaves were first developed for this in the 13th century, apparently, in the Forest of Dean.

From the early 17th century it became technically possible to build waggonways of a reasonable gauge and length to form meaningful land transport corridors, so long as a downhill and gravitational alignment could be found. Because of the local geography North East England was the first area to exploit this at scale, with links down to the Tyne, Wear or a harbour on the coast. The coal went predominantly by ship to London, hence seasale.

The development of improved river navigations and canals opened things up far more. The first waggonways to an artificial waterway were probably around St Helens, in connection with the Sankey Brook navigation. If the colliery owner owned the waggonway they could then sell coal from a canal wharf rather than just the pithead, for others to move forward. So it was possible to have forward landsale beyond the point of production, with the coal producer still owning the coal until it left the wharf.

Fast forward to the development of railways. There were hundreds of collieries, all producing 'unique' coal. When I was working for BR I was amazed to discover that the 200-plus remaining collieries produced what were regarded as over 400 distinct products - literally every seam was different. Coal is, after all, a natural product rather than the highly defined output of a refinery or chemical works. So each coal had varying qualities in terms of ash production, smoke production, being easier to light, combustion temperature, chlorine content, sulphur content and so on. If you were a large industrial plant than having the 'best' coal for your boilers was important. Not every ton was equal!

The nice thing for the customer about a station yard coal merchant was that they could bring together a range of fuels, from smokeless through to nice-sized lumps, 'patent' fuels, coke and so on. An absolute nightmare for BR moving vast numbers of individual wagons from a wide range of collieries to thousands of stations. The Coal Concentration Depot (CCD) at least made it worth while moving rafts for wagons to a much smaller number of locations. It was expected that station yard merchants could remain in many locations and draw their supplies from the nearest CCD. Because BR was the landlord they sought to enforce a system of Roadborne Entry Charges if coal was supplied other than from a CCD. Audit inspections of merchants' books could be made.

Because of the seasonal demand for domestic coal in particular, the NCB could have problems with coal piling up at collieries during the summer and often gave discounts for summer orders. I believe that it was also possible to coal to sometimes be moved on a 'receive now, pay later' basis, where the NCB would retain title until the stocks were liquidated to the final customer. This might just be regarded as a form of 'forward landsale' away from the colliery but that's very much a guess on my part.

 

[Acathater]

Because of the seasonal demand for domestic coal in particular, the NCB could have problems with coal piling up at collieries during the summer and often gave discounts for summer orders. I believe that it was also possible to coal to sometimes be moved on a 'receive now, pay later' basis, where the NCB would retain title until the stocks were liquidated to the final customer. This might just be regarded as a form of 'forward landsale' away from the colliery but that's very much a guess on my part.

The merchants certainly gave discounts for summer orders
My parents would purchase their entire winters needs around August for what they said was a substantial reduction. I can't remember the exact details, but something like 30% off for a ton or more sounds in the right ballpark

 

[Andy873]

A belated contribution from me

Your contributions are always interesting and that's a good potted history of how things developed.

The merchants certainly gave discounts for summer orders
My parents would purchase their entire winters needs around August for what they said was a substantial reduction. I can't remember the exact details, but something like 30% off for a ton or more sounds in the right ballpark

Buying coal in the summer seems to have been a great way to save money if you had the spare cash available. I suppose if we were all organised we'd buy next Christmas' presents in the January sales!

Hopefully, even though it's covering the situation at one station on one line, the points here should be transferable to many stations all over the place. The subject of coal is indeed a complicated one.

 

[Taunton]

Hopefully, even though it's covering the situation at one station on one line, the points here should be transferable to many stations all over the place. The subject of coal is indeed a complicated one.

In fact, coal was often the principal driver and revenue source of much Victorian railway development. The Wilts Somerset & Weymouth, an early line from Chippenham on the GWR all the way down to Weymouth (other lines in the area were later additions) was aimed initially at potential inwards coal traffic from the Midlands..

 

[Rivercider]

I also remember in the weekly Commercial Circular (I think that was the title) there were routine instructions for Area Managers to arrange to have 'excess space' occupied by merchants to be measured. I'm not sure what the outcome was, but getting them to pay standage and demurrage was usually hard going.

In Bristol Area Freight Centre in the late 1970s or very early 1980s one of the RDR Supervisors sometimes went out around the area with a measuring wheel
to measure the area occupied by coal merchants. What happened thereafter with those measurements I have no idea,

cheers

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Aug 2026 ==

In the 1977 TOPS LOCATION HANDBOOK there are a number of locations with the customer described as NATIONAL FUEL DISTRIBUTORS.
These all seem to be located next to a NCB colliery or coke works, so are they possibly Landsale locations?

78023 Tymawr NCB
78024 Tymawr NFD
78221 Nantgarw coke works
78222 Nantgarw NFD
78358 Bargoed NCB
78359 Bargoed NFD
79091 Brynlliw NCB
79092 Brynlliw NFD

cheers

 

[Gloster]

In Bristol Area Freight Centre in the late 1970s or very early 1980s one of the RDR Supervisors sometimes went out around the area with a measuring wheel
to measure the area occupied by coal merchants. What happened thereafter with those measurements I have no idea,

cheers

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Aug 2026 ==

In the 1977 TOPS LOCATION HANDBOOK there are a number of locations with the customer described as NATIONAL FUEL DISTRIBUTORS.
These all seem to be located next to a NCB colliery or coke works, so are they possibly Landsale locations?

78023 Tymawr NCB
78024 Tymawr NFD
78221 Nantgarw coke works
78222 Nantgarw NFD
78358 Bargoed NCB
78359 Bargoed NFD
79091 Brynlliw NCB
79092 Brynlliw NFD

cheers

The last three seem to have had landsale depots, but I can’t find one at Tymawr, although that is not proof either way. Perhaps they had a TOPS number because they sold coal of a different grade to the local product that had to be brought in in wagons, which might be bending the ‘pure’ definition of landsale a bit?

 

[Dr Hoo]

The last three seem to have had landsale depots, but I can’t find one at Tymawr, although that is not proof either way. Perhaps they had a TOPS number because they sold coal of a different grade to the local product that had to be brought in in wagons, which might be bending the ‘pure’ definition of landsale a bit?

Very possibly. Having been extensively involved in ‘coal’ for a while there seemed to be endless variations of moves of Concessionary (miners’ “free” coal), Landsale between sites, movements to a nearby Washery, Blending purposes, Stocking sites, movements of local Opencast coal into colliery sites for loading to rail, Slurry to the few power stations like Methil that could burn it and so on. Various ‘different’ TOPS locations could be ‘virtual’ distinctions only for the subtleties of accountancy, charging and customer reasons.