All larger dock complexes were laced with railway lines and even a small riverside quay would be quite likely to have a goods siding run onto it. The railways saw the commercial potential in linking up with ferry services connecting the British mainland with Ireland and the Continent, several companies either bought stock in dock companies or purchased them outright (for example the London & South Western Railway purchased the whole of Southampton Docks in 1892 and the South Eastern Railway purchased Folkestone harbour to cater for their ferry service to Boulogne). Other companies actually built their own dock complexes from scratch - Harwich Parkeston Quay was built by the Great Eastern Railway in the 1890's, the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway extended the docks at Fleetwood to handle their timber, grain and fish traffic and the Hull and Barnsley Railway was until 1905 named the Hull, Barnsley & West Riding Junction Railway & Dock, as it was set up to service a purpose built dock complex at Hull.
By the late nineteenth century the railway operated ferry services ranged from small paddle steamers operating on lakes and rivers to large cattle carriers operating across the Irish Sea and fast passenger ships running to the Continent. The size of the ships varied with the work they had to do and that varied with time. The GWR operated a ferry across the river Dart between their station at Kingswear and the town of Dartmouth (the principal destination for the passengers). At the height of its popularity they used a moderately large paddle steamer for this service (the 1924 built Kingswear Castle is now operated as a cruising ship based at Chatham). By the 1950's when a new vessel was built a small motor type was sufficient (this service was operated by British Rail until the 1970's and the motor vessel remains in use today under the ownership of the Dart Valley Railway).
The railway owned ferries were often painted in the house colours of the railway company but some services were operated by wholly owned subsidiaries. One example is the Caledonian Steam Packet Company which operated services on the Stranraer Harbour to Larne ferry route. British Railways inherited the railway owned ships and routes and operated over a hundred services for many years, very few of the railway owned ferry services carried railway wagons however, by the twentieth century those that did all operated between ports on the South and East coast and the Continent (discussed below). The BR operated ships had black hulls, white superstructure, red funnels with a black top and, after 1964, the BR logo in white on the funnel sides. In 1965, following the change to the 'corporate' British Rail livery they adopted the name Sealink for all their ferry services and this name was often painted in white on the side of the ships hull.
Fig ___ BR Sealink ferry
Train Ferry Traffic
Carrying loaded railway wagons on ships and barges is not a new idea, we have been doing it since the 1830s. In the 21st century there are several services on various inland waterways around the world as well as sea-going services between countries.
Getting wagons across rivers usually involves building a bridge, in some cases however it was too expensive an option or too difficult from a technical standpoint. In 1833, on the Forth & Clyde Canal in Scotland, a barge was fitted with two sets of tracks arranged longitudinally, with a central loading track feeding a turn-plate and extending to the side of the barge. This was the worlds first wagon ferry and remained in operation for many years. The first railway ferry operating on open waters was also built in Scotland in 1850, it was used to carry goods wagons between Burntisland and Granton on Firth of Forth. The paddle-steamer Leviathan carried the trains, which formed the main link across the Forth until completion of the Forth Bridge railway in 1890.
Passenger and car ferries continued until the 1960s when a new suspension bridge was built.
Passengers were not carried on the train ferry barge, they had either to take a separate ferry or take the long way round in their coaches. Ferries of this type have not found favour in Britain, most rivers are small enough to be bridged, but they are widely used in other countries.
Larger sea-going commercial train ferries appeared in the UK in the 1920s, carrying loaded railway wagons between the UK and the continent using ships and port facilities built for the government in the First World War.
This type of ferry usually has two tracks to connect to the shore, each of the lines diverging on the deck to provide four tracks for on board carriage of rolling stock. These tracks on the ships deck are usually not fully encosed, which means that stock carrying dangerous cargo can be carried safely. As the ship will tilt if one side is loaded and the other is not the loading and unloading at the terminals takes place using two engines, one on each approach track, to keep the ship balanced.
The ship connects to the shore using a 'link span', essentially a bridge, one end hinged on the shore the other suspended from a heavy rectangular arch carried on a floating pontoon. The Granton to Burntisland ferry was the first to use this method, (although that small vessel was fed by a single track, with a set of points either just before the connection to the ship or possibly on the ship itself. I believe it had two tracks on the deck.)
In the UK the two train ferry ports were Harwich (from the early 1920s) and Dover (from the mid 1930s), both connecting with the continent. There was no train ferry service to Ireland, mainly because the track gauge in Ireland is wider than that in the UK and unlike the Iberian trade the nature of the traffic did not lend itself to (profitable) rail movement. Rail traffic to and from both ports was operated from marshalling yards in and around London, where it was attached to normal UK services for delivery.
The port of Harwich was actually built by the Great Eastern Railway in the 1880's to service their (non rail) ferry services to the Continent. It was originally named (and sometimes still referred to as) Parkeston Quay after GER's Chairman, Charles Parks.
During the First World War the War Department built three ships to carry railway vehicles and established military ports equipped with the necessary docking gear. These were used during the war to carry stores between military ports at Southampton and Richborough in Kent and Calais, Dieppe and Dunkirk in France. They remained in military service until 1919 and were then laid up.
In 1922 the Great Eastern Railway and the Belgian Government agreed to set up a train ferry service (freight only) between Harwich and Zeebrugge. In 1924 the LNER (who took over the GER in the 1923 Grouping) purchased the three war department ships and the associated shore 'link-span' equipment from the army and moved the linkspan to Harwich. The British and Belgian companies established the semi autonomous Great Eastern Train Ferries Ltd. to operate the ferries and La Société Belgo-Anglaise des Ferry Boats SA to control the rolling stock.
Fig ___ Ex WD train ferry in GETF livery
The Belgian company provided the bulk of the rolling stock, starting with 402 12-ton and 21 15-ton covered wagons leased from the Belgian State. These vans had 'swinging link suspension' and clasp type air brakes, sketches of the vans can be found in the section on Goods Rolling Stock Design - Ferry Wagons.
In 1932 the LNER took over the ferries when the ferry company went under as a result of the Great Depression.
At Harwich pairs of Sentinel S.1 locomotives were used to get the wagons on and off the ferries, using both approach tracks as described above to keep the ship stable. The ports had a pier to align the ship with the link span, the illustration below is based on an advert for the Zeebrugge end, but the arrangements were similar.
Fig ___ Ex WD link span and train ferry
By the later 1920s services operated to and from Belgium, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland and several continental railways built rolling stock for these services.
The main cargo was high value and perishable goods (fruits, vegetables, eggs, cheese, butter, meat and fish, especially herring) as well as fragile goods (pottery, glass, tiles and slate) which avoided them having to be man-handled on and off ships for the channel crossing.
In 1936, the Southern Railway company and the newly nationalised French railway (SNCF) invested in new train ferry docks at Dover and Dunkerque. Unlike the Harwich dock the Dover facility was fully enclosed, just large enough to hold a single ferry. This was to minimise the effects of the tide as the linkspan has to remain fairly level.
This service employed three ships, each of which had two tracks laid onto the stern with four tracks on deck. At each port, the ship ran stern-first into a dock where the water level could be adjusted so that the trains could run off the ship onto the tracks. They could carry twelve international sleeping carriages or twenty four forty foot wagons and an enclosed upper deck had a garage for 25 motor cars. The illustration below is based on a poster produced by the SR advertising this service. Note the funnels are mounted fore and aft rather than at the sides as on the older LNER (former War Department) ferries.
Fig ___ 1930s Southern Railway train ferry
The SR cross channel ferries were originally built to carry freight wagons (although foot passengers were also carried) but the new terminal at Dover was then also used to carry through sleeper passenger coaches (as well as freight) from 1936. This passenger coach carrying service was the London-Paris 'Night Ferry' which ran every day except Christmas Day (with a break during the Second World War). This service is discussed below under Ferry Related Railway Passenger Services. The Night Ferry service ceased operating in (I think) 1980.
When war broke out again in 1939 the LNER and SR train ferries were requisitioned and used by the Royal Navy, two of the former LNER ferries were sunk during the war. The lone survivor (HMS Princess Iris) was returned to civilian service after the war and renamed SS Essex Ferry. The ships had been extensively modified the war and when handed back to the LNER she had a single funnel on the centreline and the train deck was roofed over.
Fig ___ Post War former LNER train ferry
The demand for carrying railway goods wagons to and from Europe on purpose built cross channel ferries returned at the end of the war. In 1947 a new vessel was built for the Harwich-Zeebrugge route, the SS Suffolk Ferry, and in 1951 British Railways built another new four-track ferry for this service, the SS Norfolk Ferry. In the late 1950's BR Southern Region started building rolling stock for this trade.
In the post war era Harwich connected with the railway networks of Germany (West), Austria, the Swiss OBB, Belgian SNCB, Scandinavian railways and various Eastern European countries including the former East Germany.
Dover saw traffic from France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia.
Typically each ferry carried about thirty wagons and vans. British Railways owned ferry stock was all withdrawn from ferry use in 1982 and transferred to Speedlink to meet internal demand for air braked stock. By the early 1980's Speedlink was running five trains a day to and from Harwich and four trains a day to Dover, and there were additional special workings (notably china clay slurry tanks working to Switzerland).
In 1984 the Government decided BR should sell all its ferries and hotels, the entire ferry fleet was purchased by Sea Containers Ltd in 1985. The passenger train ferry services (carrying railway coaches) ended in the early 1970's but freight operations continued at Harwich until 1987 and at Dover until 1995.
The restrictions on carrying dangerous chemicals in the channel tunnel mean that this once common railway traffic is now carried on lorries using roll-on roll-off vehicle ferries. On the continent there are still a number of train ferry services operating and this has prompted people to consider re-starting a UK-Continent train ferry service, mainly for freight, using the old Harwich terminal. That would offer an alternative rail route in the event of problems with the channel tunnel but the costs of setting up the service will probably kill it on the drawing board. The 'link-span' that connects the ship to the shore at Harwich is now seriously dilapidated and would require a substantial capital investment to bring it back into use.
Ferry Related Railway Passenger Services
Only one through passenger service was operated using the ferries, this being the Night Ferry service between London and Paris mentioned above.
The Night Ferry passengers boarded the train in London (or Paris) and went to bed, they crossed the channel during the night and awoke in Paris (or London). One of the train ferries operated by the Southern Railway was specially adapted for this work. The sleeper coaches used were actually built by the French CIWL (Companie Internationale des Wagon-lits or International Sleeping Car Company), who also supplied the coaches for the 'Orient Express' . These coaches were specially built to suit the British loading gauge and were supplied along with some four wheeled brake vans with 'birdcage' look outs on top of the roof. The illustration below is a scan from a 1930s coach and wagon handbook, this was a 'pocket book', hence the poor quality of the image. It formed part of an advertisment for the Birminham Railway Carriage and Wagon Co.
Fig___ Wagon Lit London-Paris Coach
The usual train was made up of perhaps six sleeping cars with three or four special luggage vans and one of the special brake vans, the wagon lit coaches were essentially the same as the standard Continental type and as Continental N is 1 in 160 you could get away with using models from Continental firms although the brake van might be hard to find.
Fig___ Wagon Lit London-Paris Guards Van
I believe it was usual to add six British Pullman coaches for the London to Dover leg (the Grafar Pullmans might serve for a pre-war layout, but I am not sure about that) but these did not travel on the ferry.
As the railways owned and operated a great many ferry services they had many passenger trains timed to connect with these. Special stock or livery seems to have been rather rare however(the GWR may have had a distinctive livery for their 'ocean mails' service but I think that was confined to the mail bag vans).
Probably the most famous UK passenger train serving the ferries was the all-first-class Pullman coach Golden Arrow, an express service between London and Dover (Folkstone for a time in the late 1950's) where passengers left the train to cross over on the ferry. A similarly plush train was provided on the French side to take people on to Paris. The French actually started the idea, their 'Flèche d'Or' service began operating between Paris and Calais in 1926, it was 1929 before the British introduced their Golden Arrow service. The only pictures I have seen of the Golden Arrow train show it headed by a streamlined Merchant Navy class loco with a circular name plate on the front.
The last run of ‘Golden Arrow’ ran on 30th September 1972 however some of the Pullman cars have been restored and are now in use in the English portion of the "Venice-Simplon Orient Express", running over much the same route as they did in the past.
BR did run a rake of coaches in distinctive ferry livery in the 1980's, the livery used was the railway owned Sealink ferry livery. I only recently heard of these and couldn't find any further information but Marcus Kerr was able to advise as follows-
