GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Moor Street Station: gwrms2736

Francis Nicholls Ltd leased an area in Shed B Warehouse to deal with the banana traffic. Here after being unloaded from the wagons, the trusses of green bananas were stripped of their wrappers and hooked on to an overhead conveyor allowing them to be manoeuvred to the ripening rooms. Each truss weighed approximately 30lbs.

The Port of Avonmouth became synonymous with the Banana trade. This was the result of the Colonial Office offering an annual subsidy of £40,000 for a mail / passenger steamship line to run regularly between Britain and Jamaica. The aim was develop trade with the island and thus the deal included the requirement to import at least 20,000 bunches of bananas. The Elder-Dempster Line won the contract and the first refrigerated ship (SS Port Morant) arrived at the Port of Avonmouth from Port Limon in Jamaica in March 1901. The banana trade rapidly developed, by 1904 the ships were arriving every fortnight and in 1910, 200,000 bunches of bananas were being imported weekly through the Port of Avonmouth. Initially the banana bunches were manually unloaded from the ships by mainly casual labour and loaded into general merchandise railway vans waiting in three parallel sidings, but the increasing scale of the trade resulted in improvements, both in the handling and transportation. In the 1920’s four large electrically powered unloading gantries and elevators were constructed at N berth in the port to convey the bananas directly from the ships to the adjacent waiting wagons. This roughly halved the required work force to about 300. In addition the port's railway track layout was altered to a continuous circuit around which groups of about fifteen wagons could be pulled by capstans. These two improvements allowed one banana wagon to be fully loaded every minute. From 1905, dedicated wagons were also built (or modified) to better regulate their internal temperature, which meant the bananas could be ripened during the last leg of their journey and arrive at the retailers in perfect condition. This was done by insulating the wagons and providing controllable ventilation through the use of adjustable louvres and steam heating, which was powered by the locomotive in a similar manner to typical carriage heating. In winter when the steam heating was required to raise the temperature to about 20 degree Celsius, the number of wagons in each train had to be limited to typically 34 Banana Wagons. By 1926 the Great Western Railway had a fleet of 606 new or converted wagons dedicated to the banana traffic, including:

• 47 Diagram Y4 Purpose built wagons (built under L943 in 1925)
• 258 Diagram Y4 Conversions from Meat Wagons (see 'moor street/article6')
• 180 Diagram Y5 Wagons built 1907, insulated 1925
• 21 Diagram Y6 long wheelbase wagons built 1905, steam heated 1925
• 100 wagons received in exchange from the LNER in April 1925.

A further 100 banana wagons (diagram Y7) were built on lot L1054 in 1929. All of these steam heated banana wagons could be readily recognised by a two foot diameter white circle painted on their sides.

Robert Ferris

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