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Keeping 500,000 promises
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ayear by Ashley Taylor, AMIRTE Assoc Inst T
Computers control Tartan Arrow Glasgow-London overnight transit Special money-back guarantee facility
CONGESTION is the natural enemy of transport. I am not referring Merely to the road congestion with which all road users are familiar, but also to the piling up of traffic which, unless systematically controlled, can all too" easily change a successful venture into failure. However, there is little doubt that with the aid of modern data processing many transport undertakings could greatly reduce the frustration often experienced by customers and staff. The advantages of computerisation are amply demonstrated by the facilities ror overnight London area /Glasgow area :ransit offered by Tartan Arrow Services Nho are unique in employing their own :hartered train for the trunk haul. However ;ound the principle adopted, doubletranshipment involves problems of its own md I suspect that fears of difficulties in 3rogress tracing may have caused some )ther operators to fight shy of evolving -oad-rail-road operations of their own.
Tartan Arrow set out to offer a reliable ;ervice that would enable products from 7..entral Scotland to be available in London
and the South East with a minimal loss of working time, and similarly with products originating in the South-East and destined for the GlasgOw /Edinburgh area. There may be cheaper ways of forwarding goods by these routes but obviously thousands of customers are well satisfied with the facilities offered. Anything can be sent, from a parcel to a full container, and on average the Monday-to-Friday service carries some 2,000 tons in each direction weekly. Minimum charge for a parcel between Glasgow central area and London central area is 1 Os 9d, which covers next-day delivery. There is also a Blue Parcels priority system that virtually ensures on-time delivery, this carrying a minimum rate of 14s 5d coupled with a money-back guarantee in case of failure. I am told that claims for refund are few and far between. Hundreds of thousands of consignments large and small travel in each direction in the course of the year—in round figures let's say half-a-million—and the system of control is such that fully detailed waybills are ready for every delivery vehicle long
before the train from the South runs into the freight shed at the Tartan Arrow terminal at Glasgow.
The Scottish director of Tartan Arrow is 35-year-old Mr. John Cooper who left the Army in 1955 and immediately took over operations North of the Border for the road transport company established by his brother, Mr. Derek Cooper, two years previously. Mr. Derek Cooper continues to direct operations at the London end. They decided to take a serious interest in parcels traffic in 1957 and, following a number of successful developments, the business became a public company five years ago. The Coopers quickly saw the possibility of linking their operations with the new express liner trains and in 1965 an agreement was made by Tartan to charter their own regular services. The terminals were due to open early in 1967 and the "blacking" of the Tartan Arrow trains is now old history. In 1966 the Transport Holding Co. had taken a stake in the organization and in due course Tartan were taken over jointly by THC and British Railways, thus falling fully under the banner of the National Freight Corporation.
The trains employed for the Glasgow-London route, and vice versa, incorporate eight full-size parcel vans, similar externally to the Royal Mail coaches, and seven 60ft bogies, each of which can transport two 30ft containers, three 20-footers, or one each of 30ft, 20ft and 10ft. The train operates between Kentish Town in London and Dalmarnock (Glasgow) where it runs straight into a Tartan Arrow freight shed, drawing up alongside the 600ft loading bank where sorting takes place. Delivery of parcels by road is performed by a fleet of 50 seven-ton Bedford vans. Container haulage is undertaken by 30 articulated units of 24 tons or 32 tons gross weight. These are mainly Leylands but a number of Guys is also included. Distinct from the trunk operation there, Tartan Arrow has a fleet of 35 platform vehicles engaged on general haulage and working under the title of Ritchie, a subsidiary organization. Their activity includes a certain amount of hiring work and daily runs with sundries traffic to major Scottish cities. Mostly four-wheelers in the 9-ton to I6-ton-gross range, these vehicles are in the process of replacement by Leylands and Bedfords.
The southbound Tartan Arrow train leaves between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. each evening, Monday to Friday, arriving in Kentish Town between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. Arrival of the northbound train in Glasgow is a little later. Mr. John Cooper told me that barring such things as snowdrifts the schedules are well maintained and he would expect there to be improved timings year by year in the future. Transhipment and documentation of the 10ft, 20ft and 30ft containers is a straightforward operation. A Goliath gantry crane starts work before 7 a.m. transferring containers to the road vehicles which are ready to leave between 7 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. when the drivers come on duty. Nightly traffic ex-London includes two containers holding parcels for Aberdeen which will be broken down for detailed delivery on arrival there. Items in this load may be destined for Wick and Thurso, these being handed over to sub-contractors handling that area.
Parcels side
It is, however, the parcels side of the undertaking that demands the greatest administrative care. At the southern end traffic comes in not only from London but from a wide area of the South-East extending roughly from Southampton to Northampton. In the North, Tartan Arrow serves in the main that part of the country within a 75-mile radius from Glasgow, although the farthest distance at which a next-day delivery from London can be guaranteed is 50 miles. Porters, checkers and markers, start work at 6 a.m. and so are ready to go into action as soon as the train comes in. Advices already come through regarding the parcels content of the load. The make-up of the train is such that the parcels vans come to a halt alongside the central section of the unloading bank. In such time as there has been available at the London end the parcels will have been given a pre-sorting.
At Glasgow they are taken from the vans and placed on the floor conveyor for transfer to the appropriate dispatch bay. The division between parcels and general traffic is on the commonsense basis that anything that can reasonably be handled on the conveyor falls into the former category. As the various packages are unloaded they are marked with the street order and transferred to the bays. By 7 a.m. the vehicles that have the longest distance to travel are being made ready for their rounds. As the target is to have all parcels traffic cleared by 10 a.m. a number of part-time workers •are employed on a four-hour shift finishing at this time. From 10 am. onwards the full-time staff handle deliveries to the more distant places for which it is not practicable to guarantee same-day delivery from the South of England.
As they complete their delivery rounds some of the vans will turn over to the work of collection although others, engaged exclusively on this duty, will already be well laden. A radio link with all vehicles in the fleet enables progress to be checked and routings amended if necessary. A number ol urgent parcels are brought in by customerE and in the early afternoon the consignmentE are being co-ordinated, the peak loading period for the trains extending from 4 p.m to 8 p.m.
Vital factor
In the offices, the windows of which tool down on the loading bank, documentatioi is proceeding, a vital factor in this type o operation with its great volume of traffic The parcels arriving at the depot an checked in, the notes then travelling up du Lamson Paragon tube into the traffic offic■ for editing, that is to say the addition o codings that give weights, destinations an other details. This information is then clan processed on to the normal tape. The tapes with particulars of every article of traffic oi the train to be received by London th following morning, are transmitted b: means of Plessey machines to Tartai Arrow's London office where th. company's main Burroughs 500 Serie computer is situated. Data processing at th London end produces waybills for the traffi that has originated in Scotland.
Glasgow receives back a similar tape this being put on the machines that prin out the waybills for all the traffic that i coming on the trains from London fo delivery in Scotland the following da) Waybilling takes place in town and stree
order, the entires on each bill being automatically cut off at seven tons which is the capacity of the vehicle. Waybills are thus ready well in advance of the train's arrival; one copy goes to the delivery driver, one copy to the checker, and one copy is retained as proof of delivery. Tapes are also transmitted from Glasgow to London showing parcels collected and held on the bank for delivery within Scotland, so indicating the delivery responsibilities of the Tartan Arrow Scottish fleet for the following day. Details of the consignments carried in the containers are transmitted by the computer room in the same manner as those of the parcels.
North/south balance
Figures indicate that northbound and southbound traffic by the Tartan Arrow service is very evenly balanced. The value of the facilities to the trading community can be gauged from the fact that the traffic has shown a steady increase and was in fact 50 per cent up last year. Throughout the 12 months the graph remains steady with the exception of two short periods. One is in the latter part of July and the beginning of August, when many business houses are on holiday and trade in consequence slackens off somewhat, and the other is just prior to Christmas when the services are under considerable pressure for several weeks.
Recently there has been a further Tartan Arrow development aimed at assisting Scottish merchants and manufacturers in a yet wider field. This is the inauguration of Tartan Air Freight which gives a 48-hour service between Glasgow and Paris at extremely attractive charges. Parcels collected in southern Scotland by the Tartan Arrow fleet are sent by the liner train to London, from whence they are forwarded by road to Ashford (Kent). There they connect with the air service operated by Skyways. another NFC company, to Beauvais from which point the various consignments are carried to destinations in Paris and elsewhere by the Beauvais Transit organization.