Dockside Cranes

[phil_sutters]

40 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Thanks Phil. I'd forgotten about that one too.

I'm pretty sure that It does have a fairly short jib but I'll try to dig our my own photos of it. Despite that the machine house is of the larger variety which suggests that it was handling fairly heavy loads. The jib length would relate to the luffing needed to reach the far side of the hold or whatever in the ships being dealt with.  Chatham was a naval dockyard so would presumably be dealing with rather narrower vessels than most deep sea cargo ships. I'm pretty sure in any case that the dock where that crane is mounted is a fairly narrow one. I think that was also the reason why the cranes in ferry ports were generally smaller than those in Docks like Southampton or London.

I think that its current location is not one that it would have been used in. If you look at Google maps it is opposite the inshore end of a dock with the railway running between it and the dock. I take your point about different sized jibs for different lifting tasks. Many of the photos of Newhaven show the small rail mounted types, as were used at Highbridge.

[phil_sutters]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

Thanks Phil. I'd forgotten about that one too.

I'm pretty sure that It does have a fairly short jib but I'll try to dig our my own photos of it. Despite that the machine house is of the larger variety which suggests that it was handling fairly heavy loads. The jib length would relate to the luffing needed to reach the far side of the hold or whatever in the ships being dealt with.  Chatham was a naval dockyard so would presumably be dealing with rather narrower vessels than most deep sea cargo ships. I'm pretty sure in any case that the dock where that crane is mounted is a fairly narrow one. I think that was also the reason why the cranes in ferry ports were generally smaller than those in Docks like Southampton or London.

I think that its current location is not one that it would have been used in. If you look at Google maps it is opposite the inshore end of a dock with the railway running between it and the dock. I take your point about different sized jibs for different lifting tasks. Many of the photos of Newhaven show the small rail mounted types, as were used at Highbridge.

The trio of cranes at the entrance to the West India Docks, which are in the distance in this shot taken when the Swedish ship Gotheborg was visiting still seem to be there, judging by the current 3D view from the Google spy satellite.

[D River]

20 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

That's sad. Do you know when? The video was uploaded to YouTube in 2008 but I took this picture in September 2015 after taking some friends to start their cruise on the Azure and finding the Waverley on the next berth

 

I wasn't focussing on the cranes but there were four or five of them  ranged along Western Docks' long quay.

 

Further to the question of the "traditional" cranes in Southampton Western Docks - a quick look at Google Earth's historic layers function shows they actually went a year later than I'd thought - late 2016 / early 2017.  This capture of the imagery dated 12/8/16 shows the remaining older cranes up around 105/104 berths.  I stopped working trains into the docks in August 2017 after 25 years of doing so, and I'm sure they'd gone by then as I was very conscious - with the terminal redevelopments - of how much of the old infrastructure had vanished in a relatively short time.  If only I'd taken more photos....

 

 

[Pacific231G]

20 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

I think that its current location is not one that it would have been used in. If you look at Google maps it is opposite the inshore end of a dock with the railway running between it and the dock. I take your point about different sized jibs for different lifting tasks. Many of the photos of Newhaven show the small rail mounted types, as were used at Highbridge.

Hi Phil

Looking at the location again and my other photos from it. the shorter crane no. 4412 is definitely still on its crane rails, though almost touching the inland end stops, and they run the full length of the half flooded drydock housing HMS Cavalier. They're a bit different from the crane rails usually found in commercial docks as they're raised maybe a foot above ground level with one rail right on the edge of the dock, it's a a bit hidden by the safety fence ,  and the other creating a low barrier between the working area and the side of the dock.

I've enhanced crops from my own photos to show the rails more clearly.

 

 

 

Also, unlike most cargo handling docks, there doesn't seem to have been a railway line running between the two crane rails and there is  "pit" between the rails. I think the electrical supply cable lay in a shallow trough just inside the right hand rail (as seen in these images) as it was wound and unwound from the cable drum (clearly visible in the first two images I posted yesterday. I can't tell from my photos whether the cable has been removed or the drum is empty because the cable is fed from the gate end of dock. 

The other taller crane is a bit less certain. It's at the gate end of the drydock and there don't appear to be any rails running along that side of the dock but, looking at Google Earth, you can see a linear mark aligned with the leg of the crane, indicating from where rail may have been removed. These cranes are such large structures that dismantling them, moving them to another location and re-erecitng them, though possible, would be a fairly major undertaking; so when they have been preserved, like those in front of Bristol's M shed,  it tends to be in situ. 

 

Needless to say, I'm now wishing I'd taken more photos of these cranes and their surroundings when I was at the dockyard for the Chatham show in 2004. However, that day I also had a good chat with Cyril Freezer over a lunchtime sandwich. That was the last time I met him and might well not have done had I spent any more  more time photographing Stothert & Pitt cranes.

 

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Siberian Snooper]

On 14/10/2019 at 10:05, phil_sutters said:

By pure coincidence, I have just bought the Oakwood Press book by S.Jordan 'Ferry Services of the LB&SCR'. There are two photos of ships resting on the Newhaven Harbour gridiron. In this case the gridiron was installed to allow minor repairs to be done locally, with out the need for a dry dock. The railway company had its own marine engineering workshop there, to service its fleet of cross channel ferries, with a massive set of sheer-legs to lift ships' boilers out for maintenance.  The workshop was converted in 2014/5 into a University Technical College for 14 - 18 year-olds studying science, maths and engineering. Unfortunately it hasn't attracted enough students and has been wound down. There has been talk of converting it into a FE college for the same range of subjects.

You can see my photos of the work to convert the workshops at http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/album/723445 . They include photos of the original railway buildings demolished or converted.

 

Any idea what sort of boilers were fitted to the ferries?

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

On 14/10/2019 at 19:47, Pacific231G said:

Thanks Phil. I'd forgotten about that one too but I've  just found my photos of crane no 4412  and the other much taller one on the other side of the same dock and they're my clearest images of S&P LL cranes.

4412 does have a fairly short jib and the whole crane is quite squat.

 

 

 

 Despite its short stature that the machine house is of the larger variety but this crane could handle loads of 10 tons (though not over its whole range) which is more than the typical 3-5 ton level luffing cranes used for general cargo handling. The jib length would relate to the luffing needed to reach the far side of the hold or whatever in the ship is being lifted, in a dry dock probably machinery and other parts of the ship rather than stores and in this case the dry dock is realtively narrow. I think not having to reach so far was also the reason why the cranes in ferry ports were generally smaller than those in Docks like Southampton or London.

However, the other crane in that part of Chatham dockyard, no 640 (?) which I think is SWL 9 tons is much taller.

 

I think in this case the height was to handle masts, radar installations and so forth so the base is very tall but so is the jib itself. I also have no idea what the intermediate level "garden shed" on this crane was for, possibly just to store parts.

What is alo interesting about this and other images is how little standardisation there seems to have been in Stothert and Pitt's designs, The shape of the machine house/cab in particular do seem to have varied a great deal.

 

 

 

If I remember correctly the "garden shed" holds electrical gear to convert voltages etc, as when they were built  the supply voltages were different to the current supplies. In Devonport Boilershop we had some obsolete machinery that was still used and that had some big electric motors and dynamos to provide juice for them, a right pig to get going, fortunately not needed very often.

 

 

[phil_sutters]

10 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

Any idea what sort of boilers were fitted to the ferries?

 

 

It will take me a time to go through 'The Ferry Services of the LBSCR' to find the details of the dozens of ships used on their services. A copy of the book is currently available from World of Books at https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/s-jordan/ferry-services-of-the-london-brighton-and-south-coast-railway/GOR009840992   for £3.99 including p&p. They post out very promptly. If you don't want to go that route, I will gather up the information when I have a moment or two....

Best wishes

 

Phile

[Siberian Snooper]

3 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

It will take me a time to go through 'The Ferry Services of the LBSCR' to find the details of the dozens of ships used on their services. A copy of the book is currently available from World of Books at https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/s-jordan/ferry-services-of-the-london-brighton-and-south-coast-railway/GOR009840992   for £3.99 including p&p. They post out very promptly. If you don't want to go that route, I will gather up the information when I have a moment or two....

Best wishes

 

Phile

 

 

It's only professional interest, being a boilermaker by trade and never seen boilers removed from the ship for re-tubing or repairs.

 

 

[phil_sutters]

23 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

 

It's only professional interest, being a boilermaker by trade and never seen boilers removed from the ship for re-tubing or repairs.

 

 

There is a photo in the Maritime Activities of the Somerset & Dorset Railway by Chris Handley, in which a ships boiler has been lifted out by a railway breakdown crane and placed on a wagon for transfer to Highbridge loco works for repair. It would appear to have been an out of gauge load, but with only a short way to go and just a few overbridges - two, foot, one at the A38 and one, foot and one road, at Highbridge station, it was presumably fairly straight-forward as Chris says it was the way the company maintained its own vessels.

With a much bigger fleet and dockside facilities - the marine engineering workshops and a huge set of sheerlegs - the LBSCR at Newhaven must have been well versed in doing this type of work.

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

4 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

There is a photo in the Maritime Activities of the Somerset & Dorset Railway by Chris Handley, in which a ships boiler has been lifted out by a railway breakdown crane and placed on a wagon for transfer to Highbridge loco works for repair. It would appear to have been an out of gauge load, but with only a short way to go and just a few overbridges - two, foot, one at the A38 and one, foot and one road, at Highbridge station, it was presumably fairly straight-forward as Chris says it was the way the company maintained its own vessels.

With a much bigger fleet and dockside facilities - the marine engineering workshops and a huge set of sheerlegs - the LBSCR at Newhaven must have been well versed in doing this type of work.

 

 

 

 

Must be some fairly large holes to allow for boiler removal, or the boilers are fairly small to allow for egress from the boiler room.

 

 

[phil_sutters]

On the S&D cargo ships it looks as though the bridge structure and funnel were lifted off. The Julia, whose boiler is the one shown out on a railway wagon, had a boiler with a 10'6" diameter and 9'9" mean length. These dimensions are on the machinery arrangement drawing in Maritime Activities of the S&DR.

Julia and Radstock were just under 200 tonnes gross, less than a third of the tonnage of the LBSCR passenger ferries of the same inter-war era.

On the ferries the areas under the funnels would be where the boilers were, I guess, So maybe they were lifted off along with part of the superstructure beneath. I have not seen any plans so this is pure speculation.

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

On the S&D cargo ships it looks as though the bridge structure and funnel were lifted off. The Julia, whose boiler is the one shown out on a railway wagon, had a boiler with a 10'6" diameter and 9'9" mean length. These dimensions are on the machinery arrangement drawing in Maritime Activities of the S&DR.

Julia and Radstock were just under 200 tonnes gross, less than a third of the tonnage of the LBSCR passenger ferries of the same inter-war era.

On the ferries the areas under the funnels would be where the boilers were, I guess, So maybe they were lifted off along with part of the superstructure beneath. I have not seen any plans so this is pure speculation.

Looking at various plans in Waine's Steam Coasters and his description of the their building, the machinery and boiler(s) would be installed, the engine casing closed up and the structure above the boiler, usually the galley, and funnel fitted. For complete reboilering, the yard probably would have had to remove part of the superstructure though the casing must have been large enough for the largest . The rest of the machinery including the individual parts of the engines could be lifted in and out through the engine room skylight though for larger components I suspect that the engine room skylight would have had to be lifted off completely. 

I understand that the P.S. Waverly uses modern industrial steam generators but AFAIK the S.S. Shieldhall is still fitted with its original Scotch boilers so the Trust's engineers could probably answer that question. 

[Pacific231G]

On 15/10/2019 at 23:31, Siberian Snooper said:

 

If I remember correctly the "garden shed" holds electrical gear to convert voltages etc, as when they were built  the supply voltages were different to the current supplies. In Devonport Boilershop we had some obsolete machinery that was still used and that had some big electric motors and dynamos to provide juice for them, a right pig to get going, fortunately not needed very often.

 

 

Hi Phil

I've just got a copy of Stothert & Pitt Cranemakers to the World and the taller crane at Chatham is identical in every respect to a photo in the book of one of the 360 dockside cranes that the company built for the Ministry of Supply in eighteen months from 1944 at the rate of up to ten a week. According to the book, they were designed to be erected quckly, possibly under enemy fire, from interchangeable units, sometimes assembled on site in as little as twenty seven working hours, and were designed to include a diesel generator to power them independently of local electrical supplies  in damaged or temporary military ports. 

 

The book isn't good on technical details- it talks for example about the importance of Claude Toplis' invention of level luffing but never explains it.  Essentially it's a biography of the company, but I take from their description that these particular cranes were prefabricated.  I assume that the "garden shed", that doesn't appear in any of the other cargo cranes illustrated, was to accomodate the generator but when installed in a permanent location would continue to house the electrical gear even if the generator had been removed or quite possibly never installed , when a shore supply ofelectrical power was reliably available.

[phil_sutters]

I have just spotted a big crane and two smaller ones in the photo-sharing site I use. 'Stone Road' records a lot of railway stock restoration and replica building they are working on. They have an interest in the Peterhead Prison quarry railway, hence the sharing of this scene at Peterhead.

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/312383/47877550

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

I have just spotted a big crane and two smaller ones in the photo-sharing site I use. 'Stone Road' records a lot of railway stock restoration and replica building they are working on. They have an interest in the Peterhead Prison quarry railway, hence the sharing of this scene at Peterhead.

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/312383/47877550

Thanks Phil

Those breakwater railways are always interesting. I remember sniffing around the one at S. Shields in the late 1960s just after the railway had closed so the train was still in the yard.

That block setting crane is definitely a no 10 outfit Meccano model and then some*. It's interesting also how similar the smaller steam cranes look to those that worked the Gare Maritime at Dieppe until at least the late 1950s. I think that's just form following purpose rather than any collusion.

 

*I wrote that somewhat tongue in cheek but then I found this !

 

Edited November 28, 2019 by Pacific231G
more info.

[D River]

DD2 Cranes - a few months ago I mentioned I was making a pair of these, and here they are, finally finished.  The scale is 2mm/foot, materials Brass and Nickel Silver with fly tying thread for the rigging.

Edited December 23, 2019 by D River
double upload

[Artless Bodger]

A totally fascinating topic - combining two of my favourite subjects, cranes and railways.  Referring to the cranes in some of the photos, with tall boxlike structures vertically on them, I believe these are hydraulic cranes and the vertical box contains the hydraulic cylinder for hoisting the load. A chain (usually in early examples) was secured at the end of the hydraulic cylinder, passed 180 degrees over a pulley on the end of the piston rod and then back down to a pulley at the base, then led to the jib and the hook. When the piston rose it drew the chain up and so raised the load, for a 20 foot lift the cylinder would have a 10 foot stroke, hence the height of the casing. There is a picture of two, one light one heavy, at GWR Brentford Docks: https://www.steampicturelibrary.com/places/docks-brentford-docks/gwr-docks-brentford-c1930-7194253.html

 

Sketch of operating principle.

[AlfaZagato]

Those cabins at Brentford seem...impractical.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

Those cabins at Brentford seem...impractical.

They do, in the sense that the cab doesn't slew (swing) with the jib. Presumably, the valves for the hydraulics were fixed so didn't move with the jib as it slewed but a crane operator needs to see the lift so I'm guessing that the length of the cabin enabled them to see from the rear of the cabin the load when it was being handled on the railway side. I also wonder if perhaps operating the crane was a two man operation with one opening and shutting the relevant valves and the other, presumably the man in charge of the crane , looking out and telling him what to do.

[AlfaZagato]

I'd hope so.    Those are at least 20-foot wide cabs; I can't imagine them being one-man operations at that point.

[phil_sutters]

11 hours ago, Artless Bodger said:

A totally fascinating topic - combining two of my favourite subjects, cranes and railways.  Referring to the cranes in some of the photos, with tall boxlike structures vertically on them, I believe these are hydraulic cranes and the vertical box contains the hydraulic cylinder for hoisting the load. A chain (usually in early examples) was secured at the end of the hydraulic cylinder, passed 180 degrees over a pulley on the end of the piston rod and then back down to a pulley at the base, then led to the jib and the hook. When the piston rose it drew the chain up and so raised the load, for a 20 foot lift the cylinder would have a 10 foot stroke, hence the height of the casing. There is a picture of two, one light one heavy, at GWR Brentford Docks: https://www.steampicturelibrary.com/places/docks-brentford-docks/gwr-docks-brentford-c1930-7194253.html

 

Sketch of operating principle.

These close-ups, of one of my Highbridge Wharf models, show the mechanism quite well. The chain is a bit overscale and I am not the finest of finescale modellers but it looks quite good when not subject to close-up photography.

[Tim V]

Fremantle 1969.

[Artless Bodger]

The Toplis patents can be found on Espacenet. https://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP

 

Claude Toplis' patent for a level luffing crane, including the reason for doing so is GB191222704 (A) (search Claude Toplis). A later patent for the bifurcated jib and crank luffing is in GB 213949 (A) (search Stothert Pitt). The bifurcated jib was designed to remove any obstruction from the crane operator's field of view, the crank luffing mechanism to ensure that if allowed to over-run the jib would just oscillate and no damage would occur. This patent includes diagrams which though of a general nature might be useful to anyone contemplating making a model.

[Schooner]

Whilst looking up Kerr Stuart locos I came across this and thought it might be of interest here:

 

 

I found it on the lovely Diana Facebook page, captioned "Sirdar MARY (KS 705/1901) on the jetty at Budle Bay, Northumberland. Photographed sometime between 1911-1917."

 

Looks almost as bad in the photo as it does outside at the moment...

[KeithMacdonald]

Do my eyes deceive me, or is the Sirdar Mary a Clyde Puffer?

Or something else?

It's not a name I can find on the Puffers and VICs vessel index.

https://www.puffersandvics.org/puffer_index.htm