Dockside Cranes

[The Johnster]

That makes sense, Brian.  IIRC all the hoists at Swansea were mobile except the river wharves, as were those on the south wharf at Cardiff's Queen Alexdandra dock, the last built.  I think Newport's were mobile as well.  This enabled much more efficient use of the wharf space as well as the advantages you have outlined, and opened up the wharf to be capable of other uses as well, but was less efficient from the railways' point of view, as each wagon had to be shunted to the hoist and then taken away after tipping.  Because the wagons entered at ground level, mobile hoists had to raise them a greater distance than fixed hoists.  There is no such thing as a free lunch, and this required greater hydraulic power to achieve competitive loading speeds; as I said the game was to get the ship back out to sea as soon as possible.

 

The lack of sufficient hydraulic power to keep the hoists all working at the thier maximum capacity was the root of the problem that developed at Cardiff during the 1870s; it caused delays to shipping and railway traffic and led to David Davies Llandinam being involved in the development of Barry Docks, and the town and railway that went with them.  Cardiff responded with the Queen Alexandra Dock which could handle coal traffic more efficiently than the older docks (both were of course built with bigger sea locks to be able to handle large steamships) , but this suffered from having less direct rail connections to the Valleys railway network, though the Roath Branch had been built by the Taff Vale to serve it and the Roath Dock.  I cannot recall coal being shipped from the Roath Dock, the north side of which was mostly in the business of iron ore unloading for the steel works, the eastern end was used for grain traffic, and the southern wharf for pit props; it still handles imported timber.  Cardiff built new hydraulic pumping stations for these docks, but never achieved the efficiency of Barry nor the ship turnaround times of Penarth.  Penarth was hampered by a sea lock that prevented larger ships from using it, though, and closed before WW2.  My father remembers watching the Flying P line windjammers sailing from there, the Pamir and the Passat.

 

The fixed hoists often took the wagons from a high level embankment and could be fed by gravity as far as the turntable, and a common arrangement was for the empty wagon to run off the hoist on to a gradient to run by gravity to the 'empties' sidings where they were coupled and formed into trains to be returned to the collieries, which were like a 70s porn film script, 'more, more, faster, faster' (or so I am informe) in demanding them.  This arrangement was used at Barry and at Cardiff's East Dock; I was less familiar with Newport's methods but the layout was mostly at ground level there.  I do not know what arrangments were in place at Port Talbot, Briton Ferry, or Llanelli; Porthcawl had high level feed to it's hoists, used as carriage sidings when the dock was filled in by the excursion traffic; I can remember this.   The area was eventually cleared and used as a car and coach park.

 

The northeast English ports had, as has been stated, the geographical advantage of steep sides to their river wharves, and used fiexd staithes.  Grimsby, Immingham, and Hull were on more level terrain, and I presume used hoists; Immingham was built specifically for coal export and was, like the South Wales ports, railway owned.  Railway ownership meant that shunting was done by railway owned locos, as opposed to industrials, though the line was somewhat blurred at Swansea where the GWR came into possession of Harbour Trust and contractor's locos by absorbtion at the grouping.  The Manchester Ship Canal at Trafford Docks, Port of London Authority, and Port ot Bristol Authority  owned extensive railway networks and operated considerable fleets of locos, but we are drifiting from coal hoists.

 

A hydraulic pumping station, basically a big steam plant, would make a very good corner filler on a docks layout. 

[Fat Controller]

Llanelli's docks were on a level site, as were Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Burry Port, so wagons had to be lifted before tipping. The hydraulic power station at Llanelli's North Dock is still in existence; in recent years, it's been a restaurant, owned by Stephen Jones, formerly of Scarlets and Wales.

[Michael Edge]

One coal hoist still there in Goole, photo taken last month.

[Bernard Lamb]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

 

A hydraulic pumping station, basically a big steam plant, would make a very good corner filler on a docks layout. 

Try this for size.

By Limehouse Basin.

There were many examples around the London Docks with a very much larger example at Wapping. 

[figworthy]

3 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

One coal hoist still there in Goole, photo taken last month.

 

If that is the one that I think it is (if it is, I think I saw it working once), then the wagons would have arrived and left on an elevated section, running across the brick arch, rather than using the rails visible at ground level.

 

Adrian

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Try this for size.

By Limehouse Basin.

There were many examples around the London Docks with a very much larger example at Wapping. 

I know that hydraulic mains power was much used in the London Docks for fixed machinery of every kind from cranes to dock gates but  I've always wondered how portable it was. Could you hook up  a travelling crane to a hydraulic main as you can to an electric supply? 

[phil_sutters]

41 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I know that hydraulic mains power was much used in the London Docks for fixed machinery of every kind from cranes to dock gates but  I've always wondered how portable it was. Could you hook up  a travelling crane to a hydraulic main as you can to an electric supply? 

While it doesn't answer your question about mobile plant, this article does show how widespread its use was in London.

https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/hydraulic-power-in-london/

[The Johnster]

Wow.  A whole world that I never knew about previously!

[phil_sutters]

I didn't until I searched yesterday!

[Pacific231G]

4 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

I didn't until I searched yesterday!

Thinking about the London Docks, though I had known about it I'd forgotten all about the widening of the hydraulic power network to the rest of central London by the London Hydraulic Power Co. I also hadn't realised that the service operaed until as late as 1977 but with all the installed hydraulic  machinery around London that does make sense.

The company was bought by Cable and Wireless who used the pipe network to run telecomms cables around London.

I'm kind of wondering now about the quality of their water. It would have had to be pretty clean, free of contaminants if not biologically pure.  Apparently it was simply pumped from the tidal Thames and heated in winter to avoid freezing but how much filtration did it need? 

Though the first such system was in Hull, there were similar public suppliers in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow and, as statutory bodies, they had the right to dig up the streets. They had such a system in Melbourne lso but I don't know how common they were worldwide. 

The LHP co.  supplied water at 700-800 psi so any kind of mobile machinery would have needed pretty formidable flexible pipes. Apparently the LHP's eight inch diameter cast iron pipes had inch thick walls but even so breaches with considerable damage were not unknown. I've never noticed them but apparently, If you walk around central London,  you can see the small LHP placques on the covers of access points (I assume for valves) set in pavements etc.

LHP plaque- Footprints of London

Edited November 24, 2020 by Pacific231G
Updated with new information

[Schooner]

19 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Could you hook up  a travelling crane to a hydraulic main as you can to an electric supply? 

Travelling jiggers, absolutely:

 

As seen in the background here (London, c. 1900):

Amstrong, responsible for so many of the West India and Millwall cranes, was keen on jiggers and although he didn't invent them he did an awful lot to push them on customers!

 

A bit of a spam coming up, but I've just found high resolution photos of the Poplar Basins, 1898, which show wonderful details on the various cranes (and coal hoists). I had to share them here  Right-click and 'Open in new tab', then zoom for the full effect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sure these are all familar, but the highest resolution I've ever found. Hope they're useful. Oh, NLS Map linked, for context.

 

Cheers,

 

Schooner

Edited November 24, 2020 by Schooner
Map link addded

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, Schooner said:

Travelling jiggers, absolutely:

 

As seen in the background here (London, c. 1900):

Amstrong, responsible for so many of the West India and Millwall cranes, was keen on jiggers and although he didn't invent them he did an awful lot to push them on customers!

 

A bit of a spam coming up, but I've just found high resolution photos of the Poplar Basins, 1898, which show wonderful details on the various cranes (and coal hoists). I had to share them here  Right-click and 'Open in new tab', then zoom for the full effect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sure these are all familar, but the highest resolution I've ever found. Hope they're useful. Oh, NLS Map linked, for context.

 

Cheers,

 

Schooner

Thanks Schooner and those images are fascinating. However, I think an explanation of how jiggers worked is probably called for. I can see the hydraulic ram but if it's mobile how would that have been hooked up to the HP hydraulic main and my slightly educated guess might be well off the mark. 

Edited November 24, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Schooner]

I'm sure you'll have it right - it's the same principle as any block-and-tackle advantage...just working backwards!

Above is the 'normal' way purchases are put to use. Long story short, the weight of the object being moved is divided by the number of passes at the moving block; in return you must multiply the amount of line pulled by the number of passes at the moving block. More weight, less far.

 

Jiggers force the purchase apart, allowing them to exchange the enormous forces they exert for lifting a smaller weight further.

 

Did that help? Happy to draw up a sketch but it'll have to be in a little while...

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, Schooner said:

I'm sure you'll have it right - it's the same principle as any block-and-tackle advantage...just working backwards!

Above is the 'normal' way purchases are put to use. Long story short, the weight of the object being moved is divided by the number of passes at the moving block; in return you must multiply the amount of line pulled by the number of passes at the moving block. More weight, less far.

 

Jiggers force the purchase apart, allowing them to exchange the enormous forces they exert for lifting a smaller weight further.

 

Did that help? Happy to draw up a sketch but it'll have to be in a little while...

Hi Schooner 

I'm afraid it answers the question I didn't need to ask, but others probably did so a worthwhile and clear  explanation. However,  I do  understand the principles of mechanical advantage (Even after forty five years I think my University would be entitled to ask for it's engineering degree back if I didn't understand that ) The jigger in the photo is actually using a small chain drum and a much larger wire drum to multiply the travel (and divide the force) but the principal is the same.* I should perhaps have asked not how jiggers worked, that's clear from the photo, but how were they actually used. 

 

So, I understand how hydraulic pressure could operate lifts, hoists, presses, lock gates, theatre safety curtains and probably hydraulic motors (like steam engines but with water instead of steam) My real question was how you'd practically connect a mobile jigger to the hydraulic main at such high pressures and how would you transmit the motion to a crane not sitting next to a connection. The hydraulic outlets surely couldn't have been every few yards along the quay.  I can see a cable coming from the jigger but one cable could only handle hoisting, luffing and slewing would have to be manual, and you'd have to pass fairly rapid and detailed instructions from the crane to the jigger operator.

Assuming a cylinder diameter of about twelve inches and a mechanical ratio of perhaps 8 to 10 to one I'd estimate that the jigger in the photo could, at 400 psi, power the lift for a modest dockside crane of maybe a ton but some of the travelling cranes in your photos and other I've seen appear to be a lot larger than that. No problem for a fixed crane using hydraulic mains power of course but more challenging for one that has to move up and down the quayside. 

 

*A slight aside but there is  an excellent example of the pulley based system you're describing in the ground to  first and second stage lifts in the Eiffel Tower which move through 128 metres driven via  a carriage and cables running over a set of pulleys by a hydraulic cylinder with a throw of 16 metres. and a  ratio of 8:1  . It used to be a classic water hydraulic system with three large  accumulators but I think it's now a hydraulic oil system driven by an electric pump and the accumulators act now only as hydraulic counterweights- they no longer store the energy to run the lifts. I think hydraulic lifts in buildings generally used this system though I think some (probably single floor goods lifts)  used a directly acting cylinder under the cage.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Schooner]

Ah yes, sorry , I see now I misread your post, no slight intended

 

No answers I'm afraid - I wish I knew! The only other picture I've found to date isn't great either:

 

I think they were used almost exclusively with cranes in fixed positions - as above - or with ship's gear ("typically a yardarm rig" I've read, which to me sounds simply like a whip rigged of the end of a spar give enough height and be able to plumb the hold/quay) as in the previous pic of Loch Torridon. In either case the location of the jigger, and so hydraulic connections for it, would be set. In neither case is there a requirement to luff, and slewing is either passive (? As above?) or negated by guying the load directly as would be fairly typical for a ship unloading with her own gear in that fashion.

 

It's perhaps worth noting that Armstrong's fixed cranes didn't allow for assisted slew unless fitted with a dedicated ram, and had fixed jibs:

 

Absolutely no idea how connections were made to the system, but I've yet to read either of the two books I've got on the list for this very problem: 

 

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/ApplebysIllustratedHandbookofMachinery_10859368 

 

and

 

https://ia801002.us.archive.org/27/items/ApplebyIllusHandbookOfMachinerySecV1903/Appleby Illus Handbook of Machinery Sec V 1903.pdf 

 

(Appleby being the one who broke Amstrong's crane monopoly at the West India and Millwall Docks)

 

EDIT: Aha! From Section 2, p37, on hydraulic portable cranes:

"To carry this system into effect, the pressure mains will be laid in the centre of a line of rails, or parallel to it on one side, and a simple form of high-pressure hydrant will be fixed at any of the joints, which will be at convenient distances apart. The crane will have a corresponding pipe connection, which, when attached, will force inwards the valve of the hydrant, and, when disconnected, this valve will come back to its seat and retain the pressure in the mains. The pipe can thus be taken through the cranepost in the usual manner to the cylinders for lifting and slewing"

Edited November 24, 2020 by Schooner

[Giles]

Slightly off topic, the stage machinery- in particular stage lifts of London's Theatres were powered from the mains for very many years. If I recall, the Hydraulic lifts in the Opera House were only removed in the early '90s (although long since disconnected..,)

 

We still occasionally use jigger rams for elevators, either vertical or horizontal, although of course now modern high pressure oil type

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, Schooner said:

Ah yes, sorry , I see now I misread your post, no slight intended

 

 

 

EDIT: Aha! From Section 2, p37, on hydraulic portable cranes:

"To carry this system into effect, the pressure mains will be laid in the centre of a line of rails, or parallel to it on one side, and a simple form of high-pressure hydrant will be fixed at any of the joints, which will be at convenient distances apart. The crane will have a corresponding pipe connection, which, when attached, will force inwards the valve of the hydrant, and, when disconnected, this valve will come back to its seat and retain the pressure in the mains. The pipe can thus be taken through the cranepost in the usual manner to the cylinders for lifting and slewing"

Don't worry Schooner. I didn't take it as a slight and you do have to understand the principles of mechanical advantage to get how these things work so your explanation was entirely reasonable.

 

It seems that you could use hose connections, a bit like those used by the fire service, to connect the hydraulic mains to the "hydraulic winches" which jiggers were. The pressures however were far higher. Industrial fire hydrants have minimum pressure of 100 psi (only 20 for residential hydrants)  while those used for hydraulic mining monitors seem to be around 70 psi. (5 bar) both far less than the minimum 400 psi supplied by the LHP company. (It seems that their pumps delivered into the system at 500psi (34.5 bar) but by the time it reached their customers it could be down to 400 psi (27.5Bar)

This diagram is though intriguing me. It's from the the 1905 Book "Modern Engines and Power Generators, vol. VI" by Rankin Kennedy and is simply describeed as a "small hydraulic crane" 

 

It's clear that the jigger is the horizontal arrangement of cylinder and pulley beneath the colum controlled by the lever , yet the actual lifting and lowering of the hook is equally clearly carried out by the raising and lowering of the column  (seen here fully extended)  with I think a six fold multiplication of the column lift. There is however no obvious way that the horizontal jigger is connected to the column which appears to also be a hydraulic cylinder. Could here have been a secondary lower pressure hydraulic system driven by the jigger ?

 

Edited November 25, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Giles]

I'm guessing the bottom one is the slew. You can see a sheave on the column above the bottom ram

 

[Pacific231G]

5 hours ago, Giles said:

I'm guessing the bottom one is the slew. You can see a sheave on the column above the bottom ram

 

Very well spotted. I asume the control lever for the lift was behind the one we can see

[Bernard Lamb]

Funny how things crop up. Just come across this photo of an hydraulic lift in the ruins of the old Bishopsgate Goods Yard. It was apparently used for lifting vehicles between levels.

 

[Schooner]

I really must get off Getty...

 

Whitby 's No 2 lifeboat, the 'Jacob and Rachael Vallentine', being lifted onto a train at the LNER Poplar goods depot, UK. It has just been reconditioned and four horses were needed to haul it to the docks where it was placed on the train. It is 34 feet long and 8.5 feet wide. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 17th January, 1938

 

Open in new tab and zoom for full effect  

Edited December 16, 2020 by Schooner
Date added

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

 

 

Mike.

[Corbs]

Hi folks

 

Thought you might like to see some more photos of Bob Edwardes' diorama of 1950s era M Shed...

 

 

[SteveyDee68]

2 hours ago, Corbs said:

Hi folks

 

Thought you might like to see some more photos of Bob Edwardes' diorama of 1950s era M Shed...

 

 

Now, see, a crane kit like one of THOSE would surely be possible in lasercut materials and sell like hot cakes?!

[Corbs]

We're looking in to laser cutting it (or the jibs at least) at the moment. Main drawings are done, just undergoing CAD conversion.

 

Out of interest what would people be willing to pay for such a kit? Either fully laser cut or mixed resin/laser cut?