Loading stone : train to coastal ship

[Joseph_Pestell]

I have in mind to model a small quayside location where stone (or mineral ore perhaps) is unloaded from wagons and onto ships.

 

Would this be done wagon - stockpile - ship or directly wagon - ship? I have tried Google but I must be putting in the wrong search criteria because it is not coming up with any images. Ideally, there would be an unloading shed (hopper wagons?) of some sort so that I can get round the full/empty wagon problem.

 

Edit: I am thinking that wagon - stockpile - ship makes more sense. You would want to load the ship more quickly (while the tide is in) than you could from wagons.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Joseph_Pestell
Edit

[Fat Controller]

31 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I have in mind to model a small quayside location where stone (or mineral ore perhaps) is unloaded from wagons and onto ships.

 

Would this be done wagon - stockpile - ship or directly wagon - ship? I have tried Google but I must be putting in the wrong search criteria because it is not coming up with any images. Ideally, there would be an unloading shed (hopper wagons?) of some sort so that I can get round the full/empty wagon problem.

What sort of era were you thinking about? 

[Joseph_Pestell]

circa 1955 (I am a peculiar person who likes ex GW tank engines in black).

22 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

What sort of era were you thinking about? 

 

[Fat Controller]

15 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

circa 1955 (I am a peculiar person who likes ex GW tank engines in black).

 

So you could have mechanised plant on the quayside, such as a tracked crane with a grab? I'd look at small hoppers; perhaps some early-build 'Herring' might have found themselves in commercial service, or some 13t BR hoppers, when Peco-Parkside release them. When there's a ship to load, the wagons could unload direct into it, otherwise, the stone/minerals could be stockpiled; it takes a lot of wagons to fill even a small ship. 

It's the sort of job a dirty 16xx might do (just saying..)

Have you seen the 'Porthgain' thread on here? A small natural harbour, serving a quarry.

[SED Freightman]

Further to the Fat Controller's comments, with a payload of around 500T per train, even a small coastal ship would I guess require 3/4 trainloads of stone/mineral.  Therefore as ships will generally endeavor to spend as little time as possible in port there would probably be a need to either accommodate enough wagons to fill the ship on sidings adjacent to the quayside if direct transfer from wagon to ship takes place, or alternatively have the wagons discharged onto a quayside stockpile until sufficient material for a ship is on hand.  Available space and volume of material to be handled would generally dictate the need for added dockside investment in discharge hoppers, conveyors, storage bins/bays, cranage, etc. along with the need to ensure that the loading equipment is capable of evenly distributing material around the ships hold during loading. 

[Gordon A]

Another related question is your dock a wet dock or a tidal dock.

In a tidal dock the ships would sit on the mud when the tide went out, in a wet dock there would be a set of gates, some time two sets of gates at the harbour entrance which would retain the water in the dock when the tide went out. This has the advantage of the ships always floating and not bottoming out.

 

Gordon A

Edited August 4, 2019 by Gordon A

[Kris]

Maybe have a look at some of the china clay loading facilities. Something similar should work of other minerals. Alternatively look at the way the coal was loaded.

[eastglosmog]

Have a look at Gwavas Quarry, just south of Penzance.  https://maps.nls.uk/view/105996547

Ships loaded direct from wagons, I believe until conveyor belts were installed in 1972.

[TravisM]

Not wishing to rain on anyone’s parade but I’d say that it was more usual for sand, gravel and rock to be loaded from ship to train as most minerals were dredged and then off loaded at the quayside.  The only exception to this would be coal.

[eastglosmog]

Eh?  I don't know where you got that idea from jools1959, but it is not true. In the 1950s, virtually all hard rock came from land based quarries, most of them inland.  Some may have been transported by sea (Gwavas/Penlee for instance) from coastal quarries but most was transported by rail or road.  There was some sea dredging of sand and gravel, but most sand and gravel was from land based pits.

[Fat Controller]

32 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

Eh?  I don't know where you got that idea from jools1959, but it is not true. In the 1950s, virtually all hard rock came from land based quarries, most of them inland.  Some may have been transported by sea (Gwavas/Penlee for instance) from coastal quarries but most was transported by rail or road.  There was some sea dredging of sand and gravel, but most sand and gravel was from land based pits.

It very much depended on where you were; there were inland areas where glacial deposits had left sand and gravel behind (Thames and Trent Valley come immediately to mind) . However, there were no such deposits in my part of South-West Wales, so sand was dredged from the Burry and Tywi Estuaries, whilst larger aggregate was quarried from the Carboniferous Limestone and Millstone Grit that was exposed at the fringes of the coalfield. Further west, dolerite, slate and granite were quarried at Porthgain and Abereiddi, and shipped coastwise. 

[TravisM]

1 hour ago, eastglosmog said:

Eh?  I don't know where you got that idea from jools1959, but it is not true. In the 1950s, virtually all hard rock came from land based quarries, most of them inland.  Some may have been transported by sea (Gwavas/Penlee for instance) from coastal quarries but most was transported by rail or road.  There was some sea dredging of sand and gravel, but most sand and gravel was from land based pits.

 

I was only giving first hand observations when in the late 70’s and 80’s, I travelled around the London area, Portsmouth and Southampton, other ports around the south coast and the Bristol area.  It all seemed to be off loading sand and gravel, and on the quayside there were hoppers for the ships crane to dump it in so it could be loaded into wagons and trucks.

 

I just assumed that was the normal practice except for the export of coal.

[Joseph_Pestell]

9 hours ago, jools1959 said:

 

I was only giving first hand observations when in the late 70’s and 80’s, I travelled around the London area, Portsmouth and Southampton, other ports around the south coast and the Bristol area.  It all seemed to be off loading sand and gravel, and on the quayside there were hoppers for the ships crane to dump it in so it could be loaded into wagons and trucks.

 

I just assumed that was the normal practice except for the export of coal.

 

Yes, by that date, coastal shipping was greatly reduced around the UK. So the sort of scene that I am thinking of would probably not exist. Those that did remain, such as Par and Fowey, were rather larger.

 

Many thanks to others who have posted links/suggestions. I will take a look at those.

 

I can definitely see the logic in frequent small trains unloading onto a stockpile from where the stone/mineral would be loaded onto the coaster. As to the dry/wet harbour, I have not quite made up my mind. I might use Gordon Gravett's Arun Quay trick of modelling the harbour as being at the back of the scene so we don't need to know whether the tide is in or out.

[Joseph_Pestell]

15 hours ago, eastglosmog said:

Have a look at Gwavas Quarry, just south of Penzance.  https://maps.nls.uk/view/105996547

Ships loaded direct from wagons, I believe until conveyor belts were installed in 1972.

 

That looks like a superb theme for an industrial quarry layout. What gauge were the "tramways" there?

[Joseph_Pestell]

20 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

Have you seen the 'Porthgain' thread on here? A small natural harbour, serving a quarry.

 

No, not one that I have come across. And a search is not showing it.

[eastglosmog]

16 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

That looks like a superb theme for an industrial quarry layout. What gauge were the "tramways" there?

2ft (610mm) - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penlee_Quarry_railway for a quick bit of info.

I've got some more bumf on it somewhere, will see what I can find.

[Andy Hayter]

A couple of thoughts to throw into the mix.

 

Ship size - small coasters often ran down to 500t cargo* and this would be split between 2 or occasionally more holds - so a 250t aggregate cargo is quite feasible.

Docks - in small coastal ports, space was often at a premium.  Having part of that space used for loose storage of aggregate would be an expensive (in space and probably in money) operation.  Also a labour intensive operation with off and on loading operations - even crane operators came at a cost.  Direct loading would be far more likely at that time in many/most ports.  

 

* IIRC Clyde Puffers could only carry 300t

[TomJ]

36 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

No, not one that I have come across. And a search is not showing it.

It’s a thread I started in layout design called BLT with quay and quarry loading. Inspired by Porthgain in West Wales where you can still

see the crushers where stone from a narrow gauge railway was loaded into ships. 

Im trying to work out how to add a standard gauge railway to the scene!

 

Sorry I can’t link to it on the phone!!

[Gordon A]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

No, not one that I have come across. And a search is not showing it.

 

Try this link:

ttps://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/146362-blt-with-harbour-and-quarry-loading/&tab=comments#comment-3627946

Gordon A

 

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, TomJ said:

It’s a thread I started in layout design called BLT with quay and quarry loading. Inspired by Porthgain in West Wales where you can still

see the crushers where stone from a narrow gauge railway was loaded into ships. 

Im trying to work out how to add a standard gauge railway to the scene!

 

Sorry I can’t link to it on the phone!!

 

Thanks, Tom. By going via your profile, I have found your thread. Very informative and the sort of thing that I am thinking of (albeit with the stone crushing taking place away from the quayside).

 

Porthgain looks lovely. We were in Carmarthenshire for a few days last September but did not get up to that part of the coast. Definitely noted for our next trip.

[eastglosmog]

Joseph - there are some interesting photos of the Penlee line here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/96859208@N07/12714970505/in/photostream/

of the line in its later diesel days. If you scroll through, there is a picture of the ship loader and a ship in Penzance harbour (as well as some pictures of the original steam loco stuffed and mounted).

 

[Harry Welch]

Hi everyone,

I have just finished writing an article for a railway society magazine about a short branch in Northwich, Cheshire that use to run down to the River Weaver. In the attached image on the right is a wooden shed with a chute. This is the end of the branch and was used for end tipping wagons of salt into waiting rivercraft. The branch trip working was twice a day so any shunting/tipping of wagons would have involved horse power to take the empty wagons out with gravity used to let in each wagon in turn. 

Not sure if this is the sort of loading arrangement the OP was thinking about but it might solve a few space problems on the quayside, cranes, stockpiles etc.

[duncan]

The one point with stone would be the small size of the individual bits, no 1st mate would allow large chunks to crash into his hold !

[jamie92208]

You could possibly use something like the canal side wharfs used for coal loading with a short siding at right angles that had a mechanism for tipping the wagons using the end doors.   The actual Wigan pier was something like that but I haven't any pictures.  The Harton stathes on the Tyne were similar.

 

Jamie

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Trefor granite quarry in north wales was another place that sent out huge tonnages by sea http://m.ipernity.com/#/doc/302581/32030297

 

I think that at both Penlee and Trefor the basic operation was the same: quarry high on hillside; crushed stone stored in huge top-fed bins near the quarry; narrow gauge railway to the harbour. This allowed all of the operation to be by gravity, and a shuttle of trains to load a coaster fairly swiftly.

 

Porthgain was the same too, wasn’t it?

 

Off-hand, I can’t think of a similar operation that used standard gauge transfer to ship, but surely there must have been one.