Steelworks Workings

[dud spud]

What deliveries did steelworks take in?

How were they unloaded?

What types of trucks were they unloaded from?

 

Thanks in advance

[Fat Controller]

If there were blast furnaces, then iron ore, coal/coke and limestone. In the early days of the industry, the plants would be in areas where all three could be found in close proximity (eg, the northern edge of the South Wales Coalfield). Later as iron ore started to come from abroad, plants began to develop around the coast. All these raw materials would be carried in open wagons and/or hoppers. The former would be inverted in a device known as a tippler; the hoppers would dump their load through a hole between the wheels. The combination of ore, coal and lime would be melted to produce molten iron.

The molten iron would go to a converter of some sort, where the carbon content would be reduced, making the resultant metal less brittle. A certain amount of scrap, and more limestone (normally powdered) would be added. 

Some steelworks don't have blast furnaces, but rely on a mixture of scrap and pig-iron. The incoming materials could arrive by road or rail; again the rail wagons would normally be open wagons. 

A lot of plants used oil fuel for the re-melting process; this would arrive by rail tank. 

If the plant made its own ingot moulds, then fine sand would be required. This might come in by rail.

Another item consumed in quantity would be refractory brick, used to line furnaces, converters and ladles: this might again come by road or rail.

[Davexoc]

Try looking through this site, you might even be able to tour it again sometime in the future....

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/scunthorpesteelworks/

[luckymucklebackit]

I worked for several years (1970s-80s) at Clydesdale Steelworks near Mossend, this was an Electric Arc Steelmaking Plant with rolling mills producing seamless steel tube by the Pilger Process.  Scrap metal was delivered by rail from various local scrapyards in 16T mineral wagons and were unloaded by cranes with large magnets fitted.  Finished tubes left on a variety of Bogie bolsters or Tube wagons depending on the finished length. Everything else came in by road.

Ravenscraig just up the road by this time was receiving iron ore on the PTA tippler wagons and coal on HAA hoppers, the limestone came in on PAA hoppers from around Shap. finished goods were steel coil on BAA wagons

 

Jim

[RANGERS]

I guess the answer to this depends on where the plant was and which period you're interested in.

 

Corby in the 70s received limestone from Wirksworth, Derbys in HTO/ HTV hoppers, coal mostly from Derbys/ Notts in BR 16t MCOs or non-pool BSC owned slope sided tipplers. Fuel oil came in B class vac braked tanks or air-braked TTAs.

 

As the internal quarry system was connected directly to the works, only a small proportion or ore came by BR, this mostly on short trips from Glendon East or Twywell in BR 27t tipplers, similar BSC owned wagons or 30t BSC PO tipplers. Occasional batches of imported ore came from Ridham Dock or Birkenhead. These were pretty rare and usually in 21t hoppers.

 

Outbound traffic was steel tubes in 22t tube wagons or a variety of bogie bolsters. A very small amount of steel went out as plates and an even smaller amount as coiled strip.

 

One curious working was occasional BOC 100t tanks, these served the BOC plant on the site but it was never clear if they were loaded inbound or outbound.

 

Fisons also had a plant on site processing slag into fertiliser, this was shipped out in 12t VVVs until the contract switched to road a year or two prior to closure.

 

Occasional traffic was plant and machinery, all manner of wagons could be used for that - lowmacs, low fits, weltrol's etc. This wasn't common.

 

 

[Fat Controller]

The BOC Oxygen would have brought in oxygen from Merseyside whilst the on-site oxygen plant was receiving maintenance.

[Busmansholiday]

In terms of steelworks, it depended on which one you were interested in and which era as no two were identical and all moved with the times.

Iron and steel making companies sprung up in the UK where there was an availability of iron ore and / or coal. Generally it was iron ore as

the deciding factor. 

In terms of locations, if you want to know why they sprung up in particular locations then you need to look at Public Health England's Radon map of the UK. Not widely published is the fact you're not going to get iron ore without the decay products of Uranium and Thorium of which radon is one. Look at the dark brown bits on the map and there's a strip across England where the majority of iron and steel works were.

 

For Scunthorpe, where I spent almost 38 years, there were several local quarries, both open face and underground, some connected by internal rail tracks, others used the large off road lorries.

Coal and iron ore came via BR but externally purchased scrap and everything else always came by road (everything and I really mean everything at Scunthorpe came via road). Unloading of coal was standard MGR, iron ore via tiplers (just a sight bigger for the imported stuff via Immingham) as described above.

Some works like Scunthorpe had the capability to build their own wagons and did, internal 100 ton billet carriers were a particular example.

I'm sure there's some wagons in the background when I write the final bit of this ; 

later in the week.

 

 

 

 

 

[class37418stag]

On 14/04/2020 at 15:30, Fat Controller said:

If there were blast furnaces, then iron ore, coal/coke and limestone. In the early days of the industry, the plants would be in areas where all three could be found in close proximity (eg, the northern edge of the South Wales Coalfield). Later as iron ore started to come from abroad, plants began to develop around the coast. All these raw materials would be carried in open wagons and/or hoppers. The former would be inverted in a device known as a tippler; the hoppers would dump their load through a hole between the wheels. The combination of ore, coal and lime would be melted to produce molten iron.

The molten iron would go to a converter of some sort, where the carbon content would be reduced, making the resultant metal less brittle. A certain amount of scrap, and more limestone (normally powdered) would be added. 

Some steelworks don't have blast furnaces, but rely on a mixture of scrap and pig-iron. The incoming materials could arrive by road or rail; again the rail wagons would normally be open wagons. 

A lot of plants used oil fuel for the re-melting process; this would arrive by rail tank. 

If the plant made its own ingot moulds, then fine sand would be required. This might come in by rail.

Another item consumed in quantity would be refractory brick, used to line furnaces, converters and ladles: this might again come by road or rail.

 

Hello 

A lot of plants used oil fuel for the re-melting process; this would arrive by rail tank ? Oil fuel made re melting process metal 

[Fat Controller]

12 hours ago, class37418stag said:

 

Hello 

A lot of plants used oil fuel for the re-melting process; this would arrive by rail tank ? Oil fuel made re melting process metal 

Yes- fuel oil was generally supplied in lagged Class B tanks- the black ones. The steel companies tended to hang on to the wagons, rather than transfer their contents to storage tanks, so the unfitted type lasted well into the 1960s. One works I was familiar with (it was at the end of our street),bought the rail tanks off the oil company when they were finally replaced, chopped off the top half of the barrel, and reused them as scrap-carriers.

[br2975]

As has been mentioned, rail  traffic would depend largely on (i) the period you are modelling (ii) the methods of steel production employed (iii) is it an integrated plant ? (iv) where is your plant located ?  i.e. inland, coastal (v) and what does the works produce i.e. finished product.

.

Brian R

[luckymucklebackit]

It was one of the features of UK steelmaking that made it uncompetative with the modern Korean and Japanese markets.  Their steelworks were fully integrated and built beside the sea, and bulk iron ore or coal was loaded straight from the ships to the stockyards and then to the steelmaking plant.  The cast ingots went almost immediately to the rolling mills and finishing plants and then straight onto the waiting ship for export.  OK that might be a bit of an over simplification but compared with say Ravenscraig where ore was unloaded from the ships at Hunterston, some would go up the conveyor to the loading hoppers, the rest to the stockpile, train then would take the ore to Ravanscraig where it would be unloaded to a secnd stockpile then into the plant.   Semi-finished coil went initially over to Gartcosh by rail, later all the way down to Wales for finishing.  Interesting times for the railway observers but all that transport was additional cost.

 

Jim

[pH]

11 hours ago, luckymucklebackit said:

OK that might be a bit of an over simplification but compared with say Ravenscraig where ore was unloaded from the ships at Hunterston, some would go up the conveyor to the loading hoppers, the rest to the stockpile, train then would take the ore to Ravanscraig where it would be unloaded to a secnd stockpile then into the plant.  

 

Before Hunterston was built, iron ore was shipped into Glasgow itself, to General Terminus Quay on the south side of the river, and Rothesay Dock on the north side. (An ore carrier, the 'Akka', bound for Glasgow, hit the Gantocks off Dunoon and sank in 1956).

 

After Nationalisation, ore was moved from both of these places to the Lanarkshire steelworks in trains double-headed by WD 2-8-0s, from Polmadie shed on the south side, and Dawsholm on the north. (I don't know what was used before then, though Dawsholm had had Stanier 8Fs.) Those on the north side used the Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire(!!) Railway round the north side of the city, passing over the line out of Queen Street at the north end of Eastfield shed yard, and joining the line out of Buchanan Street near St. Rollox shed. The trains from General Terminus used the Clydesdale Junction line (built to allow the export of coal from General Terminus in the 1840s), passed under the Glasgow and and Paisley Joint at Shields Road and joined the line out of Central at Gushetfaulds.

 

(Edit. Correction - apparently, Dawsholm had not had 8Fs, though several other Scottish sheds had. I should check sources before posting and not rely on my increasingly-faulty memory!)

Edited April 22, 2020 by pH

[caradoc]

Wasn't there a plan to actually build a steelworks at Hunterston at one time ? As luckymucklebackit and pH said, the transport of raw materials to (and finished product from) UK steelworks was good for the railway, and the rail enthusiast, but not for the viability of the industry ! Perhaps another area in which having the industrial revolution here first eventually told against us, with steelworks located at their original sources of raw material which eventually became worked out, or at least uneconomic.

 

[luckymucklebackit]

21 minutes ago, caradoc said:

Wasn't there a plan to actually build a steelworks at Hunterston at one time ? As luckymucklebackit and pH said, the transport of raw materials to (and finished product from) UK steelworks was good for the railway, and the rail enthusiast, but not for the viability of the industry ! Perhaps another area in which having the industrial revolution here first eventually told against us, with steelworks located at their original sources of raw material which eventually became worked out, or at least uneconomic.

 

 

There was at one time an aspiration to relocate the entire Scottish Steel Industry to Hunterston, they got as far as building two direct iron reduction plants but in the event these plants were a white elephant and were never used for iron production.  There were many factors in play here, local opposition to what is an area of natural beauty being scarred by what is unavoidably a dirty, polluting industry and the influence of politicians wanting to keep employment in their patch (i.e. Lanarkshire).  There were many incidences of this, resulting in some bizarre decisions.  One of the worst was where I worked at the Tube Mill.  A major part of our production was casing pipe destined for the North Sea and what should have happened was that once the tube had been heat treated it would roll down a sloped bench into the machine shop, where a thread would be cut on each end and a coupler (made out of larger diameter tube with a thread on the inside) torqued in place at one end.  The tube would then be craned onto bogie bolsters, destination Aberdeen Waterloo Goods Yard.  But thanks to a parochial old Labour MP called James Dempsey what actually happened was that after heat treating the pipes were loaded onto trains (or lorries) and sent to the Imperial Works in Airdrie, some 10 miles away.  This works was so badly sited, being on high ground and with very poor road and rail access.  Trains leaving Clydesdale ( see sketch map attached) had to reverse at Rosehall Junction in Coatbridge, be propelled up the old truncated Caledonian Railway Airdrie Line via Calder yard where the train had to be split down into 4 wagon trips due to the gradient, these trips were then propelled up the branch to a headshunt then hauled up into the works.  The whole process had to be repeated once the thread and coupler had been applied.  Anyone with half a brain could see it was madness, but the MP had to show that he was keepping jobs on his patch!

 

 

Tubes waiting to be collected in the works yard, my office was just oposite where the trailer is parked on the road

 

 

jim

[Busmansholiday]

It wasn't just MPs that could cause problems as shown above, BSC wasn't internally known as Billy Smarts Circus for coming up with sensible (!) decisions for nothing. 

Even in Tata days, decisions to close plants were often made by people who hated one plant because they worked at a different one. 

 

I know that around 20 years ago it was £10 per ton more expensive to manufacture steel in Scunthorpe (because of the transport costs of ore and coal to the works from Immingham) than Teesside or Port Talbot. Teesside got the chop.

 

[class37418stag]

Ingot casting or mould deliver from steelworks to steelworks by from south to Scotland by Railfreight closed van of VAA or VDA ?

[Fat Controller]

2 hours ago, class37418stag said:

Ingot casting or mould deliver from steelworks to steelworks by from south to Scotland by Railfreight closed van of VAA or VDA ?

Not by closed van- these things are big. I worked at BSC Landore, one of the last two Ingot Foundries in the UK, during the summer of 1974. The usual transport for ingot moulds up to about 40t were Warflats; the biggest, weighing over 60t, were transported on Flatrol WLL. These wagons had been built during WW2 to carry the M6 'Super Sherman', and used 3-axle bogies.

[ardbealach]

On 22/04/2020 at 21:50, pH said:

 

Before Hunterston was built, iron ore was shipped into Glasgow itself, to General Terminus Quay on the south side of the river, and Rothesay Dock on the north side. (An ore carrier, the 'Akka', bound for Glasgow, hit the Gantocks off Dunoon and sank in 1956).

 

After Nationalisation, ore was moved from both of these places to the Lanarkshire steelworks in trains double-headed by WD 2-8-0s, from Polmadie shed on the south side, and Dawsholm on the north. (I don't know what was used before then, though Dawsholm had had Stanier 8Fs.) Those on the north side used the Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire(!!) Railway round the north side of the city, passing over the line out of Queen Street at the north end of Eastfield shed yard, and joining the line out of Buchanan Street near St. Rollox shed. The trains from General Terminus used the Clydesdale Junction line (built to allow the export of coal from General Terminus in the 1840s), passed under the Glasgow and and Paisley Joint at Shields Road and joined the line out of Central at Gushetfaulds.

 

(Edit. Correction - apparently, Dawsholm had not had 8Fs, though several other Scottish sheds had. I should check sources before posting and not rely on my increasingly-faulty memory!)

 

When I lived on the east side of Glasgow overlooking the Rutherglen - Coatbridge line (and the Clyde Iron Works) I saw the General Terminus iron ore trains on a regular basis with their fully fitted 28 wagons and a brake at each end.  (As an aside it surprised me that the John Summers iron ore wagons from Bidston to Shotton steelworks were unfitted at that time).  Back on topic ...  The Ravenscraig iron ore trains (as PH rightly states)  were hauled by double headed WD 2-8-0s. But I can recall a WD 2-8-0 and a WD 2-10-0  as a regular pairing.  The only LMS 8F's I ever saw on these trains were 48773 / 48774 and 48775 which, like the WD's, were all 66A Polmadie engines.  (Cannot find my IA Locoshed allocation - but I seem to recall that these were the only Scottish LMS 2-8-0s)

 

Later on double headed Class 20's were used - nose to nose - and I think they were later replaced by a pair of 37's but that was after I left Glasgow.  

 

On their return trips these iron ore trains ran on the West Coast main line down through Uddingston and Cambuslang, the double headers running tender first.  They made quite a ground shaking rumble as they raced passed my school.   (AM)

[pH]

10 hours ago, ardbealach said:

The Ravenscraig iron ore trains (as PH rightly states)  were hauled by double headed WD 2-8-0s. But I can recall a WD 2-8-0 and a WD 2-10-0  as a regular pairing.  The only LMS 8F's I ever saw on these trains were 48773 / 48774 and 48775 which, like the WD's, were all 66A Polmadie engines.  (Cannot find my IA Locoshed allocation - but I seem to recall that these were the only Scottish LMS 2-8-0s).

 

You're right – in the late 1950s, the only 8Fs shedded in Scotland were 48773/4/5/ at Polmadie. However, there had been many more earlier. In 1945, there were a total of 46 at Scottish sheds – Perth, Motherwell, Grangemouth, Carstairs, Dalry Road and St.Rollox. (And I was right in what I originally wrote – Dawsholm had a couple by 1947.) They appear to have been transferred south very early after Nationalisation and replaced by WD engines. There are many transfers during 1948. Perth had had up to 19 8Fs during WW2. I've read somewhere (can't remember where) that, amongst other duties, they were used to move trains of tanks south from the Moray Firth, where they had been used in training for D-Day. Apparently, these trains were triple-headed (!!) over the Highland main line.

 

Interesting about the use of a WD 2-10-0. There are very few pictures of those in service. In fact, there aren't many pictures of the steam-hauled iron ore trains to the Lanarkshire steelworks either. I can only think of a couple, both in 'An Illustrated History of Glasgow's Railways' by Smith and Anderson. One is of a train on the bridge over the Glasgow-Edinburgh line at Eastfield, and the other is of a train starting out of General Terminus. I would love to know of any more.

 

10 hours ago, ardbealach said:

On their return trips these iron ore trains ran on the West Coast main line down through Uddingston and Cambuslang, the double headers running tender first.  They made quite a ground shaking rumble as they raced passed my school.   (AM)

 

I did not know that the empties returned by a different route to General Terminus. Double-headed WDs running tender-first on the West Coast mainline – interesting!

[ardbealach]

You are right pH - Pictures of the WD 2-10-0's are scarce, and like you, the only picture I have seen of one of them was in that same book by WAC Smith and Anderson.   And to think I could have photographed them,  but didn't.  Hindsight is a great gift. (AM)  

 

 

[luckymucklebackit]

14 hours ago, pH said:

 

I did not know that the empties returned by a different route to General Terminus. Double-headed WDs running tender-first on the West Coast mainline – interesting!

 

This practice was in place right to the end of ore workings to Ravenscraig, the loaded trains always ran via the R&C to avoid the Bellshill bank which was a heavy slog from Uddingston Junction to Bellshill for most trains.  Being the most direct route the main line was used for the empties.  Before the days of the triple headers the loaded train would pick up the banker at Rosehall Junction for the climb from Mossend to Holytown, they went over to triple headed after a coal train of HAAs spread itself all over the curve from Mossend North to Mossend East, the banker didn't respond quick enough to a brake application due to a signal check and kept pushing!

 

As an aside, on the Bellshill Bank, the local villains were known to put oil or grease on the rails if they knew there was a freight with anything worth nicking due, the loco would slip to a standstill and the vans would get raided while stationary! 

 

Jim

[pH]

7 hours ago, luckymucklebackit said:

As an aside, on the Bellshill Bank, the local villains were known to put oil or grease on the rails if they knew there was a freight with anything worth nicking due, the loco would slip to a standstill and the vans would get raided while stationary! 

 

I'm sure that happened in quite a few places. A BTP policeman told me they'd had to deal with it on the Switchback past Blackhill in the 1960s.

[jonny777]

On 25/04/2020 at 10:48, luckymucklebackit said:

 

This practice was in place right to the end of ore workings to Ravenscraig, the loaded trains always ran via the R&C to avoid the Bellshill bank which was a heavy slog from Uddingston Junction to Bellshill for most trains.  Being the most direct route the main line was used for the empties.  Before the days of the triple headers the loaded train would pick up the banker at Rosehall Junction for the climb from Mossend to Holytown, they went over to triple headed after a coal train of HAAs spread itself all over the curve from Mossend North to Mossend East, the banker didn't respond quick enough to a brake application due to a signal check and kept pushing!

 

As an aside, on the Bellshill Bank, the local villains were known to put oil or grease on the rails if they knew there was a freight with anything worth nicking due, the loco would slip to a standstill and the vans would get raided while stationary! 

 

Jim

 

I am resurrecting this thread purely for selfish reasons; and also because contributors here seem to be well versed in operations to the south of Glasgow. 

 

I have recently purchased, online, a 1954 signalbox register for Uddingston. My query centres around the times that the box is operational in early October of that year. It appears to be switched out for much of the day, but is manned between about 5:30am and 8:30; and then again between 4:30 and 6:30pm; in other words for approximate 'rush hours' only. 

 

Might there be a reason for this? Did the box control certain crossovers or other turnouts which would only be used during commuter times? Or was there maybe another more subtle reason for the intermittent nature of its usefulness? 

[luckymucklebackit]

24 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 

I am resurrecting this thread purely for selfish reasons; and also because contributors here seem to be well versed in operations to the south of Glasgow. 

 

I have recently purchased, online, a 1954 signalbox register for Uddingston. My query centres around the times that the box is operational in early October of that year. It appears to be switched out for much of the day, but is manned between about 5:30am and 8:30; and then again between 4:30 and 6:30pm; in other words for approximate 'rush hours' only. 

 

Might there be a reason for this? Did the box control certain crossovers or other turnouts which would only be used during commuter times? Or was there maybe another more subtle reason for the intermittent nature of its usefulness? 

 

My first question would be - which Uddingston box?  The Uddingston signalbox on the WCML was Uddingston Junction, a busy Junction for the Bellshill line and the Main line to Motherwell which would definitely have been open 24hrs, but the former NB/LNER box at Uddingston East was on the a line that was on the brink of closure, the station closed in 1955 and the line completely in 1961, think that is the box you have the register for.

 

Edit - here is the timetable for that line in 1955 https://timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer?token=66d160cc-d943-40f6-be38-842d1602845c  still a few trains off-peak as well as peak so the box must have been opened to allow the small goods yard there to be shunted.  Due to the sparse service it would have been "switched out" for the rest of the day

 

Jim

Edited June 28, 2021 by luckymucklebackit

[luckymucklebackit]

Confirmed on Railscot that the box closed in 1955 being replaced by a ground frame https://www.railscot.co.uk/locations/U/Uddingston_East/

 

Jim