Talking Manure

[Brian Kirby]

Yes, I thought that title would grab your attention, but this is not a general model railway thread. I've been researching Carlisle Canal Junction at the southern end of The Waverley Route, circa 1900 and found two plans showing a mysterious manure siding, running off towards the banks of the River Eden. Here's a link to one of the plans: http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/port_carlisle_junction/1901map.gif

 

Does anyone know how a manure works operated? Did they process the raw material in some way, or did they simply bag it up from loose? Understandably, the works required a remote location, due to the pong of poo, the staff at the nearby Canal loco shed would have copped it full blast with a strong easterly breeze. Did railway wagons bring the manure in, or just ship it out? Was any attempt made to capture the methane gas, and thus transport it away in tank wagons, for street lighting, etc? I suppose every town had a manure works back then, of course one reason tramways converted to electric, was to avoid having to deal with several tons of horse doo-doo every week. Were all the staff kitted out with shovels, aprons and welly boots? Another plan shows the works and siding disused by 1940, so perhaps the business was superseded by industrial fertilizers, or with all that methane gas swirling around, maybe the whole place just blew up when somebody struck a match? 

                                                                                                       Any info will be gratefully received, i'm off to wash my hands and open a few windows,

                                                                                                                                                  Cheers, Brian.

[relaxinghobby]

As I understand it the manure might be human manure or night soil from earth closets in towns and cities, collected by the council

and transported in open 10 ton wagons, phew, to a processing plant or straight to a farmers field for spreading.

 

As for processing would this be just drying out for easier handling and less smell?

[peter220950]

Fascinating stuff. I had, at first, assumed it was fertilizer from animal bones and the like that these works were processing, but in support of the above post there's an interesting article here:-

 

http://www.link4life.org/discover/local-history-online/health/fever-epidemics/refuse-sanitation-and-re-cycling

 

so it looks like it's human not animal waste that's being recycled in some of them

 

Bet Andy wishes he could sell some of the bullsh*t we get on here!

 

Peter

[Brian Kirby]

Good thinking, I hadn't considered the human element, however it looks like Peter220950 is nearer the mark, cos this earlier map does show it as a "Bone Manure Works". whereas the later map shows just "manure works".

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/port_carlisle_junction/1874map.gif

 

So could it be there's no poo involved here, just crushing up of old animal (mostly horse?) bones, or are they "blending" it with poo to create fertilizer? Of course old horse bones were often used to make glue, I notice there's a "varnish works" nearby, which may be made from a similar process, or perhaps a glue factory beyond that? Maybe carcasses are being brought in locally and bagged stuff is going out by rail? I can't believe carcasses would be sent by rail around the country?      BK

[peter220950]

You've got me hooked now!

 

There's some description here of the process

 

http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/unsentimental-9.htm

 

http://boar.org.uk/abiwxo3TWMays1.htm

 

and here

 

http://www.themeister.co.uk/hindley/british_glues_chemicals.htm

 

there's a lot on the 'net, I've been looking at - Manure works processes victorian works rail served - as a search, it's one of those subjects that can lead to a whole new layout idea, so I'm going to stop here for a bit.

 

Peter

[ColinK]

Sounds like you are on a run now...

[Davey]

Surely that's his own business!!  

[Brian Kirby]

At last i've found time to sit down and read all of Peter's links, fascinating stuff, quite a crash course on chemical manure production. Very interesting to read about all the manure options available from the manufacturers, depending on what was to be grown, also rather impressive in how nothing was wasted from dead animals. I think we can safely conclude, that this is what was going on at the works by Canal Junction in Carlisle. Many thanks to Peter220950 for digging out the information, this has been an education.

                                                                  Cheers, Brian.

[AberdeenBill]

_{Fascinating stuff indeed...     There was once a rail-connected 'manure works' at Dyce (north-west of Aberdeen), so perhaps many or most cities had them.   The cost per ton of this product seems incredibly high for the late 19th Century.   Presumably manure works disappeared fairly rapidly when (artificial) chemical fertilisers were developed after the Haber process was discovered.}  

 

_{https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Trade_Circular_1887.html?id=A52eXwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y} 

 

_Bill

 

[Brian Kirby]

This thread has shown how ignorant I was of all the various types of the stuff, there's manure, and there's manure. When anyone mentions "manure", I reckon most of us think of smelly buckets and heaps of the smelly stuff, steaming away in the corner of the yard or garden, but that will be "horse manure" for putting on your garden roses (Why do they mix it with straw? Perhaps to help pile it up on the "dung heap"?).  As AberdeenBill has just said, this bone manure industry seems to have been the forerunner of modern fertilizers. Regarding rail traffic, I suggest most ingredients arrived locally by road, so it would be mostly empty rail wagons in, and then bagged fertilizers going out by rail, which might be rather smelly, or even dangerous from gas, to put in covered vans, so open wagons with tarpaulin sheets might have been more suitable. The sulphuric acid, used to dissolve bones, might arrive by tank wagon, or within carboys in other wagons? I seem to recall the GWR used long open wagons for such traffic. Thank you to all contributors.    BK

[petethemole]

Horse manure is mixed with straw as that's how it comes out of the stables, which have straw on the floor. It's called 'mucking out'. I spent some of my teenage years hanging round stables doing odd jobs for free rides. Shifted quite a bit!

[eastwestdivide]

Artificial fertilizers were called "artificial manure" or "chemical manure" in the early days, so the term could have quite a wide definition.

See also http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/artificial-manure?q=artificial+manure

http://www.bagseals.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=4824

https://canmore.org.uk/site/319851/burghead-morayshire-chemical-manure-works

[Bernard Lamb]

As well as producing fertilizer from waste there were places where it occurred naturally and was mined.

A few of my ancestors in the Royston-Cambridge area were recorded as being coprolite diggers.

Going by the volume involved I would think that this source could well have used rail transport. The mines were very near to the railway.

Bernard

[petethemole]

This is worth a read if interested in the coprolite industry. http://www.academia.edu/6283522/A_Vanished_Industry_Coprolite_Mining  Check out Fig 10.

 

Pete

[petethemole]

That paper brought back some memories. I often used to cycle down the road in Fig 11; the thatched cottages had gone but the gabled house in the distance are familiar and they're still there according to Streetview. In my stable helping days I drove a tumbril like those on the main road aged 15 (supervised) to take hay to the fields. In my career as an archaeologist I often found coprolites although they were Saxon and medieval. And I've been to Coprolite Street. 

 

Pete

[PenrithBeacon]

Manure to a Victorian farmer meant anything he added to the soil to improve it. It could include sand for example.

 

There was a manure siding on the CLC at Baguley. I've done a fair amount of research on the CLC but I cannot find out what was handled there. It could have been anything a farmer wished to add to his soil but bearing in mind the quantities required to make a two track siding viable I would say it was unlikely to be farmyard or horse poo. Most of that would be retained by a farmer rather than sold on.

 

Iguana may be a candidate but the LSWR did a thriving trade in sea sand from Padstow for example.

 

Regards

[John_Miles]

I used to lecture on sewage disposal. It was my favourite subject because you could be disgusting and justify it. How much do you want to know? Human faeces - for many centuries we didn't mix these with water and instead piled them in middens or cellars. The material was collected by "night soil" men (how is that for a euphemism) and taken away, allowed to mature and used as a fertiliser. It was a good system and put the poo back where it belongs, on the soil.  There was even a man in Gretna Green who had a midden in the middle of the street. Around it he had conveniences where people could add to the pile. He sold it on the basis of age, rather like wine the older stuff was more expensive. When we moved to water born waste disposal it all became a lot more complicated because each batch of poo was mixed with 9 gallons of water which somehow had to be dealt with a purified so sewage works were developed.

 

Moving from humans to railways, before I get too carried away, the railways used to own more horses than engines, so there was a lot of manure to be moved. I know most about the Midland. They had manure wagons to moved the stuff away from cities to farms and I suppose that other railways were the same.

[petethemole]

I gave a lecture on the archaeology of human waste entitled "All things must pass". It went down very well. 

[keefer]

i remembered seeing 'manure works' mentioned on an old OS map of Brechin, so looked it up:

 

http://maps.nls.uk/view/82882890#zoom=5&lat=9056&lon=14579&layers=BT (1924 OS 25 inch)

 

right next to an auction mart, so there's another source of 'incoming outgoings' (and there's another mart just off the RH edge of the map)

[BR60103]

For an easier read, Terry Pratchett's The World of Poo.

 

Up to the early part of the last century, most cities had more equine waste in the streets than they could use.

[Bernard Lamb]

There is a photograph of a GWR Manure Wagon in one of the books by JH Russell.

28' 6" over headstocks

20' wheelbase

8' width

No W36985

He states that it is a one off and after the decline in the use of horses it was used for beer empties.

By the time of the photo, 1953, it was branded "Beer empties to and from Hockley".

It is freshly painted so could, well have had a change of use around that time.

Bernard

[ColinK]

IIRC The Narrow Gauge Society produced a book on the Manchester Sewage Railways.

[Mark Saunders]

The last movement of this on the mainline was from Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield to their tip in purpose built side tipping Vee skips!

 

There are two of these wagons still in existence one at the NRM Shildon and the other at the Middleton Railway, Leeds!

 

Post War Glasgow moved Night Soil by rail!

 

Mark Saunders

[Horsetan]

Horse manure is mixed with straw as that's how it comes out of the stables, which have straw on the floor. It's called 'mucking out'. I spent some of my teenage years hanging round stables doing odd jobs for free rides. Shifted quite a bit!

 

I'm still shifting it!

[Happy Hippo]

 I can't believe carcasses would be sent by rail around the country?      BK

No need for the refrigerated meat vans that were built then?

 

Having worked for a butcher, we always dealt in carcasses.  Not at all like the prepacked stuff you get from the supermarket chains.