Tank Wagons on Buchan line in the 1950s

[Franco Crosti]

There's a photo on page 47 of 'Railways of Buchan', dated August 1950, showing an ex-LMS 2P, still in 'Big Four' livery, hauling a goods train. 

 

Most wagons are vans, with a few opens, a low sided wagon and a container on a flat wagon, but further back there's a tank wagon, that looks like a 12t or 14t type.

 

Does anyone know what traffic this would have been and which company was involved?  The photo describes the location as near Maud, so I can't tell if the wagon is to or from Fraserburgh or Peterhead.

[Caledonian]

Bit before my time, but the most likely would be bunker fuel for fishing boats at Peterhead - or an empty coming back

[Franco Crosti]

Good point, oil rather than whisky then! Do you think there might have been such a traffic to Fraserburgh as well?

[Wickham Green too]

Shame nobody foresaw the oil boom and kept the Buchan Lines open.

[Cwmtwrch]

There was an Esso depot at Maud Junction, in the 'V' of the lines, between the road bridges, opposite the road access to the station. No rail connection, but may have been served via an unloading point in the goods yard [no specific knowledge one way or the other].

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/deer/maud/index.html, middle left.

http://gnsra.org.uk/maud station.htm bottom right two photographs, behind the signal.

[Fat Controller]

1 hour ago, Cwmtwrch said:

There was an Esso depot at Maud Junction, in the 'V' of the lines, between the road bridges, opposite the road access to the station. No rail connection, but may have been served via an unloading point in the goods yard [no specific knowledge one way or the other].

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/deer/maud/index.html, middle left.

http://gnsra.org.uk/maud station.htm bottom right two photographs, behind the signal.

Oil tanks didn't need much in the way of facilities. Class A tanks would be unloaded via a siphon to the top hatch, whilst Class B tanks had a bottom discharge. The load might be unloaded into a road tanker, a static tank or into 'jerry cans'. Larger facilities were built from the end of WW2 onwards.

[Cwmtwrch]

Or the tank contents could have been piped to the depot from the unloading point, which would be the simplest, and cheapest, answer, and the one commonly used even when the unloading siding was not next to the depot. In this case it could have been done by gravity, as the depot was well below the goods yard, but only a short distance away horizontally. Whether it was I don't know.

[Franco Crosti]

It seems there was an oil terminal at Fraserburgh station, first owned by Young's, later BP.

https://www.scottishshale.co.uk/places/depots/fraserburgh-oil-depot/