Quench!

[Dunalastair]

No, not a blow-by blow account of tempering metal, but a diorama of the quench tower at a coking works, very loosely based on the NCB smokeless fuel plant near Chesterfield featured in an issue of IRS Record. Operation wise a coking loco must have about the most boring roster possible, shuttling a dump car between coke oven, quench tower and the tip area, but on my diorama I have fixed the wheels to the track, so the model loco is going nowhere. Indeed the coking car is invisible, behind clouds of cotton-wool 'water vapour'. I designed and printed the 16.5mm gauge  loco a while ago, but the simple diorama is a more recent project.

 

 

I think that Walthers have sold a US-style coking works kit, but my 'tower' is home-printed, aiming for a 'hard-worked' look.

 

For those unfamiliar with the coking process, this video shows the essentials - quenching occurs at about 6m30.

 

 

Until recently, this process could be observed (from a distance) by taking the (sometimes steam) railtour at Scunthorpe works, but there has been talk recently of decommissioning that plant.

[Dunalastair]

Found the copy of IRS Record with the photograph which inspired the model - number 228 March 2017. The image is on page 114. The Avenue coking plant closed in September 1992 and was demolished from 1999. The locos were Greenwood & Batley., new in 1955. 

[pH]

I remember passing by (through?) a coking plant somewhere about Rotherham on the way from Leeds to Gloucester in 1965. The train happened to pass just as an oven was opened - it was spectacular.
 

But the process was much simpler than that in the video - the contents of the oven being emptied into a wagon, which is then pushed under a tower for the coke to be quenched, and then drawn back to be emptied down a slope. What I saw was the coke oven opening and dumping the contents straight into a quenching pond. Much less infrastructure and equipment needed to produce what appears to be the same result - I wonder why the videoed process seems more complicated?

[cb900f]

The coking plant near Rotherham may well have been "Manvers" which is just North of Swinton on the Midland main line from Cudworth.

 

Long gone of course , now a nature reserve i believe.

[Johann Marsbar]

15 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

Found the copy of IRS Record with the photograph which inspired the model - number 228 March 2017. The image is on page 114. The Avenue coking plant closed in September 1992 and was demolished from 1999. The locos were Greenwood & Batley., new in 1955. 

 

I remember the distinctive smell from the Avenue Carbonisation plant that caught your nostrils each time that I travelled past it on the Harwich-Manchester boat train in the 1970's and 80's!

[Dunalastair]

20 hours ago, pH said:

I remember passing by (through?) a coking plant somewhere about Rotherham on the way from Leeds to Gloucester in 1965. The train happened to pass just as an oven was opened - it was spectacular.
 

But the process was much simpler than that in the video - the contents of the oven being emptied into a wagon, which is then pushed under a tower for the coke to be quenched, and then drawn back to be emptied down a slope. What I saw was the coke oven opening and dumping the contents straight into a quenching pond. Much less infrastructure and equipment needed to produce what appears to be the same result - I wonder why the videoed process seems more complicated?

 

I'm not familiar with the quench pond technique. It does indeed sound simpler, but presumably you then either have to fish the coke out of the pond or drain the pond (with nasty chemicals now in it). Depending on what you want to use the coke for, I suspect that the quench tower approach is probably more controllable, and would yield drier coke. I have a friend who worked for the NCB as an industrial chemist in one of the coke plants thereabouts - possibly Avenue - and who could probably have given chapter and verse before he went 'off grid', but he is now in a care home with advanced Parkinsons so I suspect that he would not now be able to help, sadly. Apparently some modern plants use air for quenching - I cannot picture how that would work unless the oxygen is removed - it sounds more like a blast furnace. 

 

In the early days of coke batteries, in both beehive and vertical ovens, small narrow gauge locos were sometimes used to charge the ovens - I think that moving gantries probably do that now. In the US these were apparently called Larries, as in the photo below of a preserved example linked from a geocache site.

 

https://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=2f9f879c-ece0-40c5-85dc-3e33d8be0d81