Stoker

Here are some photos I took around no 8 jetty in 2004. You can clearly see the old GWR loader and how it's been added to over the years. The red brick building is the old generating station, which used to receive coal by rail. Maurice Dart told me that the ramp up to it was incredibly steep, and they always had problems getting trains up it.

4 hours ago, DavidMatthewson said:

So true - I think some of the Fowey GWR loader is still extant and even in use, but as for the rest, all changed or gone.. ;{

Yep no 8 jetty loader is still extant, over the years been added to and modified a little bit. Knocking on 100 years old now!

Yep from 1920s to 1960s not much changed. Through the 70s the industry changed so much that by the end of the decade it was beyond recognition for the old boys. Fowey included.

Hi Sebastian, didn't realise you were on RMweb! We met on the Facebook HO Scale Shelf Layouts group, I was the guy who correctly identified your method for trees! Nice layout, I shall be following this thread.

7 hours ago, dj_crisp said:

 

Many thanks! Always good to share stuff! It's definetly going to stay with a china clay theme just that the more i look at the prototype the more i seem to base ideas on St Erth - however I'm not that prototypically bothered to be that strict so will keep the china clay element with 50s flashing by on the main line

 

cheers

Will

There were quite a few stations that had clay trains passing through. St Austell, Par, Luxulyan, Bugle, Lostwithiel, Bodmin Road, Liskeard... if you're doing a fictional station what's to say it couldn't be another one of those?

38 minutes ago, DavidMatthewson said:

Many thanks for the photos and additional information. The first of your pics.. the one taken from the North end of the loader_is especially useful as it clearly shows that the entire structure seems to be on raised girders.

 

Very useful.. Thanks

 

The whole loader is actually on a jetty somewhat parallel with the shore. If you look to the right of it you can see the water. This was later filled in, I think coinciding with the closure of the Fowey-Par line, and concentration of unloading at No 8 jetty. Interestingly enough, a large part of the original loader still remains in use today, almost 100 years old now!

There's more information on the history of the harbour here:
https://www.foweyharbourhistory.com/uploads/2/0/9/0/20909932/a_brief_history_of_fowey_harbour_chapter_1.pdf

Well it's nice to see another modeller here tackling china clay in EM gauge, I shall watch with interest.

As always, if you have any clay history specific questions, or want to know if I have photos of something specific in the archive, please just let me know.

Your flow diagram is correct. This loading plant was constructed in the early 20s. There were other conveyor belt loaders on the jetties at this time, but these were static and required the ship to be warped along the jetty to fill the holds. This arrangement was kept until about 1970 or so when the large traversing loader was made the main unloading point for wagons, and conveyor belts constructed to feed the other jetties, as well as a large bulk store. I believe this was around the time the wagon traverser was put in.

I've attached some more photos from the 1920 timeframe to give you some idea of the arrangement.





There are drawings for some if not all of these structures. These were originally held by the ECC office, and I believe later donated to Wheal Martyn/China Clay History Society. They may now be in the Kresen Kernow archives, or in the separate CCHS archives which sadly are not open to the public. I'd advise arranging to meet the relevant archivists and historians in person, as I've had no luck getting them to respond to emails. Kresen Kernow does, I believe, have a searchable archive list, so you'll be able to see whether they hold anything you might want to look at.

4 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

When I worked there, the majority of bagged clay was either for the educational sector, or for the smallest of pot banks. 

Nice to see someone who's heard about 'blunging' and 'pug-mills'; when I was first sent to a pot-bank to 'help the fitter put the blunger back together', I thought it was some sort of elaborate joke.

Both equipment were common to the clay industry. Blungers and pug mills were used in the slurry plants. Pug mills were also used in drying plants that were producing paper coating clay. The mill ran at a really high pressure, enough to cause the clay to steam, this imparted a shearing action on the clay, slightly rounding the particles resulting in a better flow. There was also one unique plant at Drinnick that used a blunger to slurry already dried clay to the correct SG, before adding a dispersant, with the resulting slurry dried on a steam heated drum and scraped off with a "doctor knife". This was a special grade called Starflo or "predispersed SPS" for papermaker SD Warren in the USA.

Two grades of clay that you might recall were commonly sent to the potteries from ECC, these were Grolleg and Standard Porcelain, produced at the eponymous Standard Porcelain blending and refining plant at Melbur refinery, pictured below. This plant was uphill from where the product was being dried at Collins Dryer at the end of the Retew/Meledor Mill branch, and the last source of traffic from there.

Just now, Fat Controller said:

At a guess, early to mid 1960s; I suspect it wasn't done on a one-for-one basis, as greater use seems to have been made of bulk carriage  in sheeted opens. By the time I worked at one of the Potteries depots (Longport) at the end of the 1970s, there might be one Vanfit for every thirty opens on the daily delivery.

The potteries tended to prefer to receive clay in "lump" (bulk) form, as it was only required to go through a straightforward process of being blunged, filter pressed, and pugged before it could be thrown/stamped/etc.  I believe the stuff sent to the potteries in bags was finer particle milled clay for use in making slips and glazes, which had to flow nicely.

The majority of bagged clay leaving the county was SPS (selected particle size) paper coating clay, so would've been going up to the paper mills around the country, like Kent and Scotland.

On 13/12/2019 at 13:18, Fat Controller said:

I heard somewhere that there were approaching 200 Palvan allocated to Cornish clay traffic . They didn't last long, being replaced by Vanfits and Vanwides; the roller-bearings were put on to 13t open wagons for the Clayliner trains, and most Palvans ended up as Internal Users and static stores.

One thing that comes to mind about loading pallets was that earlier ones were 2-way. More recently , four-way ones have come into general use. 

I don't suppose you'd know when the palvans were replaced by the vanwides and vanfits?

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

There have been various comments about pushing pallets into position with another pallet.

This practise ceased when reach trucks came into common use as they could extend both forwards and to the left and right.

Using pallet trucks as oversize scooters was a regular game and you could get up quite a turn of speed, although cornering was a problem.

Bernard

 

On a more serious note, from what I remember reach trucks were more common in warehouse environments, especially where pallets aren't as heavy. The problem with a reach truck is the fact that you're moving the load away from the ballast really limits the payload because otherwise to compensate you either make the truck too heavy or too long.



Pictured here at ECC's Rocks plant in 1986 on the left beside the then unnamed Sentinel shunter (later plated "Denise") is a brand new CAT V50D, a 5000lbs (2.5 ton) capacity diesel forklift. This particular example looks like it may actually be fitted with reach forks. Stacked pallets of bagged clay can be seen in the bays behind the forklift driver and just above the engine bonnet of the shunter.

This central section of the linhay at Rocks contained the atritor mill and bagging plant, which dried clay from the standard 10% moisture content down to a very fine and dusty 1% moisture content. This ultra fine ultra dry clay could only be handled in paper sacks through specialized equipment. According to a friend who worked at Blackpool dryer (some know this place as Burngullow) in the 1960s, milling was already taking place there at that time under very similar circumstances to Rocks (mill occupied one of the bays in the middle of the linhay).

Neither of these sites had dropped loading edges to van-floor wharf height, all were about 6 foot or so and had a curbed edge to prevent loaders from driving off it, so I think it would've been necessary to bring the pallets down off the wharf down to track level, and load vans from the ground.

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

There have been various comments about pushing pallets into position with another pallet.

This practise ceased when reach trucks came into common use as they could extend both forwards and to the left and right.

Using pallet trucks as oversize scooters was a regular game and you could get up quite a turn of speed, although cornering was a problem.

Bernard

 

You've gotta do that tokyo drift thing around the corners... when the supervisor isn't looking that is!
 

8 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

No doubt you will get all sorts of replies some very accurate and some rather based on anecdotes. 

My credentials. I worked for Dexion the leading storage and materials handling specialists from 1970 to 2003.

There are two main types of pallets. Chep from the second world war and Euro Pal from around 1961. You can Google these to find some details of the history.

These began to be more widely used with the introduction of adjustable pallet racking circa 1964.

As others have said FLTs did not usually drive into vans. They dropped the pallet in the doorway and it was moved into position using a pallet truck.

Many smaller freight depots used hand stacking right up until the time that they closed. Many closed during the 1960s.

FLTs changed rapidly during the period that you are interested in. They got bigger and the range of power options increased. It is rather important to get the right type for the area and date that you wish to model. Petrol machines changed to LPG for example and battery power improved greatly.

From those days from what I can remember is that sacks when handled in bulk would be put into tote containers rather than being stacked on pallets.

I would say that this change came bout in general between 1964 and 1967 but there would be earlier and later examples depending on all sorts of factors.

Bernard

 

 

I know of both CHEP and Euro Pal. I've operated a forklift in previous work so those were included in the training. In reference to what Mike was saying, "nudging" pallets was fairly common practice - also using the forks of the machine to open sliding doors! One trick I saw frequently was using a pallet on the forks as a bumper to push another pallet further back in lieu of using a reach truck - probably done fairly frequently on the palvans I'd think.

I asked on a china clay history specific group on facebook whether any of the chaps there remembered what was being used. I didn't get very many replies, but one fellow who worked in home market sales for ECC recalled that back in the 60s and 70s they had some issues with customers getting confused between "palletised" and "pelletised". He felt fairly confident that forklift handling was something the company was doing at the time. I agree with him, back in the 60s Alfred and Judy were often pictured double headed handling fairly long rakes of palvans.

Just now, phil-b259 said:

 

Loading one van from alternate sides does rather presupposes that such a thing is possible - at many goods yards the presence of sidings or buildings means its not as simple as you imply and so it is quite likely that an awful lot of these vans were running round with all the weight concentrated at one end

 

An unbalanced load is an unbalanced load regardless of how good or bad the suspension is. The laws of physics / gravity dictate that any vehicle with poor weight distribution is inherently less stable than one where the weight  is uniformly distributed - and hence the RAIBs comments on badly loaded ISO containers being a big factor in a number of derailments despite the actual freightliner flats having sophisticated suspension etc.

With all due respect that all sounds extremely unlikely, and I'd like to try to keep the pie in the sky speculation to a minimum in this thread as I'm trying to gather historically accurate information for a model project.

Just now, phil-b259 said:

 

However this arrangement was asking for uneven weight distribution (if loading could only take place form one side then it would all end up at one end of the van).

 

This uneven weight distribution led to a number of derailments - just as badly loaded shipping containers  have been cited by the RAIB as a factor in a number of derailments / blow offs on the current network.

 

As a consequence BRs 'Palvan' had a short lifespan and BR went back to central doors or full accessibility along both sides for later designs.

According to Paul Bartlett they rode poorly due to their suspension, which was the cause of derailments, not uneven weight distribution. The load would've been distributed evenly inside as a matter of economic viability, the end doors simply meant that it could be loaded right to the ends without the need for a pallet truck inside. The downside being that the forklift would've needed to drive around to the other side of the wagon to load the opposite end. Some were fitted with better suspension and later refitted with air brakes, lasting well into the 80s.

5 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

The ground pressure exerted by the average forklift would probably cause it to go through the floor.....Even a pallet truck is very good at detecting dodgy floors.

In my younger days, I did quite a lot of unloading and unloading of both rail wagons and road trailers. In almost all cases, the lift truck would stay on the ground; any manouevring of pallets would either be done from ground level , using a lift-truck (most of which had extended forks, so they could comfortably reach beyond the mid point), or by a pallet truck on the wagon.

That's what I figured, forklift on the dock (or ground), pallet truck in the wagon. I'd imagine you could only fit a maximum of 6 pallets on a BR standard van anyway, so your two at either end could be positioned with a pallet truck, and the furthest middle pallet either positioned with a reach fork or just pushed into place using the second middle pallet as a bumper. Frowned upon now but I know it was common practice back in the day. Then some inflatable or timber dunnage between the pallets.

I know that Palvans had doors on each end on opposing sides, so as to make loading easier. I have seen a photo of a palvan being loaded with a forklift around 1961, but not sure how common that was at the time. My main problem is that I'm not old enough to have been around to see any of this stuff!



This 1958 photo showing the interior of the bagging plant at Goonvean & Rostowrack's eponymous Goonvean siding shows large sacks which were loaded from here into vans. These were 2 hundredweight bags, so the 9 bags in the foreground would've been almost 1 ton. As far as I know the men just used a sack cart to get the bag as far as the van, and from there would handball it into position. Heavy work once you got past the first layer of bags! Goonvean were about 20 years behind ECC in terms of technology.

My period is late 60s early 70s, capturing the end of the class 22. By this time I'd be surprised if forklifts weren't in use, but believe it or not I actually don't have really any photos or information regarding the use of pallets or forklifts in this time period.

I'm looking for information and any photographs regarding the use of forklifts for loading BR vans in the 1960s/70s. Specifically I want to know whether forklifts were commonly used, and if so were they driven into the wagon to place the load as with the more modern bogie vans, when the transition happened between using sack carts to manually load jute sacks into vans and using forklifts to load pallets, and really anything else about this subject as it seems there isn't much information out there. If pallet jacks were common back then, I'm assuming folding dock ramps were used as well to bridge the gap between the loading edge and the wagon floor...

Any help would be much appreciated.

Love the era and setting Trevor, looks like this is going to shape up to be a cracking layout. Anything in Cornwall with Class 22's is a win in my book.

Scott.

The joint-last coal fired clay kiln to operate, alongside the one at the end of the Carbis branch, was Lower Bostraze, which closed down in 1993. I'm sure if they'd had access to a railway they would've been using it. Likely would've been fairly low output though, maybe 3 or 4 hoods a day at most. In the last decade or so they'd drive a kubota mini-excavator onto one of the travelling bridges inside the dry, using the bucket to clear the clay off the hot pan, and the arm to slide the bridge along. Much better than shovelling it off by hand! Lower Bostraze was one of the few drys to have a pan level with the linhay, so when the excavator was done taking clay off the pan it was trundled into the linhay to load lorries. Not sure where the lorries went from there, but I'd imagine one of the local ports capable of hosting a small coaster.

If you can restrain the model building urges for long enough, I'm working on a short series of articles on layout-friendly clay works prototypes which will be posted on my Rosevear blog. There will likely be some information there that you could use as a basis.

Bill, I will have a look through my photo archives and see if I have anything from the 90s in high res and colour that could be used as a more appropriate background. I think I might have some shots of the Nanpean and Carbis areas that could work.

Looking good Bill. I notice your chap in the workshop has donned a more appropriate uniform! ;)

I recognize the photo of the dryers in the background, that's Trelavour, at the far end of Parkandillack. The steam rising from the chimney is from the dryer that Goonvean constructed here in 2001, sadly shut down after just a little over a decade of use when Imerys bought Goonvean. The dryer was a band dryer from Mitchell dryers, a company that Goonvean had been purchasing from since the 1950s. Their first Mitchell band dryer was built at Goonvean siding, just east of Treviscoe, processing 2.5 tons per 8 hour shift. Boots the pharmacy used to buy 10 tons per month from there for use in their cosmetics, and the dryer had originally been used to dry dog biscuits!

Hi Bill,

Just checking up on progress since I last posted and thought of some suggestions for details.

Your man in the workshop made me think about uniforms that ECC issued over the years. The blue trousers he's wearing would be accurate for the mid 60s to 80s, and they also had a blue jackets and blue overalls back then - these were all made of denim and were issued to everyone who worked in the pits, linhays (but not dryers), refineries, and fitting shops. In the dryers they wore white overalls. By the early 90s the uniform had switched to orange trousers, orange shirt/jacket, and orange overalls. This applied across the board, with the exception of offices and labs. Once Imerys took over, the orange became high-vis orange, and they added retro-reflective stripes and high-vis vests. Looking at your rolling stock you're definitely in the 90s, so your chappie should be wearing orange trousers, an orange jacket (no yellow vest with silver reflective stripes), and unless he's a manager or supervisor his hard hat should be blue or red. The below photo of an ECC employee operating P403D Denise at Crugwallins siding in 1993 clearly shows the uniform of the time.



Another detail you might like to include is tree screens. ECC planted rows of Cypress Leylandii in an attempt to buffer noise and screen the view of their works in deference to their neighbours. Why this species in particular you ask? Because they're evergreen, meaning they provide screening year round, and they're the tallest of the dense "hedge" conifers. They're really easy to make, you can just lay hemp rope fibres, plumbers hemp, or whatever you have to hand between wires and twist them together to make an armature, which can then be shaped and flocked. For a Cypress you just have to give it a more columnar shape and pull the armature through your hand a few times, from trunk to tip, so that the branches incline upwards. This guy has a good video demonstrating it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMw11tcZa-8 An alternative method is to cut a scotch-brite pad into small squares and stack them onto a bamboo skewer - this can then be shaped with scissors and flocked. The tree screens I'm talking about are visible in the background off to the right hand side in this photo.



One other detail that is extremely common around clay works is plank fencing, which can be seen in the photo of Fal Valley Dryers at Treviscoe below. These were made up of 6" x 1" x 72" boards with about a 1" gap between each board, fixed vertically to two 2x4 horizontals that were fixed to 4x4 fence posts. Very easily done with basswood strip.



Lastly, one final detail is height restriction chains. These are really straight forward, just two 9" diameter posts set in concrete in a barrel, or set into the ground, standing either side of an entrance to a works or at any point where the max headroom changes. Spanned between them is a chain set at the max headroom level. This is to allow clearance under electricity wires, pipelines, covered loading areas, conveyor bridges, and entryways. Here's one at Treviscoe.

Anyone know if any of these ever worked down to Cornwall on clay traffic, or if they were strictly a northern/steelworks thing?

16 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks Scott, that's most interesting although I think that it's a little too complex and certainly too big for what I want. I had in mind one of the more conventional pan dries, similar to, but smaller than, this one that I downloaded from your old blog:

 

There was also an article in the January 1965 Railway Modeller that gave me some initial ideas.

 

My existing model is about 18 inches long overall including the coal storage area and the chimney. I don't think I'll have room for anything bigger.

Roger that, I'll see what I can come up with.

Would you be open to the suggestion of a loading wharf, with clay being trucked from a nearby kiln? If you have limited space and want a simpler smaller kiln, that arrangement would be more prototypical, and would allow for some nice scammel lorries. 

The trenance and goonbarrow branches both had small wharves fed by small kilns. Some of the kilns were just 100 feet long, which would be well within your target 18 inches. Although if it's sited away from the tracks with clay brought to the wharf by truck, you might be able to site it on a part of the layout that isn't as tight.