Artless Bodger

On 15/02/2020 at 14:03, Southernman46 said:

Great thread !

 

ISTR the coal did turn up as an MGR train during the early 80's ?

I've a recollection that some trials were run before I left in 1985, with 56s on MGR wagons, but I did not manage to take any photos.

4 hours ago, br2975 said:

Auto train, twenties style, and NO not the 1920s !

.

Brian R

Seeing the tow bar - a week or two ago, walking across the footbridge from Earley station into Woodley during an engineering possession I was surprised when a road rail excavator appeared underneath, pushing one, and pulling another trolley using tow bars a bit like this. Each trolley was loaded with recently cut down tree trunks. Running wrong-line it passed through Earley station, projecting leafy branches sweeping the surface of the down platform. Further on in the walk, returning down Henley Wood Road where the track runs parallel to the road, the trolleys had been unloaded onto the side of the track and an articulated lorry with a hydraulic boom grab was lifting the trunks over the boundary fence and loading them up for disposal. Note to self - take a camera next time you go for a walk! What was surprising was that the wood was being removed at all since in many places it is left on the cutting sides.  Would make a nice model, especially the out of gauge load sweeping the platform!

On 13/12/2013 at 22:36, br2975 said:

 

Excuse my ignorance ... but what is a 'ring stiffness tester' used for ?

 

Brian R

 

(I wonder who'll be first to bite ?)

A bit late and hope it's not too off topic (or pedantic - I used to be a paper technologist)

Standard paper and board testing methods. The picture shows a flat crush test; a sample of corrugated board is placed between two anvils and pressed, the force required for it to fail in compression is recorded. Ring stiffness or ring crush relates to the stiffness of the board in the vertical plane - relates to the sides of the box when stacked - a ring of liner board is formed from a narrow strip inserted into a mandrel and placed between the anvils, the ring is crushed edgewise, again the force at failure is recorded. You will often find test spec details printed on standard corrugated cases. 

The other photo shows an inclined ramp used to slide loaded pallets, cases etc down into a block to test the effectiveness of dunnage etc. PIRA had one or more in the 80s.

Another great thread by the way - this site is a gold mine, better than watching TV. Thanks to all.

Demolition of the west mill boiler house (the cream corrugated structure) and the associated brick flue and chimney were complete before mid 1985, the new coal hopper and boiler house construction started in that space. The big black building housed nos 6 and 7 boilers and remained in use as did no 8 boiler which was new - in among the photos of west mill bh demolition I have photos of the chimney being lifted into place on no 8 bh. West mill bh contained Stirling boilers 1-5, with the turbine house behind. From what I've seen of old photos the tallest part was built before the war - as was the chimney - for the new no 9 m/c. 9 m/c was a newsprint machine and its pulp was supplied from east mill beaterfloor. After the war 3 MG paper machines were added alongside no 9, and the extension of the wm bh provided steam for these. No 3 mill (13 m/c) dated from the late 50s, and I think that was provided for from wm bh. 6/7 bh came a bit later, possibly to allow the oldest boilers in east mill to be shut down - by now these were numbered in the 20s, though there had been a bank of Lancashire boilers in em too. All were coal fired until some time in the late 60s or early 70s when converted to oil, I'm unsure about the dates, and those family members who might have know are unfortunately all now dead. Reduction of steam requirements to just 6, 7 and 8 in the mid 80s was determined by machine closures, only 2 and 3 remaining in em and 13 in wm by then. We'd had a spell of relying heavily on grid electricity when no 5 turbo generator broke down, and ultimately with reduced demand and oil price rises, it must have been more economic to go for coal fired steam (for drying), and buy in all electricity. Later moves to gas fired CHP was also an economic choice, much as Portal's mill at Overton did.

These two photos show the cranes ready to fit the top part of new no 8 bh chimney - the wm bh is still standing, and the remains of the brick chimney and flue, with no 8 bh to the right. The building behind with fans in the wall is the turbine house.

Not Reed's traffic; ARC aggregate empties from Allington. Boiler house demolition in the background. Taken from the steps up to our building. Our east mill reception siding ran under the beater floor to the right which was where Bounty usually stabled, later Hornblower too. The wiggly tin on the far right was the builders' ladder store (single storey lean to) and the size plant. The covered bridge carried pulp and water mains, steam pipes and electrical connectors between em and wm - there were some alarmingly accessible open busbars in the roof space above the pedestrian walkway with just a wire mesh guard under them - beware if you were carrying anything metal, thin and over 5' long!

For comparison here's a picture of the old west mill boiler house being demolished, c1984, 6/7/visible on the left. East mill rail connection and sidings just visible in the foreground. This photo was taken from the entrance steps to our building.

The oil discharge was out of sight beyond the left edge of the photo and below the gently rising embankment of the main line. The lattice structure in the foreground carried cables over our internal tracks.

21 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

Some photos of heavy oil discharge arrangement https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/oilterminals/e42db5e4    https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/oilterminals/e1a9e3ad6   https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/oilterminals/e16820bcb

 

Paul

Thanks Paul

Interesting photos; I left APM at the end of April 1985, by which time the original west mill boiler house had been demolished and construction of an unloading hopper for coal and a new coal fired boiler house had started. Your photos show the remains of 6/7 boiler house but after it had been decommissioned, the electrostatic precipitators and metal chimneys have gone from the roof. Whether the oil discharge was still in use by 1990 I cannot say, as oil may have been held as a reserve fuel. The old west mill pulp conveyor gantries are still in place (no cranes though, they went before I left). A new paper transhipment shed (more like a dutch barn) was built just to the right later as refered to in SED Freightman's post - again views on some urbex sites.

Oil trains were usually 3 a week, 10x TEA 100T bogie tankers (it always tickled us - big tank wagons labelled TEA - sustenance for British industrial workers perhaps?), they had to be delivered in a short time frame so the oil did not cool and become too viscous to discharge. Watching and hearing a 73 on diesel backing the train upgrade through New Hythe station until it crested the hump and gravity took over down the Brookgate siding connection was always exhilarating.

All gone now, houses and distribution services only.

Thanks SED Freightman, 4G headcode certainly rings a bell. Though scheduled for an ED I remember seeing a 33 on some occasions, once with just 1 fitted 16T loaded with coal, no brake van. Sometimes the train was long - mainly minerals and pressflows, our 1 or 2 5 planks for clay and / or the chlorine tanker. 

Posted elsewhere on RM Web also; there are a few 16 tonners visible here. Incidentally as internal wagons we had a couple of the slope sided minerals and quite a few cupboard door minerals, all painted green (Reed's house colour) with white numbers.

Mineral wagons in an industrial setting - a scan of a photo my brother found during the demolition of Aylesford paper mill (east mill). This is Howe, the Pecket 0-4-0ST in west mill. Hidden behind the buffer beam is the Strood - Paddock Wood railway line, the roof visible is east mill size plant beyond the railway and one of the pulp conveyors faintly visible above. Date unknown.

The Toplis patents can be found on Espacenet. https://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP

Claude Toplis' patent for a level luffing crane, including the reason for doing so is GB191222704 (A) (search Claude Toplis). A later patent for the bifurcated jib and crank luffing is in GB 213949 (A) (search Stothert Pitt). The bifurcated jib was designed to remove any obstruction from the crane operator's field of view, the crank luffing mechanism to ensure that if allowed to over-run the jib would just oscillate and no damage would occur. This patent includes diagrams which though of a general nature might be useful to anyone contemplating making a model.

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I hope this isn't some dreadful euphemism...

Not intentionally - APM's two waste water clarifiers at the south end of the site were adjacent to the Johnson Tar Works (rail access was via the APM internal system), hence the nick-name. One of my jobs was to test the depth of sedimented sludge each morning by lowering a long wooden pole into the water to the bottom - if you could bounce it there was little or no sludge and the clarifier was working properly, if there was resistance due to the depth of sludge then extraction was failing and we'd have to pump out and clear the sludge. Climbing up onto the rotating scraper bridge 15' up gave a panoramic view of the main line a few yards away. I could time my rounds to hopefully see the pick up goods, or later in the morning the Allington aggregate empties go past.

Local goods on the Strood - Paddock Wood line were either 73 or 33 hauled and at one time included 16T minerals, one sighting when I was poling Johnson's clarifiers one morning was a single fitted 16T behind a 33 heading towards Aylesford - shortest goods train I ever saw. APM's coal trains in their later years sometimes had 73s, I remember one evening while working on 31618 in Blackhorse yard, a 73 took the APM empties out. Thanks for the memories this has stirred.

Photos of Howe

1. Taken the morning I 'helped' with the shunting - sorry poor quality scan of a photo taken with an instamatic.

2. Scan of a photo rescued during east mill demolition.

3. 4. Two scans made from the archives during decommisioning work in EM, a minor contretemps on Perimeter Road.

Yes, you are right that there were only the two locos Hornblower and Bounty. It was necessary to move Hornblower to east mill when Bounty broke down. I was full time at APM from July 1978 to April 1985, and I don't recall Hornblower being in use in WM at all in that time (I walked past the shed most days). It was a surprise to see it on the mainline when it was moved to EM and I was based in the building on stilts right next to it for 3 years ('82-'85).  It left APM before I did, probably 1984.

With a half hourly passenger service, and a 15 mph top speed (indicated on the clock) it must have been a squeeze to get it moved between passenger trains.

Do you know when wagonload freight stopped on the Strood - Paddock Wood line please? We stopped taking chlorine as a result, clay traffic had stopped a bit before I believe - mainly because APM had shut the machines that made grades using it. 

In the photo above (probably taken from the roof of 6/7 boiler house), at the very left edge just above the Stothert & Pitt crane may be seen Hornblower, the west mill 165DE Ruston and Hornsby shunter, this had replaced 2 steam locomotives in west mill, one of which was held in reserve, Pecket 0-4-0ST Howe. When Hornblower was out of service for tyre turning*, Howe was brought out and I got to spend a Saturday morning with the driver - even had a go at the regulator myself. A coal train arrived and we spent some time splitting it up and shunting the cuts into place so the S&P cranes could unload the wagons into the coal bunkers.

*Due to the sharp curvature in the sidings tyres got worn quickly, when Hornblower was transferred to east mill in around 1979 - 80 we found after some use that it was developing flanges on the outside of the wheels! It must have happened quite quickly as I doubt if BR would have allowed it to make the journey on the mainline from Brookgate siding to Snodland (to cross over) and back with the tyres that worn.

As I was getting a bit off-topic in a response to  SED Freightman on the ICI 40t Bogie Caustic Tankers - Where, when, who? thread I thought I'd open a new topic with that and some other details of the old Reed mill at New Hythe, Kent - Aylesford Paper Mills or APM. However if this is of no interest please feel free to delete it.

Construction of the paper mills at New Hythe (Aylesford was the nearest village just to the south up river on the Medway, began just after WW1, and by the late 1950's it was the biggest mixed mill in Europe, with the main papermill and other associated industries on site. A major local employer. The original mill was constructed between the Strood - Maidstone West railway line and a navigation cut on the river Medway, where a new wharf was built. What became East Mill steadily expanded until in the late '30s the site was full and construction commenced west of the railway line - West Mill. Other industries were also set up to use paper from the mills - paper sacks, corrugated boxes, paper tubes. Post WW2 the expansion continued with a joint Reed / Kimberley Clark sanitary tissue mill and eventually building products too. The attached site plan shows the extent of the internal railway systems.

East Mill and West Mill railway systems were separate, and although the plans suggest the Blackhorse site to the north of East Mill systems might be easily connected I never saw any evidence, on the ground, or on plans to show they were. Though EM and WM had steam and later diesel shunters, Blackhorse was apparently shunted by a farm tractor fitted front and back with buffer planks. See attached:

At its height 7000T of coal were delivered each week and around 7000T of paper made. There were two boiler houses, in EM by the wharf, and in WM. Originally some coal was delivered by water but later all by rail, apparently much from the Kent coal field. An aerial photo found during demolition of EM and scanned for me shows multitudinous 16T mineral wagons in both EM and WM sidings. West mill rail connection was known as Brookgate Siding (Brookgate Industries were adjacent, part of the Reed conglomerate and made coated papers with early types of carbonless copy paper and encapsulated ink papers for bus tickets and the like), the ground frame box (?) for East mill was Reed's Siding (from memory).

Several family members worked for site companies, and I was frequently taken in on Saturday mornings if my father had to go in, so I saw bits of the mill from the age of about 5 in the early 60s. I later worked in summer holidays from school and college for site companies, notably in the mill itself and later the technical department before obtaining permanent employment in 1978 in the technical dept, leaving for another job in mid 1985. My brother continued to work in APM from starting an apprenticeship, until being on the decommissioning team when East Mill was finally demolished.

Cameras were officially discouraged, though I managed to get several photos at odd times later on.

More to follow.

APM New Hythe.pdf

On 15/01/2020 at 17:22, SED Freightman said:

 

Sorry for going OT but the seeing the photo reminded me that sometime after the chlorine traffic finished I made arrangements for 'Hornblower' to be transferred from Reeds Siding to Brookgate Siding on the opposite side of the main line.  Following C&W and guaging exams, the loco ran under its own power via Aylesford to cross over, driven by Reeds driver accompanied by a BR conductor driver (from Gillingham?), sadly nowadays it would almost certainly be quicker and cheaper to effect such a transfer by road. 

Even more off topic; sorry to disagree but the movement was from west mill (Brookgate Siding) to east mill via Snodland to cross over. This was c. 1979-80 and I was walking to New Hythe station for a 1/2 day off when Hornblower came through, our OMED superintendant was also on the footplate. Hornblower was the west mill shunter (photo on Flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/12a_kingmoor_klickr/6680871095.) originally. Through family connections I got a trip on it in 1968 from the point in that photo round to the back of no 13 machine house and was allowed to drive part way back. Howe the Pecket 0-4-0ST was brought out of retirement a while later when Hornblower was having its tyres turned and I got a turn on Howe too. Once Hornblower was in East Mill it was used for the chlorine tanks and clay wagons (Bounty the 88DS's gear box had died). After the last train off our site, Hornblower and Bounty sat under the em beaterfloor or outside our department until they were carted off for scrap - craned onto a low loader. I borrowed the mill polaroid to take a couple of photos. I still have Hornblower's maker's plate - the engineers didn't want that to go to the scrapman!

A totally fascinating topic - combining two of my favourite subjects, cranes and railways.  Referring to the cranes in some of the photos, with tall boxlike structures vertically on them, I believe these are hydraulic cranes and the vertical box contains the hydraulic cylinder for hoisting the load. A chain (usually in early examples) was secured at the end of the hydraulic cylinder, passed 180 degrees over a pulley on the end of the piston rod and then back down to a pulley at the base, then led to the jib and the hook. When the piston rose it drew the chain up and so raised the load, for a 20 foot lift the cylinder would have a 10 foot stroke, hence the height of the casing. There is a picture of two, one light one heavy, at GWR Brentford Docks: https://www.steampicturelibrary.com/places/docks-brentford-docks/gwr-docks-brentford-c1930-7194253.html

Sketch of operating principle.

A late comer to this topic, which along with other posts on coal yards etc are very interesting, thank you to everyone. Nearholmer mentions the Midland coal yard at Maidstone. I helped a friend in the Kent Archaeological Society to photograph and measure parts of the, by then, unused yard in the early 70s. I recall the coal yard was further north than the main goods yard and adjacent to the Royal Engineers barracks. The sidings were indeed on the flat, with spurs served by wagon turntables. The rails if I can recall correctly were short and double headed bullhead, very rusty and delaminating (iron rather than steel perhaps?). The yard had a separate road entrance with a small brick hut. 

Coal deliveries to local paper mills varied - Tovil upper (Reeds) was a quite small mill (5 machines) and the coal was probably carted from the nearby Tovil goods branch terminal as there were no direct rail access to the mill. You could look into the boiler house (Lancashire type) from the road and see barrows and coal piles on the floor. Lower Tovil mill (Allnutts), where my grandfather worked, was even smaller (1 machine) and presumably also had coal carted in from the goods yard, as the branch crossed the road on a girder bridge just along from the gatehouse.

In contrast the Reeds mill at Aylesford was in two parts, either side of the Strood - Paddock Wood line, each with its own connection. Coal was unloaded from the wagons by grab crane, either direct into the boilerhouse bunkers or onto a stockpile. The boilerhouse cranes were Stothert and Pitt dockside type (East mill actually took coal by water as well originally). The east mill stockpile was served by a Smith Rodley locomotive steam crane. The combined mill burned around 7000 tons a week at its height. Attached photo (scanned for me from stuff found during demolition) shows plenty of coal wagons, cranes unloading them etc. 

Have just come across this thread. If it is of interest, the chlorine tankers were worked singly, we had chlorine delivered to Reed's Aylesford Paper Mill at New Hythe in them by the local pick up goods (were they still called that in the 1980s?). When I joined Reed's in 1978 the chlorine was delivered in 4w tank wagons of rather ancient appearance - from memory they were through vac piped but unbraked, with spoked wheels. These were replaced around 1980 by the vac fitted bogie tankers. We had to have part of our siding relaid to a wider radius to accommodate them. The drawing supplied to our water and effluent dept at the time (the unloading pipe gantry had to be moved too) was lettered for Murgatroyds. The attached photo shows the last tanker about to be shunted off site, c. 1983, when wagonload freight on the Strood - Paddock Wood line was to be withdrawn. Kent County Council were unhappy about the prospect of bulk liquid chlorine transport to the site by road, so we had to change to an alternative antimicrobial treatment for the 650 000 gph of process water we used. The loco is Ruston Hornsby 165DE, no 416211, delivered 18/10/57.

There are photos of Cowans Sheldon turntables in the book "Carlisle's Crane Makers - The Cowans Sheldon Story" by Alan Earnshaw, published by Nostalgia Road. On page 49 an LMS 45' table and an ex-SECR one at Chatham, length not stated but a Maunsell L1 only just fits. The Chatham table has bullhead rail in chairs, on a very shallow well type, with transverse deck timbers.

Regards

Apologies for a late entry to this topic - of interest to me as I had the clockwork loco in my first trainset. The loco had green plastic upperworks and black footplate and smokebox. I note a query about dates so perhaps this would be of interest? I was given the trainset as a Christmas present, but it was withheld after a fractious episode until I was 4 (1961). So the 2 tone clockwork loco was definitely around in December 1960.

The set comprised the loco, 2 short bogie coaches in maroon plastic, and a circle of series 3 track (black sleeper base).

Artless. 

There was a series of articles, in Railway Bylines I think, a few years ago (possibly by Peter Coster?), with photos of the crushing plant, road vehicles used to transport stone, loading hoppers etc. I'm annoyed now I didn't keep my copies.

Cheers