Arthur

Here's a 1959 map of Dorman Longs Teeside empire. At one time the U.K.'s largest steelmaker they were still, in the 1950's, one of the largest and, by some margin, the largest on Teeside. Although the map shows just Dorman Long works others, which are in the same geography, were the integrated Cargo Fleet works and the iron making plant of Gjers, Mills & Co. Both were in the old Ironmasters district, that northern bulge into the Tees, at the western end, where Dorman Longs Acklam and Britannia works were located. Works off the map were South Durham Iron & Steel just north of the Tees near Hartlepool and Skinningrove on the coast, south of Redcar. All the steel making plants used the open hearth method and the plant labelled "Bessemer" furnaces are actually blast furnaces, Dorman Long just called that plant the Bessemer plant. A map of Dorman Long's Clay lane furnaces. This shows two furnaces No.s 3 (1956) and No.s 2 (1957), both built by Dorman Long themselves with 27' 6" hearths, capable of 1,000 tons per day and typical large furnaces of their day. A third furnace, No. 1, was added in 1962 and space was left to add a further three but that never happened. They were served by a system of conveyor fed bunkers rather than the more usual rail served Hi-Line. A photograph looking north east, No.3 nearest to camera; Opened in 1954 was the new Lackenby open hearth melting shop containing 5 x 350t tilting open hearths and 2 x 600t active mixers. Firstly a cross section of the plant; a photograph of the east side of the plant; One of the 350t tilting open hearths on test. South Durham had similar sized furnaces at their new, South, works, and these were as big as they came. Only SCOW's Abbey works had some larger, 400t, but they were of a somewhat different type. The furnace in the photograph has yet to have any brickwork added and the ends are enclosed in brick flue chambers, that oval port at the end would not be visible. The whole furnace can be rocked back and forth, pouring steel out of the back, and slag down those spouts into ladles under the charging stage, at the front. The pulleys are for the door opening gear. Hope these are of interest, I'm away for a couple of weeks and will add some more when I return.

That's great, amazing that the word 'advertisement' was filtered out by your browser.

I've changed the topic title to better reflect the inclusion of rolling stock ads. Here are some for the Distington Foundry, once part of the United Steel Companies Empire (which included the Yorkshire Engine Company), and, by 1967, part of the British Steel Corporation. By the time of these ads. the other torpedo ladle builders, Ashmore Benson, Pease & Company and Head, Wrightson, were part of the Davy International group and as the only potential customer was the British Steel Corporation, Distington had somewhat of a competitive advantage... The first two are related to the only British example of long distance movement of hot metal over the national network. More here: http://www.rmweb.co....lling-stock-10/ The ads may look identical but the small images are different. The first ad.shows three images of them in build, the second shows the first test train on B.R., shunting by one of Consett's Hunslets at the works and discharge into a transfer ladle at the B.O.S. plant. Distington built a good number of these vehicles, the six shown in 1969 were those built for the Cargo Fleet-Consett service and the nine 300t capacity ones in 1970 were for Shotton Steelworks. It's a pity, as John observed earlier, that they do not show prices. I worked at Shotton in1974 and these ladles were out of use at the back of the open hearth melting shop and the Kling ladles were back in service. Whether they were ever used again I do not know, but it seemed somewhat wasteful of what must have been a very expensive bit of machinery. And in contrast, from 1929, an ad. for Dewhursts of Sheffield, who must have built hundreds, if not thousands, of the typical British slag ladle.

I know it as a dolly knot too. Still use it occaisionally when securing hay/straw on my Ifor Williams trailer.

Yes, it's what was left of the old South Durham Iron & Steel company's works at Hartlepool. The British Steel Corporation closed down the iron and steel making plant and it became a finishing works and part of the Teeside Division. It retained a heavy plate rolling mill and became the main plant for the manufacture of large diameter pipe which is made from rolled plate. Steel was supplied from Lackenby as slabs and coiled plate.

Not boring at all Dave, I was looking at this the other day and thinking how much you seemed to be enjoying the extra detailing opportunities 7mm gives, the machine tools look great. Pin-ups are sheer class!!

It's not(!) really a knot in the sense that it's used to apply tension to the rope after which the rope still needs to be tied off. I was taught it by an old hand in the early '80s though we were using tensioned straps by then. You essentially form a hanging loop in the rope, drop the loose rope end down through the hanging loop, around the hitching cleat, back up through the hanging loop and pull down to tension. In essence you've created a 2:1 pulley system and it doubles your tensioning effort. You can put several in a single length of rope as you move down the trailer.

Not at all David, it's an open thread to gather anything related to the topic. Excellent links with a couple of glimpses of Dorman Long's Bessemer blast furnaces, images of which seem to be rare. Graeme, I'll post some relevant information over the coming days.

Graeme, I've got a fair amount of information about Teeside steel mainly covering the period 1945 to 1980. The information I have is just about the industry itself, I've nothing on the related main line rail traffic.Is there anything particular in which you are interested rather than me just posting stuff at random? Arthur

Some more, now with colour, and one for steelworks rolling stock. The one below shows the Ravenscraig open hearth melting shop in the background, one of the last to be built in this country.

James, yes, it's a different generation of furnace than those at Scunthorpe. They were american designs typical of their day, two built in 1938 and two in 1954. Without looking up the data they originally were about 25' (8m) across the hearth and stood 200' to the explosion doors platform and yielded around 1,000 tons a day. They have been enlarged over the years and I don't know their current dimensions but still nothing like that at Redcar. The Redcar furnace was heavily influenced by designs from Nippon Steel in Japan and stands 300' to the explosion door platform.

Following Graemes request here a couple of images of steelmaking on Teeside in BSC days, these from 1979. Firstly, a new torpedo ladle on a test run, that's why it's rotated upside down. Sixteen of these 350 tonne capacity ladles were built by British Steel, to a design by the German company DEMAG, at their Distington Foundry in Cumbria specifically for the, then, new Redcar blast furnace. Laden, their all up weight was 700 tonnes and the loco is one of 27, 70 tonne, 760 hp, GEC's. The ladles were used in pairs, an all up train weight of 1410 tonnes, on a 4 mile round trip between the blast furnace at Redcar and the BOS plant at Lackenby. The wagons were 3.3m wide and much of the internal rail route they used was rebuilt and relaid to cope with them. This is the furnace they served, at the time Europes largest, and still standing though idle. A larger version of Llanwerns No. 3, it was a four column design, belt fed, had a Paul Wurth bell less distributor and was designed for very high top pressure. With a 14m hearth and twin cast house it had an output of 10,000 tonnes per day and was built by Davy International. It was put into blast in late 1979, the initial charge included 6,500 railway sleepers as kindling. Arthur

One from 1958

Here are some locomotive manufacturers advertisements from a steelworks related publication from around 1954, interesting that only one includes a steam locomotive. That's one hell of a weight on those wagons behind the Hudswell Clarke at the English Steel Corporations River Don Works in Sheffield. Interesting wagons too. Arthur

Merf, The original is very grainy, even with a magnifying glass it's difficult to be sure. I'd say the reg is TYO 396, the least clear is the last letter so the O might just be a D. Again I think you've got the fleet number right. The second number is the least clear but 8630D seems right. Arthur

Another from Steel Times, this one August 7th, 1964; Steel bar from GKN's East Moors works is loaded onto a BMC tractor/semi trailer outfit at South Lambert. The bars were for use in the construction of the Victoria line.

Could it be the earlier version of the Freight Lifter? It seems to have the same metal ladder running half way up the nearside of the mast.

Thanks JCB, from that I was able to follow it up a bit. Seems, from what I can find, that the original design had the typical centre seating position and then a B.R.owned one was in an accident (on a public road?) leading to the judges comment above. Following that a revised design, with a two driving position layout, evolved.

Excellent, thanks for the link Adam, nice to see it restored to it's former glory. Arthur

Though not of great quality I hope that these are of interest, both are from an article in Steel Times, March 13, 1964. The article covers the development of "steel railheads" at Moor Lane and Rood End to serve Birmingham and the Black Country. Opened originally by the Western Region, they were transferred to the London Midland in 1963. Rood End received billets from Llanelly and Briton Ferry steelworks whilst Moor lane handled strip from Ebbw Vale. Similar railheads were planned at Aston, Great Bridge and Wolverhampton Walsall Street with services from Sheffield, Scunthorpe and the North East. The railheads were served by overnight fitted trains and offered next day delivery. Rood End, above, received up to 14 trains per week, carrying billets from 24' to 30' carried on fitted bogie bolsters. Moor Lane received 5t, 1,200', coils which were unloaded by a 'Freight Lifter' fitted with Somers patent automatic lifting tongs which gripped both inside and outside the coil. That Freight Lifter is an interesting looking machine.

And here's a link to my gallery which has a number of images of the iron and steel industry and their associated railways. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/gallery/album/6861/437-steel-industry-images/ Arthur

Prior to 1983, military vehicles released for civilian use, took the number plate relative to the year of first civilian registration, In 1982 I bought a 1973 build lightweight Land Rover on a Y (1982) plate. In 1983 the Q plate was used for any older vehicles taking their first civilian registration. This included kit cars, ex military vehicles and vehicles identified as being stolen and being re-registered when the original identity was uncertain. Later, I'm not sure when, where possible, older vehicles were given registrations relative to their year of build. My current, 1976, ex army ,forward control Land Rover was given an R (1976) plate when I first registered it in 2000.

 There were plenty of 32t rated Ford Cargo tractor units and some were rated at 38 tonnes. Ford pushed them up to that weight after the demise of the Transcontinental.Â

To add to Brians pretty exhaustive list of magazine articles are three relevant books. All cover U.S. prototypes and their modelling, though, as the laws of metallurgy are common on both sides of the pond, so is the equipment (railways aside). Firstly, Dean Freytag's,  'The History, Making and Modeling of Steel', originally published by Walthers as part of their steel mill series, it was long out of print and was going for silly money. The NMRA managed to get Walters to re-print it, currently on special offer at Walthers; http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/98-20 A large hardback, it is mainly devoted to the prototype with a bit at the back about using Walthers kits. Secondly, Dean Freytag's, 'The Cyclopedia of Industrial Modeling' Pure plastic modelling, not entirely devoted to steel but relevant to any industrial modelling. http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/pls/pls115.htm and finally, Bernard Kempinski's,  'The Model Railroader’s Guide to Steel Mills' http://www.kalmbachstore.com/12435.html in Kalmbachs typical softback style, similar to Deans first book but with a little more modelling though not what you could call a step by step approach. Arthur