Tankers during Grouping

[Graeme Leary]

This topic has been touched on previously but I am interested in how/where tank wagons would be placed in a typical goods train during the Grouping.

understand 'block' trains comprised of all (or mainly) tank wagons did not appear until WW2 when such formations were developed and that generally tank wagons could be situated anywhere in mixed goods (having regard to wagons that may need to be split on a long running).

In the case of 'block' (all) tank trains I also understand there would always be a non-tank wagon between the loco/tender and the first tank wagon and I assume a similar safety precaution would have occurred in a mixed goods.

Photos I have seen suggest tank wagons could be placed anywhere on a mixed goods (during the Grouping) but confirmation would be appreciated.

Graeme Leary,
New Zealand

[Hatfield Shed]

On the photographic evidence available - which is limited! - you have it right. I believe there had to be a wagon between a flammable spirit tanker and the brake van too. (Adding to the difficulty are the earlier cuboid types which unless near the camera simply blend in with the likes of five plank wagons.) Typically just one (cylindrical) tank wagon in a lengthy goods train, on the rare occasion that there is a recognisable tank wagon in the train. The RTR manufacturer's choices of such as these over general merchandise opens is fully comprehensible, pretty livery on a distinctive outline is effective eye candy, but quite unrepresentative of the pre WWII reality.

[Graeme Leary]

Thanks Hatfield Shed, good to have that confirmed.
Graeme

[Hatfield Shed]

I am expecting 'someone' to pop up with specific information about routes serving refineries, where significant numbers of tank wagons would be in evidence. Relevant to the LNER, comfortably the largest refining capacity in the UK pre WWII was the first major UK refinery site, at Shell Haven in Essex. (I learned this by accident while undertaking a business process improvement study with Shell!)

[Seagull]

Regarding tank wagon routing, I wonder if rather than thinking where they would originate from it might be better to think where they would be going too.

Firstly the overall usage of bulk liquid products of all types was much less in the grouping years than we are used to today.

As mentioned above bulk petrol & oil fuel trains came about due to wartime necessity. The other products (vegetable oils, molasses, creosote etc.) were subject to slow steady growth and changing usage and markets.

Imported mineral oil products are normally discharged direct from ship to refinery storage tanks. Similarly imported vegetable oils and other bulk liquids are often discharged direct to the end user who tend to locate their plants adjacent to a suitable berth.

Processed liquid products (as opposed to raw) would probably go from the site of manufacture (or discharge in the case of imports by ship) to a marshalling yard where the wagons would be cut into a mixed goods train for onward delivery. I would expect that the few moves that involved a larger number of tanks would be over a short distance to the nearest yard.

Trying to think of bulk liquid users between the wars only gives me a short list - though I'm sure others can add to it.

Fuel oils and petrol.
1. The Navy (they would mostly use coastal tankers) may have used some fuel supplied by rail tanker to small ports or naval installations.
2. The Army would probably use bulk petrol tankers but remember the Treasury was holding the purse strings.
3. The Airforce but on a very small scale until about 1938.
4. Merchant ships and fishing boats in small ports - probably 1to (at most) 5 tanks. Most fuel being supplied in coastal tankers.
5. Petrol distribution depots where the petrol was transhipped to road tankers, 40 gallon drums or the then ubiquitous 2 gallon cans. These were almost always very small and would take about 5 tanks at a time, though in the mid 1930's larger ones started to appear that would take larger numbers of tanks.

Creosote was mostly produced by local gasworks and would usually be shipped in a few tank wagons at a time. The biggest users being the railway companies probably followed by the post office, electricity companies, then timber yards.

Specialist oils - lubricants, transformer oils, vegetable oils, molasses, pesticides, acids, etc. even now do not get shipped far in any great quantity. I would guess single tanks would be the rule at that time.

Alan