Asbestos Related Industries
Asbestos is a mineral comprised of long thin fibres (from 2mm to 30mm in length) recovered from rock. These fibres can be exceptionally thin (100th the size of human hair), they will not burn and the fibres can be spun into yarn and woven into cloth. The resulting material is fire proof and sound absorbing so asbestos cloth was used for insulating lagging on engine and for fireproof gloves and suits for fire fighters. Asbestos has been known for thousands of years, ancient Greek temples had lamps with 'everlasting' wicks. Only the longer fibres can be effectively made into cloth and there were nine grades of the material. It comes in various forms, the word asbestos is used for any similar mineral, and each type has its own colour and properties. When mined typically only 5-10% of the mineral is asbestos.
Asbestos was mined in several countries but Britain imported its supplies of asbestos and the most important imports were white asbestos from Quebec (actually hydrous magnesium silicate) and 'blue asbestos' from South Africa. Being an imported material much of the associated industry was located close by the docks. Not all asbestos factories were located in dock areas, there was a very big Turner and Newall site in Rochdale (this was always their main UK plant), but Manchester and Clydebank both had factories close to their docks.
Commercial development of asbestos on an industrial scale began in Italy in the mid 19th century. Its value was soon realised and special spinning and weaving machinery was developed, the earliest uses for asbestos fabric being in fireproof garments and safety curtains for theatres. In 1879 the first consignment of raw asbestos (which had been uncovered by a forest fire in Quebec) arrived in Britain. A firm called Turner Bros in Rochdale landed a contract to produce asbestos manufactured goods and immediately began to buy in machinery. They were the first in the country to spin asbestos yarn and weave asbestos cloth by power-driven machinery.
Brake linings of woven asbestos were first made in England in 1896. Asbestos packings for steam glands were made from carded Italian fibre wrapped in cotton (carding is a process of combing to align all the fibres, this is also required when the fibres are spun into thread). Asbestos cement was invented in about 1900, a Continental invention it was patented and no one in the UK owned a licences, so until 1909 all supplies were imported. In 1909 Turner Bros Asbestos Ltd opened a factory to make asbestos cement products in Manchester's Trafford Park (at the time the largest industrial estate in the world). The fibres were simply mixed with cement and pressing the result between rollers to form flat or corrugated sheets, this allowed the practical use of the shorter fibres which could not be spun and woven and this product soon became one of the main uses for asbestos.
The dangers of asbestos had been recognised since the 1920s when it was realised that the hard fibres could irritate the lungs causing a fatal condition known as 'asbestosis' (the term 'asbestosis' was coined in 1927). The issue only came to public attention in about 1967 and thereafter legislation was passed limiting or prohibiting the use of some forms of the material. By the 1970s it had become clear that the 'permitted' forms were also dangerous. As a result asbestos was phased out (although no suitable alternative were found for brake linings and the like at the time). By the later 1980s there was a thriving industry removing it from buildings (where it had been used as lagging and as a heat insulating matting) and older railway stock was being scrapped due to the use of asbestos lagging for sound and heat insulation (causing problems for the preservation industry as asbestos removal was an expensive business).
From the mid 1990s motor car brake lining changed to using ceramics and other materials in place of asbestos. I understand there was a study on just how much had been deposited on roads by brake linings on motor vehicles, but the cost of cleaning that lot up on all the roads in the country was deemed to be too high and the decision was taken not to mention it.
Asbestos is hard to avoid, it is also found in talcum powder (in very small quantities and only occasionally), some industries switched to using Vermiculite (a magnesium-aluminum-iron silicate which resembles mica) in place of asbestos but some supplies have been found to be contaminated with asbestos fibres.
Fiberglass insulation was invented in 1938 and was seen as the best replacement for asbestos as an insulation material, however it seems the fine fibres are also dangerous in similar ways to asbestos and there are similar concerns about 'carbon fibre reinforced' materials as the carbon fibres are similar in many ways to asbestos.
Modelling an Asbestos Related Works
There were no really distinctive features in this industry, the asbestos was imported in bulk and bagged at the docks, it was supplied to the factories in brown Hessian sacks about four feet high by two and a half feet wide, hessian sacks were still used for asbestos in the early 1970s and probably continued in use until production was ended.
The cement at the Manchester TAC asbestos cement factory in the 1960s and 70s came in standard 'Blue Circle' paper sacks.
The sketch below is loosely based on a photographs of a Turners Asbestos Cement Coy works in the 1930s, the sign was individual letters supoorted on a light metal frame. The only point of real interest is the design of the roof lights, these would be very easy to add to a model roof, requiring a simple cut at each end for the end pieces.
Fig ___ TAC buildings
The more modern asbestos works buildings were simple but large metal sheds, by the 1970s these often had few windows, relying on electric lighting. These large metal buildings sometimes had the TAC logo on the side in the post war era (possibly before) but other than that it's just large 'industrial' buildings.
Fig ___ TAC Logo
The sketch below shows the railway access to the TAC works in Trafford Park after World War Two. Note as this was an industrial park the railway lines ran alongside the roads, often cutting across to serve the various industries, and were not fenced off.
Fig ___ TAC factory track plan
Having tracks run into a building can be problematic if there are any snags with couplings, the simple and rather minimal plan shown below avoids this. The buildings are based on a photo of a works in Scotland in the 1980s but will serve for any post 1950s layout. The base is plain brick, the upper walls are corrugated metal sheeting, for which corrugated card from the next scale up would serve (so use OO card for an N gauge layout). The logo was painted directly onto the metal sheeting as shown (at the Manchester works the logo was painted in full, a blue rectangle with white lettering as shown above). The brown areas on the sketch are the works yard, in which the tracks are inset, allowing fork lift trucks to access the railway stock. The awning on the centre end of the left hand building covers a lorry loading bay. Extending the left hand building would improve the look of the thing, assuming you have the space.
Fig ___ Suggested minimal post war TAC factory track plan
One application for asbestos cement was a kind of fire retardent partition walling made from a sandwich of asbestos cement about an inch thick with some kind of cladding sheet on either side. By the 1970s one side was typically a light grey 'formica' type material. This was shipped out in 8x4 foot sheets about an inch thick. For exterior cladding on buildings the sheets were perhaps 3mm thick, both corrugated (used on roofs) and flat (used for wall cladding), this material was widely used for minor industrial structures and more rustic domestic buildings, again the standard was for 8x4 foot sheets but sheets made to order were also produced for the 'garden shed' manufacturers. Ships board and Marine Board was the same stuff, cement mixed with asbestos fibres, but came out about an inch thick. Asbestos cement products were light grey in colour and were usually shipped in 8x4 foot sheets, transported lying flat as the material is friable and the edges are likely to get damaged. One brand for ths stuff used in ships was 'Marinite'.
By the 1960s the standard shipping method was to lay the sheets into a pile as they emerged from the cutting machine (which cut section from a continuously produced strip of the cement material). The sheets were then banded with some form of soft, light grey banding. Metal banding could not be used as it would damage the asbestos sheets.
Asbestos paper (actually asbestos mixed with cement but run off into very thin sheets) was used as an insulating material and this in turn led to the production of millboard. Other asbestos cement products included foot-square roofing tiles (often tinted brown I believe), strapped together in packs about a foot square by eighteen inches tall.
British Asbestos Companies
In 1920 four UK manufacturers of asbestos products merged to form Turner & Newall Limited, who thereafter supplied about half of all the asbestos used in the UK. The four companies involved were Turner Brothers Asbestos Co Ltd, J. W. Roberts Ltd, Newalls Insulation Co Ltd, and The Washington Chemical Co Ltd. Between them these firms dealt in most of the products associated with asbestos. In 1925 the company acquired a controlling interest in Ferodo Ltd, the leading UK manufacturer of brake linings, clutch facings and other friction materials (who were major users of asbestos products). In 1928 T & N acquired Bell's United Asbestos Co Ltd, a collection of companies making a widen range of asbestos based products, but they sold off the merchanting side to a new company 'Bell's Asbestos and Engineering Supplies Ltd (which later became Bestobell Ltd). In 1929 Turner and Newal set up a distribution and sales arm called Turners Asbestos Cement Co Ltd (TAC).
Turner and Newall moved out of the asbestos market completely by the mid 1990s, it was bought out by the American car parts company Federal Mogul in 1997 but Federal Mogul went into bankruptcy in October 2001 because of the number of American asbestos related claims made against it.
One company which did not fall under the TAC banner was British Uralite Ltd, who made a small range of asbestos cement products.
Blue asbestos was first discovered in South Africa in 1803-6, and later in the century workers at the Kimberley diamond mines found large seams at Koegas, near Prieska on the Orange River. The British based Cape Asbestos Company was founded in 1893 in order to mine the asbestos at Koegas, than ship it to factories in Europe to be woven into fire-resistant materials. The headquarters were in London where they operated four factories. The last to be built was in Barking in Harts Lane and opened in 1913, the others being at Carlisle Avenue, Cable Street and Bow Common Lane). Production continued until 1966. The Cape Group still exists, but they have not dealt in asbestos products for many years.
Fig ___ Cape Asbestos Co Logo
After World War Two BBA Group Limited and The Cape Asbestos Company Limited became increasingly involved in the UK asbestos market
Other firms in the industry included the Atlas Stone Company, Ltd (Atlas) who began making asbestos cement building materials in 1929 and The Universal Asbestos Manufacturing Co Ltd who set up in 1930.
The Aberthaw and Bristol Channel Portland Cement Co Ltd, entered the asbestos cement market sometime after 1929 but sold its Rhoose factory (where asbestos cement was made) to T & N in 1935.
Tunnel Asbestos Cement Co Ltd (a subsidiary of the company now known as Tunnel Cement Ltd) was formed in 1936 but from 1937 TAC took on the distribution of all asbestos cement products manufactured by Tunnel (at the time Tunnel was making asbestos cement building materials and a limited range of small diameter asbestos cement pipes).
Rawling's Rawlplugs were made from asbestos until the 1960s when they changed to using plastic. The original 1908 Rawlplug was a folded brass fitting, but by the time of the First World War they were using asbestos.
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