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Industries associated with Docks & Harbours


Oil and other petroleum products are, in the UK, almost exclusively associated with ports. For information on the facilities associated with this traffic see also Lineside Industries - Petroleum and LPG.

If building a small port or harbour on your layout it is worth considering what the trades it served might be. A lot of coal was shipped to and from small riverside and coastal quays and jetties and grain was also regularly shipped round the coasts by sea. If you have coal mines in the area then some means of tipping the coal into ships would be required whereas if the port brought coal in then you need a crane or two to off-load the ships and barges. You would be most unlikely to see both activities at a single port.

Obviously warehouses would be a feature of most ports, although a lot of goods were loaded directly onto railway wagons or road vehicles for delivery. Chandlers supply ships with their stores, this includes ropes, block and tackle, sails, paint, foods and ropes. A chandlers is therefore usually a large building, typically three or four stories high and resembling a warehouse with doors on the upper floors equipped with simple 'cat head' hoists.

 
Index for Specific Dockside Industries

The various industries discussed below have their own distinctive structures and in some cases railway rolling stock. Sketches of some of the buildings and rolling stock are included under their respective industries.

Tobacco     Grain & Flour    
Seed Crushing and Oil & Cake Mills Soap, Detergents and Margarine

Note Rope making and Rubber Goods and Tyres, both associated with ports and harbours, are discussed separately
 


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Tobacco

The British had for many years a great liking for tobacco, both to smoke and powdered in the form of snuff. This was heavily regulated and taxed and hence when it arrived it was stored on 'bonded' warehousing until someone paid the duty on it. It was shipped in 'hogsheads', essentially large wooden barrels but with flat rather than barrel shaped sides. Several British ports were associated with tobacco imports but Bristol was the most important.

Fig ___ Landing 'hogsheads' of tobacco

Photo Landing 'hogsheads' of tobacco in London docks'

From the docks it was transported to equally imposing warehousing, usually located close by, and thence to the factories, also usually not far from the docks.


Fig ___ CWS tobacco factory in Manchester

Photo of CWS tobacco factory in Manchester




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Grain

See also 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and animal feed.'

Britain imports much of its grain, hence many of the larger flour mills are located at or close by sea ports (or on a ship canal as at Manchester). These mills have an associated silo to store the grain, these are very large buildings with few windows, handy as a low relief structure for disguising the entrance to a fiddle yard.



Fig ___ Typical large flour mill and silo building in a dock area

Late 19th century concrete flour mill and silos

Vacuum unloading of grain has been in use since the 1920s, requiring a tall tower with a crane jib to lower the hose (typically about a foot or 30cm in diameter) into the ships hold. An alternative arrangement is to have a covered extension to the building extending across the quayside and supported on steel masts, there is an example of such a structure in the South East (but I cannot recall the name of the place).

For model railway purposes a quayside grain silo might also load imported wheat into hoppers for delivery to inland mills operated by the same firm. A covered loading bay at the foot of the silo with a couple of pipes (thick wire) running down to it from about 'first floor' height would serve and justify hopper wagons as well as vans for the bagged flour and coal wagons or oil tanks for the boilers. If space is really tight you can do what I did and run the siding under the building, behind a series of brick arches or iron columns (these would be perhaps eighteen inches or 45 cm in diameter and spaced at about 12 feet or 4m). The track plan shown below can be accommodated in about five feet (if you limit arriving train lengths to 8 wagons and a brake van). A is a raised platform with small cranes, also serves for the 'workers train' coaches and provides 'end loading' facilities. B is the gantry carrying the vacuum system that unloads the ships and barges. C is the mill and silo, with the associated siding run underneath as described. D are coal hoists, positioned against the centre of the loop so they do not get in the way when uncoupling (you can replace these with simple chutes to load barges from hopper wagons if you don't like tall things at the front of the layout). E is a possible bulk oil depot at the end of the coal siding (run by the same firm). F is a spur for brake vans, also handy for parking the dock loco when railway company trains arrive on the shunting loop. No inset track is required where the points are, only on the quay area to the left and possibly along the coal and oil siding.

Fig ___ Flour mill and silo at a docks

Sample track plan for a small port

If you are really strapped for space one option would be to have the silo itself right on the edge of the quay, with a track passing underneath to load hopper wagons. The example illustrated below is based on one on the Manchester Ship Canal, the red arm swings out over the water, supported by cables from the upper walkway, the dark grey hose hanging from the arm can be pulled up and laid on the platform out of the way if required.

Fig ___ Quayside grain silo

Sketch of a quayside grain silo

Not all flour was milled at the docks, a lot of grain was shipped in bulk or in bags from the port to inland mills. The building used to store the grain is generally called a 'grain elevator' although in function it is basically a silo (most were rectangular structures not cylinders).



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Seed Crushing (Vegetable Fats & Oils)

This business was closely associated with the flour milling and animal feeds businesses, many seed crushing firms also had interests in those areas. Unlike seed crushing however flour and related products are not confined to dock areas and are discussed separately under 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and animal feed'

There are a number of valuable oils and fats recovered by crushing vegetable seeds. Vegetable oils are often called 'fatty oils', they have a similar make up the vegetable fats but are liquid at normal British temperatures whereas the 'fats' are solid (generally 'normal' is taken as fifteen degrees Celsius). As many of the plants used do not grow in Britain the seed crushing works were usually built in or close to large docks to facilitate imports.

The materials handled included soya beans, linseed (from the UK, Argentina, India and Canada), cotton seed (from Egypt, India and Greece) and peanuts (which they called 'groundnuts' from West Africa). These firms also extracted coconut oil from the white innards of coconuts (called copra). These oils were sold both for use in foods (human and animal) and for use in industrial products such as lubricating oil, soaps, varnishes, printing inks, and paints. Most of the residual fibrous material (they called it 'cake') was sold in slabs as animal feeds, some was mixed with grain and other additives to produce a range of balanced animal feeds known as compound feed' sold in hessian sacks.

There are four types of vegetable oil, divided according to how they react with air (although these are not clear distinctions) and whether they are a liquid or solid at average British temperatures.
Drying oils react with oxygen and form a 'skin', linseed oil (from the flax plant, the oil is yellowish in colour), painted on wood or bricks it forms a waterproof barrier (you have to boil it first, which is a smelly business). Linseed oil was sold to paint, varnish and printing ink manufacturers, linoleum works and lubricating oil firms (and of course in tins for conditioning cricket bats). Boiled Linseed oil is often boiled before using and boiled oil mixed with 'whiting' (powdered chalk) makes putty (as used to hold windows in place). Putty is also used in certain rubber compounds and as a coating for glossy papers. Other drying oils, not recovered at seed crushers works are Tung Oil (or China Wood Oil) and Oiticica Oil (from a Brazilian tree of the same name.
Semi-drying oils include soya bean oil, used in foods, soap, paints varnishes and as a source for Nylon production (the most widely used vegetable oil today). Sunflower oil (a yellow colour) and the yellow to dark red cottonseed oils are used for fish frying and soap making, in leather dressings, lubricants and as a food additive.
Non drying oils include the pale yellow to clear castor oil, originally mainly used as a medicine but since World War Two it has found many industrial uses. Milky coloured coconut oil is used in foods, cotton dyeing, soaps and detergents and for leather dressing. Peanut oil (or groundnut oil) went into margarine. Since World War Two a plant called Rape has been bred until it became a useful source of oil and animal feed. The oil is dark brown and is used in foods and lubricants. Rape is actually two species of the mustard family, other notable examples being turnips and sweeds. Even more recently Oilseed rape has been developed from the `weed' rapeseed, the seed is typically 42% oil and the meal left after removing the oil is about 42% crude protein. The refined oil is commonly known as Canola (a US registered trade name) but the name is also sometimes used to refer to the whole plant. A diesel engine will run on this stuff.
Finally there are the inedible soap stocks such as palm oil (used in soap, candles, and lubricating greases) and low grade coconut oil (a clear syrupy liquid commonly called copra oil and Cocoa Butter (used for soaps and cosmetics). These are all solid at normal British temperatures and required steam heating in railway tanks to allow them to discharge.

Associated railway stock would be owned by the seed crushing business but there were also tanks (usually lagged) owned by their customers, notably the soap industry, which would be seen at such a works (see also below under Soap and Margarine).


Oil and Cake Mills

Three businesses which are closely linked are flour milling (considered separately under Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits and breakfast cereals'), seed crushing (obtaining oils from plant seeds) and animal feeds (using the residue from the first two. Many companies did at least two of these businesses, Unilever, for example, in addition to the two feed mills it owned in London (through its BOCM and Silcock subsidiaries) also had separate oilseed crushing plants at Silvertown and Erith (both on the Thames near London). Both Pauls and Unilever had feed mills and seed crushing plants in Hull (a major centre for seed crushing). Other companies such as Ranks and Spillers owned flour mills in addition to feed mills. Just to complicate the matter however not all 'cake mills' were also seed crushers, a lot of firms set up in the country areas to make animal feed, getting their supplies mainly from local flour millers.

All of which has made teasing out the history of the industry rather complicated, however the oil and animal feeds businesses in the ports usually shared the same premises.

By the early 1800s the oils from crushed seeds were increasingly important for a number of industrial purposes and for inclusion in human foods, the by-product of this process, the oilseed cake, is a rich source of protein and was sold as a feed for all types of animals. These firms also recycled the residue from flour milling (wheatfeed) which they mixed with the 'cake' (as noted above the large flour mills tended to be in the docks). From the 1890s other ingredients were added to make 'compound' animal foods. The output from the 'cake mill' was blocks of compressed feed to be sold to farmers. Some was also made into pellets, sold in hessian sacks, I think that started in the 1890s with the development of 'compound feeds'.

Seed crushing firms existing in most larger ports, the industry produced millions of tons of products and employed thousands of people. The map below shows the main ports associated with the trade.

Fig ___ Location of major oil and cake mills prior to the 1960s

Map showing Location of major oil and cake mills



Oil and Cake Mill Process and Buildings

The incoming vegetable matter arriving at the larger works in the dock areas would usually be delivered in sacks, copra (the dried inner white material from the coconut) was shipped in bags or in bulk. Copra, from which we get coconut oil, is problematic as a cargo as it produces toxic fumes and is liable to be infested with biting insects called 'copra bugs'. The fibrous outer husk of the coconut is called coir and is used to make 'coconut matting'.

The seed was run through sets of chilled-rollers, then heated by steam in 'kettles' (these were very big metal vats), it was then laid onto woollen sheets and covered with another layer of wool before being put into the press. By the 1890s steam powered hydraulic presses were in use and this is where most of the oil was extracted leaving the 'cake' residue (these days they use a continuous process involving a tapering screw drive to press out the oil, in some cases they use a solvent to extract it). The residual oilseed cake was cut into blocks and allowed to cool on racks. At the farm these blocks were put through a small mill which broke the cake up, from photos of which I gather the blocks were about two feet long, four inches thick and about fifteen inches wide. By the 1890s the feed was also being further processed, adding other ingredients to make a 'compound cake' that sold for a higher price. I believe this was sold in the form of 'pellets' delivered in sacks. I am not sure when (or if) the basic 'cake' ceased being sold.

A decent sized mill would take in say 700 tons of seed a week, producing nearly 500 tons of cake and about 350 tons of oil.

Larger establishment would have their own cooperage, a joiners' and pattern shop, a fitting shop (to make and repair machinery) and saddlers shop where they made not only the horse harnesses but also the belts to drive the machinery. These establishments featured large and very tall brick silo type buildings, usually square, with no windows. They needed large storage areas for the bags of seed and there were always a lot of barrels and steel drums about the works. Larger mills, as found in the dock areas, would have storage tanks for the oils as well and by the 1930s they had large brick built silos to hold the incoming grains.

The seed crushing works were housed in a large building with windows, adjacent to the huge silo used to store the grain. As with cotton mills the silos were usually of brick and iron construction, the floor being made up of brick arches, to provide a 'fireproof' building and some were built using reinforced concrete from the 1890s on. On the high sides of the main structure the name of the company was often displayed, sometimes in bass relief stone or brick lettering, usually including the word 'mill'. Hydraulic lifts were used inside the building so add a tall tower (say two stories above the top of the main building by about fifteen to twenty feet square) for the associated 'accumulator' and a raised water tank. Finally you should have a boiler house, both to provide power and also steam to the works.

The animal feed side also required large buildings, up to 15 stories tall but with few windows. The sketches below are based (rather loosely) in the BOCM works in Hull (crush mill and silo), and the Foster Bros mill in Gloucester (provender mill building). The figures give some idea of the scale. There would also be a number of other ancillary buildings in the complex, many the size of a small factory in their own right. There would be a number of medium size oil tanks to hold the product prior to shipping. The buildings are show with the loading bays large enough to run a railway through them, the prototype bays were not so tall.



Fig ___ Typical main buildings for an oil and cake mill in a dock area

Sketch showing the Typical main buildings for an oil and cake mill in a dock area

The feed was shipped out in considerable quantities, mainly by rail, and trains composed solely of vans and sheeted open wagons loaded with animal feeds were a common sight (especially in the South West and around Selby in Yorkshire) up until the late 1950s. A typical consignment for a particular station could be from one to ten wagon loads, to be collected by several local feed merchants.

In the 1960s a new approach was taken by the big animal feed firms, using more home grown plants and mills located closer to the customers in the country (these mills were much smaller than those in the docks and catered to a 70 mile radius or thereabouts). The first of these 'country' plants opened at Winsford in Cheshire, able to supply the industries on the coast and the farmers inland using short distance road haulage. The mills at the docks were then run down into the 1980s, then in the mid 1980s there was a change in agriculture policy and demand slumped, leading to a major retrenchment in the industry and the close of both dockside mills and some of the newer country mills.


Modelling an Oil and Cake Mill

Whereas the flour mill was a simple and monolithic building, grain going in and flour coming out, the oil and cake mill was a rather more complicated enterprise. Flour mills were generally made to look imposing as the public were expected to buy and consume the product (see also 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits and breakfast cereals'). Oil and cake mills catered to the agricultural sector and tended to be rather more agricultural in appearance. The big main building and silo might have looked like a flour mill, but the ancillary structures (often quite large) were often steel frames clad in corrugated iron. Where building were modified, from the later 1920s on, the corrugated metal clad steel frame was the norm.

From a model railway perspective these establishments are on the large side, but you can get away with a lot of compression and retain the general look of the thing. The best option would be a low relief structure against the backscene. A single siding would suffice, providing an excuse for a range of traffic. If you wish to avoid the covered loading areas as shown above you can model the wall of the building flat against the back scene, ideally you would have a loading bank to avoid having to 'spot' wagons, but just adding loading doors in the wall would suffice if space is tight. You can add a sack hoist and a small covered bay for loading tank wagons to make it more interesting to look at if you wish. Rivers tend to meander, if the buildings are in relief in front of the backscene you can angle the silo to get away from the rigid grid-like arrangement of buildings.

Also you would see tanks and their associated pipework (much of it elevated) to handle the oils produced in the plant. For modelling purposes two medium size tanks (similar to those sold as 'oil tanks' by various manufacturers) with a couple of smaller types (say two of the Ratio double-tank sets) would serve. There would be a lot of wooden barrels, mainly rather large ones, with steel drums only really becoming more common in the later 1930s or possibly just post war.

A proportion of the oil made at these plants was shipped in company owned and branded rail tank wagons, although I have not been able to find details of the loading apparatus used. Some of these tanks were fitted with steam heating coils (required to liquefy a cargo of fats). These tanks were not heated by the railway engine in transit, the heating was done at the receiving end and could take up to 24 hours. Adding insulation to the tank and putting the stuff in very hot reduced this time considerably.

The rail tanks would be used both to supply customers and (I understand) to bring in some bulk liquids (such as molasses) to the plant for blending into the feeds. The customers for the oils covered a wide range of industries, dealing in foodstuffs, paints, chemicals, linoleum makers (who required linseed oil) and lubricating oil manufacturers (who used quite a lot of castor oil). These customers might also send their tanks to the seed crushers to collect cargo (I believe Crosfields the soap makers used some of their tanks in this way).

Although the bulk of the materials were delivered by sea some was supplied from UK sources. Most of this locally supplied material would arrived in vans and sheeted opens but for something a little different you can run in a sheeted hopper wagon carrying 'spent grain' from a brewery. The iron ore hoppers as supplied in kit form by the N Gauge Society were used for this work.

Fig ___ Sheeted hopper delivering spent grain

Photo of a model of a Sheeted hopper delivering spent grain

The seed crushers had to ship large quantities of 'cake', for which there would be regular rakes of vans to be loaded at the works. In the 1960s BOCM used some converted 'plate' wagons, fitted with a high plywood body, to carry their palletised animal feeds from the Avonmouth plant. A photograph appeared in Model Railway Constructor Annual of 1983 (published by Ian Allen Ltd 1982, ISBN-0711012334)in an article by Paul Bartlett & Trevor Mann in the Paul Bartlett & Trevor Mann on the BR standard 'plate wagon' with a selection of conversions based on the chassis. Sadly I loaned my copy to someone who appears to have lost it, so I cannot attempt a sketch. From memory they had plain sides some seven feet high and were open topped (covered by a tarpaulin in transit).

The vans used for shipping out the bagged animal feed were often branded using a paste-on paper label bearing the company logo, his practice appears to have caught on in the 1930's (when suitable latex based glues were developed). A second rectangular label was also often added stating the name of the product itself. Examples of the logos are included below, for more on traders labels see also Livery - Introduction.

The country animal feed mills were a lot smaller (although still substantial buildings) and had no requirement for the oil tanks. They processed locally produced material and sold to a limited geographical area (see also 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and animal feeds').


Companies in the seed crushing business

J. Bibby & Sons Ltd.
Based in Liverpool, the company started as a seed crusher in 1830, it was called J Bibby & Sons by the later 1870s at which time they began to make 'compound animal meal' (possibly the first calf meal). By the 1880s they also operated a mill in Lancaster and (after a fire) rebuilt the Liverpool mill. By 1914 they were employing 2,000 people and selling a range of animal feeds. They operated a small fleet of tank wagons from 1933 (possibly earlier but their tank wagon No.1 was registered on the LMS in that year), the only examples I have found details of are described in Mr Tourret's book Petroleum Rail Tank Wagons of Britain (see Bibliography for details) which were black with white lettering and some fitted with steam heating coils. They got up to at least wagon No.7 and this livery is at least easy to apply.

Fig ___ J Bibby lagged tank

Sketch of J Bibby lagged tank showing livery

They expanded into soap manufacture and the provision of fats for domestic consumption in the late 1940s or early 1950s (Araby Soap was introduced in the mid 1950s). In 1968 the firm was bought by Princess Foods and later became part of ABN (Associated British Nutrition), which is part of Associated British Foods but as of 2005 the brand remains in use (as J Bibby Agriculture) in connection with animal feeds.

Fig ___ Bibby's feed sack showing logo and typical lettering

Sketch of Bibby's feed sack showing logo and typical lettering

BOCM British Oil and Cake Mills
BOCM is the giant of the industry, formed in 1899 when several firms joined together, however the individual mills continued to trade under their existing names. In 1907 BOCM introduced the first hen feed (based on imported American corn) called Eggemon, the adverts showed this as 'Egg em on' and Kositos, a feed for horses, cattle and pigs. By the time of the First World War they were described as 'Crushers, refiners and manufacturers of linseed, cottonseed, rapeseed and other oils; manufacturers of linseed, cottonseed and feed cakes'. In 1926 BOCM was taken over by Lever Bros, but the existing trade names continued in use.
BOCM operated ten large mills in Britain, all with direct railway links. Major BOCM connected works were found at Manchester, Renfrew, Erith, Hull, Avonmouth and Selby. BOCM in the Green Diesel era of BR used stick-on labels (actually they were plain paper pasted onto the sides of the vans). The examples shown are all from photographs, I believe they were red as BOCM paid extra to have a coloured label on their black and white magazine ads in the 1950s, but I cannot be sure the wagon labels were so coloured. As well as the logo label they often added a simple rectangle with the name of the feed type (eg Kositos) pasted on close by.

Fig ___ BOCM labels used on railway vans

Sketch of BOCM labels used on railway vans

By the 1950s some tank wagons had been re-liveried for BOCM, I believe they just added a letter in front of the wagon number to indicate its 'home' mill (M for Manchester, S for Selby etc), however details of this livery are hard to find. BOCM & Silcock Lever Feeds merged to form BOCM Silcock Ltd. in 1969 but the plain BOCM logo remained in use. The fleet of rail tank wagons in BOCM livery, carrying everything from whale oil to molasses as well as their more usual products such as linseed oil for the paint works. At least some of these tanks were insulated and some were steam heated. The sketches below show what I believe was the livery used by the Avonmouth tanks in the 1950s, both variants co-existed. They are based on information from Mr Tourret's book, any errors are mine. The logo on the right is the standard BOCM company logo.

Fig ___ BOCM Bristol tanks and Logo

Sketch of BOCM Avonmouth tanks showing livery and sketch of BOCM logo

In 1969 BOCM & Silcock Lever Feeds merged to form BOCM Silcock Ltd. In 1992 Unilever sold BOCM Silcock to merge with Pauls Agriculture to form BOCM PAULS LTD..

Fig ___ BOCM Silcocks and BOCM Pauls logos

Sketch of BOCM Silcocks and BOCM Pauls logos

Olympia Oil and Cake Mills
Based in Selby this firm was part of BOCM but traded under its own name. They operated some 14 ton rail tanks for oil, after the war these were used to bring in molasses from United Molasses. In the 1940s they also leased some unusual road-rail tanks from the LNER. These pneumatic tyred tanks traveled in pairs on a special six wheel chassis. The Olympia name disappeared in the early 1950s, absorbed by BOCM.

Fig ___ Olympia Oil and Cake Mills tank

Sketch of Olympia Oil and Cake Mills tank showing livery

Premier Oil Extracting Mills Based in Hull and (I believe) part of the BOCM organisation, this company operated a small fleet of tank wagons from the 1930s. There is a photograph taken in the 1930s of one of their tanks in Mr Tourret's book on petroleum tanks (the tank was for carrying seed oils and fats, it was lagged and fitted with steam coils), however I am not sure of the livery as the photo may well show the wagon in the builders 'photographic grey'. If the photo shows the final paint job the colours may be as shown, however I am very unsure on this (most of these wagons tended to be black or dark red, although the BOCM tanks in Bristol had light red oxide body and solebars).

Fig ___ Premier Oil Extracting Mills tank

Sketch of Premier Oil Extracing Mills tank showing possible livery

Foster Bros Oil & Cake Mills This firm operated in Gloucester (the mill was built in 1862) and although they formed part of the original BOCM operation they continued to trade under their own name. This mill closed in about 1955, after BOCM expanded their capacity in Avonmouth. I have not found any references to railway stock in this company's livery and I believe their products were shipped in barrels, drums and sacks mainly by barge.

Erith Oil Works
Established beside the Thames in 1907, initially dealing in whale oil, by World War One they were an established seed crushing business who also handled coconut oil and other materials. They became part of BOCM but although a likely candidate I have found no reference to rail tanks in their livery. The site is still an oil works owned today by Pura Foods Ltd, a manufacturer and supplier of edible oils and fats. This mill is no longer part of BOCM and I am not sure what the mill now does (it is described as an R&D site).

Aberdeen Commercial Co
Established in 1837, by the time of the First World War they were listed as 'Seed crushers, oil cake manufacturers, linseed and cotton oil refiners, chemical manure manufacturers, dealers in grain, coal, lime and feeding stuffs for farm stock.' I have found no references to tank wagons operated by this company. By the end of the 1930s they had been absorbed by Scottish Agricultural Industries (a large company set up by ICI in the 1920s dealing in a range of farm products including feed but mainly concerned with fertilisers). The illustration below is based on a photograph showing a former oil mill near Edinburgh, back-dated to its original (or thereabouts) to show the appearance and scale of a typical granite-built Scottish oil mill, not necessarily anything to do with this company.

Fig ___ Scottish oil mill

Sketch Scottish oil mill

Joseph Rank Ltd Joseph Rank of Hull set up in business as a flour miller in 1875, after his death the business became a private company in 1899 registered as Joseph Rank Ltd., by this time it was a flour milling and animal feeding stuffs business. They built a big grain elevator as part of their seed crushing business at Baltic Mill in Hull, part of which has since been redeveloped as a retail and entertainments complex, retaining much of the original structure. I understand that the mill in Hull continued to operate into the 1980s.



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Soap, Detergents & Margarine

Oddly enough soap and margarine are rather closely related, both use similar materials and imports have always been a requirement. The associated companies operated a number of railway vehicles, bringing coal to the factory as well as transporting the British sourced materials used in manufacture and delivering the finished product. One example is Joseph Crosfield and Sons Ltd of Warrington, south of Manchester, this soap making firm operated a number of railway tanks for vegetable oils, in the mid 1950s they built some 24 ton tanks fitted with steam heating coils for transporting fats (either animal or vegetable).

The bulk of the oils used were imported, typically in large wooden barrels, and from the 1920s to the 1950s steam wagons were used to transport them from the quays and warehouses at the docks to the factory. By the 1930s small electric trucks were fitted with simple screw-drive cranes to lift and carry these large casks (both on the docks and in the soap factories. To lift them using a crane a loop of chain with two hooks on it was used (called barrel hooks these were used for all sizes of barrels). A big crane can lift multiple barrels using these hooks. The vegetable oil barrels I have seen photographs of all seem to have light coloured ends, usually with some large but cryptic markings on them, seldom arranged neatly.

Fig ___ Palm oil casks as seen in soap and margarine works

Palm oil casks as seen in soap and margarine works

Although oils were also shipped in bulk from the later 1920s numbers of these large barrels in the yard would be a feature of both soap and margarine works up to the early 1960s, thereafter bulk supplies replaced them fairly quickly. As noted above however the soap companies often ran their own railway tanks wagons, these were used to carry both vegetable oils and fats to the works. Oddly they do not seem to have made much use of the tanks for advertising their products, the markings being confined to the company details. The pre war soap company tanks appear slightly smaller bodied than the petrol tanks, but I could be mis reading the pictures. The example below left is one of the Lever Bros fleet, they had quite a number of tanks for transporting vegetable oils from before the First World War (although a lot of these were internal use only transporting vegetable oils between the various works in the Port Sunlight complex). The example below right is a Joseph Crosfield & Sons tank from the immediate post war era, with the simple markings prevalent at that time.

Fig ___ Pre and post war vegetable oil tank

Sketch of Lever Bros and Crossfields vegetable oil tanks



The word 'soap' comes from the process of boiling up 'fats' and 'bases', the process being known as saponification. The term soap covers a range of materials, some of which we would not recognise as soap, for example napalm is a soap and some industrial soaps would strip the skin from your hands. Household soap is made by boiling up fatty oils and fats with alkalis (the fats and oils used are made up of a fatty acid and glycerin (technically a 'lipid'), the glycerin is produced as a by-product of soap manufacture). Boiling animal fat mixed with wood ash (the alkali) in water was a common method in ancient times, although the soap was mainly used in textile manufacture rather than personal hygiene. Almost any fatty substance can be employed in soap-making, important animal fats were ox and hog, and common vegetable oils were cotton-seed and coco-nut. To make hard soaps some methods added resin. Cheap mottled and brown soaps were made using 'bone fat' (obtained by treating bones with superheated steam) mixed with crude palm oil in a process patented by Gossage in the 1850s. In England tallow and palm oil were widely used, in France they used olive oil to produce Marseilles or Castile soap and some British manufacturers adopted this method (this soap was widely used by calico printers and silk dyers). Transparent soaps can be made using castor oil.

The alkalis used were usually caustic lye solutions of their respective hydrates in water. By the later 19th century caustic soda was obtained direct from soda manufacture (see also Lineside Industries - Chemical Industries). Potash lyes were also bought-in but larger firms produced their own caustic from the carbonate.

The mix is boiled up and salt is added, as the soap is not soluble in the brine it is precipitated.

British Soap Manufacturers

In England the development of soap manufacture was inhibited by taxation, often amounting to more than the cost of the product, this taxation continued until 1852 when Gladstone ended the tax (which was bringing in over a million pounds a year). In the later 19th century there were many soap makers, by World War One virtually all were owned by three firms, in order of size these were Lever Bros, Gossage's and Crosfield's. Many of the original brand names continued in use, many made at the original factories still carrying the company name.

Pears soap, set up in the 1780s, was an early industrial producer, using castor oil to make transparent soap. Pears merged with Lever Bros (see below) shortly before World War One.

Hudson's Soap was set up in 1837 in West Bromwich, initially producing soap powder, about twenty years later he built a factory in Liverpool, it was this firm that produced Omo washing powder. Hudson's merged with Lever Bros (see below) in about 1910.

In 1853 William Gossage (widely regarded as the most significant British chemist of the 19th century) patented a process for the production of caustic soda from sodium carbonate, in 1854 he set up to manufacture soap close to the lock leading into the canal that connected Widnes and St. Helens. Gossage built up a business with a reputation for good quality at a reasonable price (the factory in Widnes is now Catalyst, the museum of the chemical industry (open daily except Mondays). Gossage's firm also merged with Lever Bros.

Lever Brothers (and Unilever) Founded in 1885 in Warrington as a soap maker. By using glycerin and vegetable oils such as palm oil (rather than tallow) they produced a good, free-lathering soap, called "Sunlight Soap". By the later 1880s they were doing very well and set about building a new plant at what is now Port Sunlight where they built a 'model village' for their work force, actually this was really quite a large town. The original Lever Brothers soap factory at Port Sunlight covered 56 acres, by 1906 it covered 90 acres. By February 1895 the factory was producing 1600 tonnes of soap a week and this figure rose to 2400 tonnes a week in 1897. By 1914 over 60,000 tonnes of soap was being produced. As well as the above listed companies Lever Bros also took over Benjamin Brooke and Co in the 1890s as well as the Vinolia Co and Hodgson and Simpson. Over the next few years they bought Crosfield's of Warrington, Hazlehurst and Sons of Runcorn and Hudson's of Liverpool. They also expanded into foreign markets in Europe and America.
Vim scouring powder, Lux soap flakes (for washing clothes but also sold in some quantities to cloth manufacturers) and Lifebuoy soap were all established brands by 1900.
In 1930 Lever Bros merged with the Dutch company 'Margarine Unie' to form Unilever, arguably the first modern multinational company. Soap and margarine both use palm oil, by merging the two companies gained the economy of scale. The Lever Brothers brand was retained for a time, especially in the US and Canadian branches.

Joseph Crosfield & Sons, Limited The business was founded in Warrington in 1814, making soaps and later candles. By the mid-1830s Crosfield’s was producing around 900 tons of soap annually. In 1832 they were the 25th largest business in the list of 296 soapmakers in England and Scotland that year. In the 1839s they began making their own alkali (and alum) at a works in St Helens. in the 1890s they produced the first dry soap powder (Hudsons had been first in the field with soap flakes, which Crosfield's had copied). The firm became increasingly involved in the chemicals business, in 1911 it was purchased by Brunner, Mond & Company. Brunners wanted to prevent Lever Bros going into the alkali business, Crosfields was sold to Lever Bros in 1919 as part of a deal in which Brunner did not make soap and Lever did not make alkali. The Crosfield name continued to be used however, there were some heated rail tanks built in the early 1950s for this firm (illustrated in Mr Tourret's book on Petroleum tank wagons, although I believe these tanks were for fats and oils). In 1997 it was acquired by ICI and in 2001, Ineos Capital purchased the company. The name Crosfield was finally lost as it was renamed Ineos Silicas and that firm became part of the PQ Corporation a year or two later.

Detergent

Detergents use materials called surficants which dissolve greases, the use of which was first noted by a Belgian chemist in 1913. During World War One the Germans used detergents as an alternative to soap but after that war they were largely confined to industrial processes. The detergent effects of certain synthetic surfactants were noted in 1913 by A. Reychler, a Belgian chemist. After World War Two the US aviation fuel plants changed over to making tetrapropylene and household detergents began to appear on the market in 1947. The first product was a 'soapless shampoo'. Up to the 1960's they were more expensive than traditional soaps based on animal and vegetable oils and fats but as they contained no sodium they could be used with hard or soft water equally well. As well as the surficants they may also contain a wide range of materials from mild abrasives to scour surfaces to acids for descaling or caustics to break down organic compounds. In hard water areas they can add softeners and oidisers to provide a bleaching action and to break down organic compounds. In the late 1960s biological detergents appeared, containing enzymes which could dissolve protiens.

Using the products of the oil industry the detergent factories are not tied to the docks, although many were built close by the ports as they were set up by the soap makers (and that also tended to be where the oil was being processed). Peco offer a tanker in the livery of Albright and Wilson, a major British chemical company specialising in the field of phosphorus chemistry (see also 'Lineside Industries - Chemicals, salt and plastics industries'). This was the world's biggest supplier of phosphates for detergents (although that application declined rapidly from the mid 1970s). The model is suitable for layouts set between the mid 1970s (when the Albright and Wilson bought the tanks) until the later 1990s (when A&W was taken over by the French company Rhodia).


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