Bitumen
Several oil company railway tank liveries are illustrated in 'Lineside Industries -Petroleum products, Petrol, Fuel Oil & Petrochemicals', lubricating and other specialist oil companies and tanks are discussed in 'Lineside Industries -Lubricating Oils & Associated Works', coal tar companies and tanks are described under 'Linseide Industries - Coal Tar Distillers' and seed crushing companies and tanks are illustrated in 'Lineside Industries - Industries associated with docks'. For more oil rail tank liveries see also 'Goods Stock - Rail Tanks' and 'Livery - Tank Wagons'.
Bitumen (or Asphalt if you are American) is the thick residue left after the more valuable fractions have been removed from petroleum oil. Technically the bitumen from a refinery is called 'residual bitumen' (to distinguish it from naturally occurring 'crude bitumen').This material can be used without further refining for waterproofing timber or 'tarred felt' roofing material. Mixed with stone chippings it is used to coat road surfaces, in the UK the tar coated chippings are known as 'asphalt' (see also Appendix One - Roads and road traffic - Roads and Road Works). Bitumen has largely replaced coal tar in these duties, which is handy as the coal gas plants and steel works (both large producers of coal tar) have now all but disappeared. However with the concern over oil supplies bitumen is now being made from non-petroleum based renewable resources (developed in America and hence called bioasphalt). A by product of the bitumen processing is petroleum coke (usually called petcoke) which is basically carbon and is used for making electrodes and as a fuel (although it has a high sulphur content so it is not used for domestic purposes).
The bitumen used on roads was at least part processed, there were two distinct grades depending on whether it was to be mixed with chippings or sprayed onto the road surface as part of the final dressing. More recently it has also been processed to recover more of the lighter (still heavy) fractions, to be used as a fuel (for very big diesel engines). This mix is called HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil) and is very cheap but requires heating lines to be added to the fuel pipes, it is used in larger ships and also in some foreign power plants.
A pamphlet for Granton docks published in the early 1950s describes their bitumen facilities:Many grades of Bitumen manufactured in Scotland are received at the installation in bulk road wagons or in steam heated rail cars, which are discharged into insulated storage tanks. The temperature in these tanks can be raised very quickly by means of a special process employing injection flame. Despatches from the installation are arranged by loading vehicles via insulated steam traced lines, thus enabling the product to be supplied at a suitable temperature to road making sites, etc.
The tanks used resemble those used in coal tar distilleries, although they tend to look a lot cleaner being either unpainted steel or clad in what looks very like concrete (they were insulated and the 'concrete' cladding might be some other material). Most were vertical (marked A in the sketch)
Since the later 1980s (possibly before) there have also been dome-ended horizontal tanks (marked B in the sketch), well lagged and covered with a silvery outer cladding, however I have only seen those in the USA. As bitumen will set solid at normal temperatures the bitumen feed lines were often fitted with steam 'trace pipes' to keep the stuff liquid.
The loading arrangements vary from place to place, some have a covered loading point but this means the tanks have to be shunted through. An alternative is a flexible hose carried on a wheeled metal gallows which can be positioned next to the wagon and coupled to loading valves along a siding. Many years ago I had a photo of one of these, on which I based a model as shown in the sketch below, however I cannot now find the picture and cannot remember how much modellers licence was applied. Making one of these mobile loaders is somewhat tricky in N as they were rather light and flimsy in appearance. The base on the prototype was a rectangular metal frame but for a model layout I believe the best bet is to have the base a a solid rectangle and make the whole thing from wire with the vertical post passing through the base and extending down into the baseboard for support (as shown in the drawing below). I used brass wire for mine but the Plastruct plastic coated wire is easier to work with. The flexible hose is steel reinforced (coiled wire guitar string serves for this) and painted very dark grey.
Fig ___ Top loading apparatus used for Bitumen
For more on the firms dealing in this product see 'Bitumen related firms' at the end of this section.
Bitumen related firms
Bitumen is a virtually involatile, adhesive and waterproofing material obtained by refinery processes from crude petroleum, or from natural asphalt deposits (notably from Trinidad in the case of the UK). It is black or brown in colour and completely or nearly completely soluble in toluene. It is very viscous or near solid at ambient temperatures and softens gradually when heated. Bitumen was used for roofing and flooring materials (coated on cloth or mixed with ground cork etc)and (to a lesser extent) for road surfacing (mixed with stone or steelworks slag).
The use of bitumen to make road coating dates back to before the First World War, from the 1860s to the 1960s most (if not all) UK bitumen was imported from the Trinidad Ashphalt lake, the main company involved being the Limmer and Trinidad Lake Asphalt Co. (with Previte & Co) handling the admin and sales side of the business. This firm purchased quarries as early as the 1930s to use with the bitumen to make road surfacing materials. Coal tar recovered from gas works and steel works coking plants was also extensively used and in the early 1970s there was a marked shift toward coal tar from imported bitumen. From the mid 1970s the gas works were closed down as the UK switched to using North Sea Gas, and by the 1980s the steel works were closing as well, opening additional markets for oil refinery bitumen. Prior to about the 1960s the most common material to mix with the tar was slag from the many iron and steel works, Tarmac Ltd did not own any quarries until the early 1960s.
The railway tanks used for bitumen were and are usually insulated and often steam-heated (so would travel next to the engine in transit). An alternative was to fit 'flame tubes' into the wagon into which a gas 'lance' could be inserted to melt the bitumen so it could be discharged. Steam heated wagons have a steam pipe (some had visible pipework at the ends) and would often travel attached to the engine so they could use the steam to keep the cargo liquid, those using the gas lance had holes low down at one end and a chimney somewhere at the top.
Road lorries seem to have been less insulated, perhaps they were only used for short hauls. The example shown below is a beautifully restored 1929 Scammel tanker photographed at a show. I am not sure if the livery is applicable but having done such a lovely job on the restoration it seems likely they took the trouble to get this right. The lorry has a chain drive and note that there are four wheels under the rear of the trailer, arranged in line across. The scene was rather cluttered so I had to cut the lorry out of the picture and provide a plain background.
Fig ___ Restored 1929 Scammel tanker lorry.
The listed firms have all operated tank wagons for the transport of bitumen at some point. The list is not comprehensive but I have tried to include examples from various parts of the country.
Alexandra Transport of Glasgow
This company operated some 13 ton insulated and heated rail tanks built in the 1930s.
Ebano Oil Co
On the other side of Scotland at Grangemouth was the Ebano Oil Co, who imported Mexican bitumen. They were using rail tank wagons from the early 1930s.
Anglo American Oil Co
This company was known as Royal Daylight prior to the mid 1930s and Esso thereafter is actually the UK branch of Standard Oil. Anglo American changed their company name to Esso in 1951 (their railway wagons had been so marked since the mid 1930s) and Esso became part of the Exxon Corporation in 1978. They used the name Standard Bitumen on at least some of their bitumen wagons prior to the mid 1930s. After that date the livery changed to the Esso logo in white at each end of the tanks but with bitumen under this on the left hand or both ends. This company trades all over the UK.
Shell-BP
The Anglo Persian Oil Co was operating from 1909, they took over a smaller firm called British Petroleum in 1917 and began using British Petroleum (or BP) as their brand. In 1932 they began a joint distribution operation with Shell, the Shell-BP operation was very wide ranging, covering most if not all aspects of the petroleum trade, they purchased some anchor mounted 14 ton bitumen rail tankers in 1942, branded MEXPHALTE (the Shell name for their bitumen product, in the 1940s they also sold stuff called Shellphalt).
Berry Wiggins & Co
The company produced bitumen from a plant at Sharnel Street on the Isle of Grain as early as 1924 and built their own oil refinery at Kingsnorth on the Hoo peninsular in Kent in 1930. I gather their bitumen tank wagons did not appear until the later 1930s, these often marked "Liquaphalt" in a yellowish roundel (this was their trade name for liquid asphalt, or bitumen). The Kingsnorth refinery closed in 1977.
Fig ___ Berry Wiggins & Co Liquaphalt branding
William Briggs & Sons Ltd
This company (based in Dundee) dealt in fuel oil and bitumen. They operated railway tank wagons from the early 20th century (certainly by 1909, possibly earlier), two of which have been restored by the Scottish Railway preservation Society. I am not certain but I suspect these were for coal tar and its products. They built their own 'refinery' in Dundee in 1931 adjacent to Dundee Gas Works, initially intended to process the coal tar produced at the gas works but subsequently switched to recovering the more valuable fractions from bitumen. By the later 1960s Briggs was the only oil refinery in Scotland outside the Grangemouth complex (Grangemouth was established as Scottish Oils in 1924 by APOC, BP sold off all its petrochemical interests in 2005, the Grangemouth refinery going to INEOS, a privately-owned chemicals company). The Briggs Dundee refinery was sold to Tarmac in 1968, meanwhile however Briggs seem to have continued to operate a fleet of rail tank wagons, it may simply be that Tarmac did not repaint the wagons. On Paul Bartlett's fotopic site (see Appendix Seven - Links to Useful Websites - Photo Sites) there are pictures of some older four wheelers (some dating back t the 1920s) still operating in 1977 in Briggs livery. I believe Briggs are still in existence but serving the shipping world with their main business being Briggs Marine. In the 1920s the tanks as built had William Briggs & Sons Ltd in capitals along the side, with the wagon number below, by the post war era this had changed to the livery shown below, but I do not know when that change occurred.
Fig ___ Briggs tank
Lobitos Oilfields Ltd
This company was formed in 1908 to operate oil concessions in Peru, South America. Lobitos had its own refinery capacity in the United Kingdom where its main interest was the production of specialty products (white oils, transformer and cable oils and bitumen). The petrol from the refinery was an unavoidable by-product which the company sold to other firms. In 1962 they became a subsidiary of Burma Oil Co. but continued selling under their own brand.
Fig ___ Lobitos tank wagon
Tarmac
Tarmac was formed in 1903 as The TarMacadam Syndicate, the name changed to Tarmac in 1905. They used quarried stone and also steel works slag, mixed with bitumen, to make their road surfacing product. In the mid 1920s they began expanding their fleet of railway stock. In the early days the tarred chippings were routinely shipped by rail, but from the 1930s they began to favour road transport. In 1932 they introduced their bitumen based Settite (bitumen macadam), held to be superior to slag-based tarmac for road covering. By 1935 Tarmac's three divisions; roadstone, civil engineering, and Vinculum (a new type of flooring they developed) were well established, in that year they began to switch from using Sentinel Steam Wagons to lighter motor lorries for deliveries. The photo below was taken at a show. Tarmac marked both their road vehicles and rail transport with the name tarmac, in yellow capitals. This was normally in a plain block script but on the steam lorry fronts this was stretched upwards as shown below.
Fig ___ Tarmac steam lorry
By this time, the company had plants in northern England, north Wales, and Scotland, as well as a large transport stock including both road and rail vehicles. After World War One they built another plant in Yorkshire and replaced their entire stock of road vehicles.
On rail tanks the logo was at a slight angle, rising to the right. In 1964 The 7 T's symbol of Tarmac was introduced and the company name changed to mixed case, capital T with lowercase 'armac'. The railway tanks were not repainted however and soldiered on in their old logo for years thereafter. Tarmac had been operating rail tank wagons since the 1920s, these were steam coil fitted tanks, all black with TARMAC in 3 foot letters at a slight angle (rising to the right) on the sides.
Fig ___ Tarmac tank and post 1964 logo for lorries
In 1954 Tarmac began replacing its rail wagon fleet with road lorries, however I believe the rail tankers continued in use well into the 1960s. In 1959 Tarmac bought Crow Catchpole (a tar distillers and their main competitor in the South of the country) They then bought Tarslag, a major Midlands-based road materials company, giving them their first owned quarry (prior to this their product had been based almost entirely on crushed steelworks slag).
The Briggs Dundee refinery was bought by Tarmac in 1968, however the rail tanks remained in Briggs livery into the early 1980s. The Dundee refinery throughput was increased five fold by 1989. In 1992 the Dundee refinery was sold to the specialist Swedish refiner Nynas Petroleum Group (who also operate from Ellesmere Port). The refinery now processes extra heavy crude oils to produce a range of bitumens and a range of distillates including gas oil, marine diesel, lubricating oil base stocks and fuel oils are also produced.
With Tarmac's 1971 takeover of Limmer and Trinidad Limited, a London-based quarry products business with an asphalt lake in Trinidad, it became the largest road surfacing contractor and blacktop producer in the United Kingdom.
Foster Yeoman, familiar today for their use of high capacity wagons, were also involved in shipping 'tarred macadam' by rail, however I have not traced an reference to tank wagons in this firm's livery.
Firms dealing in Bitumen Emulsions
Bitumen Emulsions are fine particles of bitumen suspended in water, used for road surfacing as the water allows the normally very viscous bitumen to be sprayed onto a road surface with less heating, the water then evaporates. The secret to keeping the oily tar suspended in the emulsion is to electrostatically charge the bitumen particles so they repel each other and do not coagulate. This technique, called Cold Spray, was invented at the beginning of the 1920s by Hugh Allan Mackay and George Samuel Illay (a patent was granted in 1922). By then, Mackay had formed his own company, Asphalt Cold Mix Limited, to exploit the patent in the United Kingdom. I was not able to find any reference to wagons owned by Mr Mackay's company.
British Bitumen Emulsions Ltd
This company sold an emulsion mix they called Colfix Emulsion. There is a photograph of one of their wagons in Mr Tourret's book 'Petroleum Rail Tank Wagons of Britain' showing one of their tanks, a two-compartment affair secured at either end by angled plates, the side plating extends beyond the tank ends (sometimes seen on insulated wagons although not common), making this a moderately easy tank to model using a printed paper wrapper.
Fig ___ British Bitumen Emulsions Ltd twin tank
Lion Emulsions Ltd
This company were operating tank wagons by the mid 1930s (possibly earlier) and were one of the last companies to operate a fleet of smaller tanks (most apparently second hand). Some of their anchor mounted tanks continued in use into the 1980s (although the Lion Emulsions branding seems to have disappeared in the 80's, the tanks then being black with just the standard markings and twin traffic stars on them).
Colas
The French firm Colas was formed in 1924 and purchased the exclusive rights to use the product in France. The name Colas (for 'cold asphalt') was adopted because even then other firms were selling their own 'cold spray' products and the term was no longer only associated with the Mackay-Illay product. This company also operated in the UK, they had at least one tank wagon built in the later 1920s however the only photograph I have seen was in Mr Tourret's book Petroleum Rail Tank Wagons of Britain (see Bibliography), this appears to be a maker's photo and there are no markings on the tank body other than the company name.
Viamuls Ltd Operated leased tank wagons in their 'Bitumuls' livery in the 1920s and 1930s, the example below is from the Bachman Farish N gauge range.
Fig ___ Bachman Farish 'Bitumuls' tank
Scientific Roads Ltd Based in Shipley (Yorkshire) and established in about 1930, this company called its product 'Bitrin', the wagons were black with the product name with the company name underneath in white. There is a goof photograph of one of the wagons in Bill Hudson's Private Owner Wagons Vol. 3.
^
Go to top of page