Tin-plate
Tinplate was developed in Germany, which held a virtual monopoly until the 17th century. The British tin-plate industry was mainly concentrated in South Wales, where iron works existed and Cornish tin was easily available. The tin plate industry in Swansea dates back to at least 1665 when Cornish tin was used to coat iron sheets but it was the eighteenth century before industrial scale production was developed (the first factory opened in Ponty Pool in the 1730's). Further up the Bristol Channel there were also tinplate works at Lydney in the Forest of Dean. The Midlands also had a substantial tin plate industry and there were also individual tin works at many other locations around the country, most industrial towns would have at least one.
The development of plate rolling mills produced better quality sheet for tinning (called 'backplate') and British tinplate became the world leader. Up to the end of the 19th century the UK was virtually the world's only supplier of tin plate, the three hundred or so factories in South Wales sent a lot of their product abroad (a lot of British tin plate was used for roofing in America). This export trade, mainly from the Bristol Channel ports, remained significant up to World War Two.
In the 1880's and 1890's steel replaced iron for tin plate (usually Seimens rather than Bessemer steel). Originally the industry used Cornish tin but as this began to run out in the 1860's tin was imported from Australia and Malaya (now Malaysia).
In the later nineteenth century demand increased with the increasing use of tinned metal 'stock boxes' and cans for food and one gallon tins for cooking oils, paraffin and petrol. The canned foods were a major driving force because of the various large scale wars (Crimea, American Civil War etc). Tinplate production was able to keep up because of the introduction of steam powered rolling and stamping mills to prepare the iron and steel sheet.
Tin plate has a pleasing shiny 'silvery' finish. It was used for a very wide range of applications, from containers for foods to spurs for horse riders. When offset lithography appeared in the 1870s tinplate could be colour-printed, decorated tin boxes were popular with biscuit makers and tea companies and their demands for ever more ornate containers lead to the development of the pressed tinplate toy industry. Thin tinplate was used to line the wooden cases in which they shipped boxes of matches (these were still in use in the 1980s).
Tin plate was made by folding and rolling sheets of iron (later steel) into thin strip of the required thickness, this was then known as 'backplate'. The rolling was done in two stages, first with the metal red hot, then with it cold. This resulted in a coating of scale on the outside that was removed by 'picking' the sheet in dilute sulphuric acid for a few minutes and then washed with water. The plates were then annealed at a low red heat for some 8
or 10 hours in iron or steel pots, and allowed to cool slowly, after which they are cold-rolled between polished chilled rolls and then annealed again, followed by a second or "white" pickling.
Prior to the 1920s the most common method for adding the tin coating was to immerse the plates in molten palm oil (recovered from Palm kernels by seed crushing firms and shipped in barrels, drums or small tank wagons) and then running the oil coated plates through a series of pots containing molten tin.
The seed crushing industry is discussed in 'Coastal and Riverside Industries - Industries associated with docks and harbours'.
From about 1900 a new method began to take over in which the plates were run through a bath of molten chloride of
zinc, then through one of molten tin, and finally through a pair of rolls revolving in a bath of palm oil (which created the right thickness of tin on the plate). The residual oil was then removed from the surface of the plates by rubbing with bran, and they were finally polished by passing between rollers covered with sheepskin.
The standard wooden box of tinned sheets was 14 inches by 20 inches and held 112 sheets of tinned metal (each weighing about a pound or 0.5Kg).
There was also a material called 'Terne plate' similarly coated with an alloy of tin and lead and used for some special purposes, such as roofing.
Modern tin-plate 'strip' is supplied to the tin plate works as coils of thin sheet it is cut to size and given a thin coating of tin by electroplating.Although we use tin plate for coating food storage containers it is perhaps worth noting that most of the alloys of tin are toxic, especially the organic ones.
Modelling a Tinplate Works
Early tinplate works were composed of a number of buildings, generally single story 'shed' type structures, at least one of which would have a row of (typically) fairly short chimneys along one wall where the sheets were being dipped into the baths of molten tin.
Fig ___ Tin-plate works tin shop chimneys
All tinplate works seem to have had a single tall chimney as well, presumably for the boiler driving the rolling and cutting machinery. A supply of fresh water was important, both for the boiler and also for the pickling plant where the metal was cleaned prior to tinning. hence many tinplate works were built beside rivers (otherwise they had to pay for local corporation water supplies).
The building shown below is based on an illustration in a book published by the CWS between the wars, it shows the CWS tinplate factory in the North East just before World War One. Note the large 'beehive' ventilators on the roof. This factory has two large chimneys at the rear of the main building. Behind the buildings is an extensive yard area and there is a railway line in the foreground (presumably there would have been a siding run in behind the works).
Fig ___ CWS tin-plate works
Larger tinplate works were all rail connected, some having extensive tracks running through the works area. For model railway purposes a building based on the CWS example shown above, but with a siding running along the front of the building with a raised loading bank would serve well enough.
To save space you can reduce the depth of the single storey end of the factory and move the chimneys to either side of the tall part, modelling this in part relief. Personally I would probably replace the right hand tall chimney with a set of three shorter rectangular chimneys along the single story building as this looks more 'industrial'. With the chimneys against the backscene they will not cast shadows on the 'sky' behind. Road access to the works is presumed to run behind the building. The tin plate was liable to rust damage (ships officers were advised against handling it in wet weather), so a covered loading bay would seem likely at the works. I have indicated a covered loading area adjoining the tall building at the left end of the loading bank. There is space for a set of large doors on the main building at the boiler house end, allowing coal to be moved into the works.
Fig ___ Tin-plate works for a layout
As with most industries if in doubt you can add another chimney, one works in South Wales, actually a converted mill, had three large rectangular chimneys added, each one about three feet thick by about twelve to fifteen feet long and extending about ten feet above the top of the three story building. These were spaced about ten feet apart along one wall.
A tin-plate works would receive consignments of sheet metal called 'strip', however prior to the later 1930s this material was delivered in small batches, often sheet pre-cut down to the size a man could conveniently handle (about three foot square). The material would probably be re-rolled at the works to get the required thickness and a larger works might receive easier to handle large ingots or billets of metal to be completely rolled on-site. From the 1950s the steel might be delivered as coils of strip metal, although only at a larger works. Rolls of strip would be delivered on converted (roll) wagons discussed in 'Wagon Loads & Materials Handling - Metals'.
They would also receive tin ingots, the Cornish tin was usually supplied in 56 pound ingots, the imported tin from Malaya weighed in at '85 catties', which is about 113 pounds (roughly 51Kg). The Malay ingots were about two feet long, roughly six inches wide and about four inches high (with a slight taper toward one side to make them easier to get out of the mould). The ingots of tin were valuable and might well turn up in a van, at the works they could be moved about easily enough on a sack truck.
The quantity of sulphuric acid required was not great and it was probably delivered in glass carboys packed in wicker baskets. I have seen a photo of a three plank wagon filled with these in neat rows and packed around with straw (see Appendix One - Packaging materials and containers for more on carboys including illustrations showing their sizes). As this is your factory however you might like to run in a sulphuric acid tank wagon or two, although this would be for a larger works prepared to invest in the handling facilities required.
The palm oil would probably be supplied in large barrels (a Peco barrel load would serve well for that) although seed crushers were using railway tanks from about 1930 I am not sure bulk deliveries would be of particular interest to a tinplate works (for possible tank wagon liveries see 'Lineside Industries - Coastal and Riverside Industries - Industries associated with docks and harbours'). The illustration shows the size of the oil barrels and how these large barrels were handled in the docks, at a tinplate works they were probably just rolled about by the workmen as required.
Fig ___ Barrels of palm oil
There would also be regular supplies of coal for the boilers (driving the rolling and cutting mills) and for melting the tin.
Up to the later 1930s tinplate works would ship out mainly van loads of finished tinned sheet, due to their delicate nature the sheets were sometimes wrapped in oiled paper, but claims for damage in shipment were always common. To box up the outgoing tin there would be regular supplies of timber, carefully selected as 'green' (damp) timber boxes were a major cause of rust damage. The coopers at the works would make up the boxes to suit the size of plate being ordered, but these cases were not terribly strong and the cargo required careful handling. The most common standard wooden box of tinned sheets was 14 inches by 20 inches and held 112 sheets of tinned metal. Each sheet weighed in at about a pound or 0.5Kg, so the box weighed about a hundredweight (about 51Kg) and could be handled by one man (with difficulty).
The illustration below shows a man with some kind of works trolley moving cases of tinplate in 1930.
Fig ___ Trolley for tinplate boxes
In photographs from the mid 1950s I have seen pale wooden boxes of tin plate, about three foot by two foot by about ten inches deep with a couple of three inch square battens on the base to allow fork-lift handling.
Coils of tined metal were being shipped by the later 1930s, presumably for the tin can makers, the pictures I have seen show coils about three feet wide and about two feet in diameter. By the mid 1950s tinplate from the newer large works was shipped out in much larger coils as shown below, in transit these wagons would be sheeted.
Fig ___ Loading tin-plate coils at the works
Several firms operated their own railway vans in the pre-grouping era, I believe some remained in service into the early 1930s.
Fig ___ Tin-plate manufactures vans
The upper example is from Llanelli, which, at the end of the 19th Century was the Tinplate manufacturing centre of the world, there were a great many small tinplate works in and around the town, leading to the nickname of Tinopolis. The area was once home to around half the world’s production of tinplate. The Western Tinplate company was formed in 1879 and took over the closed Marsh Field Iron Works, the works closed in 1953. The Kidwelly Industrial Museum is situated just a mile from the historic castle town of Kidwelly, and just five miles from the town of Llanelli, and is built on the site of the second oldest recorded tinplate works in the UK (some of the remains of this works can still be seen today).
The lower example is sketched from a photograph in Peter Mathews' book 'Private Owner Wagons' which is` detailed in the bibliography. Redbrook is a small town in Gloucestershire, The Redbrook Tinplate Co. was set up in 1740 (using the buildings of a former copper works). The Redbrook tinplate factory was world famous for high quality products and did not close until 1962.
In the early 21st century there was only one large tin plate works in the UK, based, predictably, in Swansea.
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