Industrial Railways
Part 2: Process Industries, Food & Drink Industries.
The Wissington Light Railway
Compiled by Charles Milner
From the R C Riley Archive
Industrial Railways From the R C Riley Archive
Part 2: Process Industries, Food & Drink Industries, and the Wissington Light Railway
Compiled and captioned by
Charles Milner
Industrial
Ports, Docks and Wharves
Coal Mines
Ironstone Quarries
Process Industries
The Food & Drink Industry
The Wissington Light Railway
Copies of the images in both volumes (along with tens of thousands of others on UK, Irish and some European railways) are available direct from The Transport Treasury. To order copies of images within this volume please quote the ‘RCR’ reference number shown at the end of the relevant caption.
Opposite top: Fig 155. The Sheepbridge Ironworks were started by Dunston & Barlow Mineral Co in 1857. By 1861, they were operating three blast furnaces and supplying the highest quality iron to John Brown Ltd in Sheffield for conversion to armour plate for warships. The Company became The Sheepbridge Iron & Coal Co in 1864; the name reflecting its significant interests in coal mining as well as iron making. Iron ore to serve the plant was originally extracted from local mines but later the company developed iron ore mines in Northamptonshire; see Fig 135.
Steel making using the open-hearth process started in the 1880s and between the wars, the company specialised in centrifugal steel casting to supply the needs of the motor industry. Prior to nationalisation, the engineering interests of the company, which were focused on the coal mining industry, were separated from the metal production side, and continued as a stand-alone business. The company had long had a close working relationship with the Staveley Coal & Iron Co and in 1955 was transferred to their successors, the Staveley Iron & Chemical Co.
In 1960, that company was sold to Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd as part of the denationalisation of the iron and steel industry. The iron making plant at Sheepbridge closed on 17 November 1961. Sheepbridge No 26, seen above on 5 March 1961, was a 1919 product of the Avonside Engine Co, works number 1825. It was delivered new to the Ironworks, but also worked at Desborough Ironstone Quarry on three occasions between then and 1946. The design of this locomotive looks quite archaic and as built, closely resembled Stanton No 165. By the time it was built, the Avonside Engine Co had introduced a new range of more modern looking locomotives with higher pitched boilers, full length flat-sided saddle tanks and a modern cab; ref Fig 30. At some stage in its career Sheepbridge No 26 has gained a home-built cab and bunker, all welded saddle tank, and a new chimney to replace the originals. (RCR 15548)
Opposite bottom: Fig 156. Sheepbridge No 28 was a product of the Yorkshire Engine Co, works number 2413 of 1943. This 16-inch cylindered locomotive was delivered to Desborough Ironstone Quarries and only became a permanent resident at Sheepbridge in August 1951. In this picture, taken on 5 March 1961, it is working a train of empty slag ladles. These were used to transport slag; the non-metallic impurities separated from the iron in the blast furnace, to a waste tip. This design of Yorkshire Engine Co built locomotive was superseded after the Second World War by a new 16-inch cylinder design based on the Robert Stephenson and Co Ltd built 16-inch locomotives supplied to Appleby–Frodingham Steelworks between the Wars; see Figs 15, 17 and 18. (RCR 15549)
Above: Fig 157. No apology is made for including this beautiful picture, taken on 5 March 1961. It perfectly captures the industrial steam locomotive at work in the lost world of heavy industry; the massive oppressive buildings, the smoke haze drifting away from the locomotive, the pipe bridges and gantries and to the left a disinterested looking gaffer complete with buttoned up suit and trilby. Sheepbridge No 23 was a 15-inch cylindered product of Hudswell Clarke & Co Ltd, works number 1022 of 1913 and was a sister to Sheepbridge No 22, which ended its days at Desborough Ironstone Quarry, see Fig 137. In total, three engines of this design worked at Sheepbridge. An unusual feature of this locomotive are the double boss wheels; these were a typical feature of mid to late Victorian engines and would not have been fitted to Sheepbridge No 22 when new; it is surmised that during a heavy repair the locomotive was fitted with a set of wheels from a much older locomotive. (RCR 15447)
Above: Fig 251. No 6, pictured on 12 April 1958, was a 1920 product of Hudswell Clarke and Co Ltd, works number 1417, and was an anachronism when built. Salter safety valves and a weather board cab had long since ceased to be the norm for new built locomotives. No 6, like the other engines of the Worthington fleet, was unaltered when rebuilt; in the case of No 6 this was done by Hudswell Clarke in 1947 and looked like a classic Victorian industrial steam locomotive until it was sold for scrap in 1960. A similar locomotive, excepting that it has a flat sided saddle tank, Hawarden, built by Hudswell Clarke and Co Ltd in 1899, works number 526, was preserved by the National Trust at Penrhyn Castle Museum. A notable feature of all the steam engines operated by Worthington & Co Ltd was the use of copper capped chimneys; not just a prerogative of the Great Western Railway and Beckton Gas Works! (RCR 11609)
Opposite top: Fig 252. On 28 September 1957, RC Riley visited Ind Coope and Allsopp’s locomotive shed, situated in the middle of what was once Allsopp’s cooperage, This was located between Horninglow Street, and the former London and North Western Railway, Burton on Trent locomotive shed and yard. He was greeted by as eclectic a collection of industrial locomotives as might be seen anywhere in the United Kingdom. In the foreground was No 9, a four-wheel 58 HP battery electric locomotive built new for the Ministry of Munitions Bramley Depot by English Electric in 1922, works number 533, and sold to Ind Coope & Allsopp in 1946. No 9 survived until 1968. Behind it, are two standard 100 HP Sentinel Ltd built locomotives, and to the left are two 150 HP four coupled EE Baguley built diesel mechanical shunters. The locomotives were finished in a simple dark green livery, and were decorated with the red hand symbol, which was the trademark of Ind Coope & Allsopp and one of its progenitors, Samuel Allsopp & Son Ltd. No 9 was acquired to work the sidings of the former Ind Coope malthouses, after they were converted to bottling stores in 1948. The plant was used to bottle Allsopps Pale Ale, which was rebranded Double Diamond Pale Ale in 1934, and by 1958 had become Britain’s best-selling bottled beer. Sales peaked in 1974 at 50,000,000 pints per annum, but by 1996 production ceased: a victim of changing tastes. In addition to marshalling vans loaded with bottled beers, No 9 was also used to shunt tank wagons, bringing in lager from breweries in Alloa and Wrexham for bottling. For many years, No 9 was stabled in its own shed near to Curzon Street, close to the Midland railway station. The former Allsopp shed closed in 1967, with the remaining locomotives transferred to a shed located within the one-time Ind Coope Brewery, which stayed in use until 1970. By the early 1980s, Ind Coope and Allsopp were the only brewers in Burton on Trent to retain rail access for the receipt of the occasional bulk grain wagon. (RCR 11302)
Opposite bottom: Fig 253. Ind Coope and Allsopp purchased two new 100 HP Sentinel Ltd steam locomotives, No 7, works number 9376 of 1947 and No 8, works number 9384 of 1948. No 8 was scrapped on site in January 1971, after the ending of the use of the internal railway system excepting the sidings shunted by British Railways. No 7 was a bit more fortunate: it was sold to Thomas Hill Ltd in 1960, moved to East Ardsley Colliery in Yorkshire by late 1960 or early 1961, after a period on hire to Bachelors Foods Ltd, Wadsley Bridge, and then returned to Thomas Hill in 1963, before sale to General Refractories in Deepcar in 1965. By 1971 it was at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, Quainton Road, and then passed to the Rutland Railway Museum at Cottesmore, where it was used on demonstration freights. By 2009, it had moved to the Elsecar Heritage Railway, and latterly has been cannibalised to provide spare parts for two other 100 HP Sentinel built locomotives on the railway. A sad end to what was once a beautifully kept locomotive, as attested to by the picture; taken on the 28 September 1957. The history of Ind Coope and Allsopp goes back to the very start of brewing in Burton on Trent. In 1742, Benjamin Wilson started his first brewery, and over the next 60 years, Wilson and his son and successor, also called Benjamin, cautiously built up the business and became the town’s leading brewer. Benjamin Junior took his nephew Samuel Allsopp into the business at the turn of the century, and in 1807, following a downturn in trade because of the Napoleonic blockade, sold the brewery to Allsopp for £7,000. The business then traded as Allsopp & Sons. The brewery was located off the High Street, near the banks of the River Trent, and beer was moved down river to ports on the Humber for export. In 1823, the business was approached by Campbell Marjoribanks, a Director of the East India Company, to produce a beer for sale in India to replace a beer being brewed for them in London. A sample was produced which met the approval of the East India Company and Burton India Pale Ale was born. The water at Burton on Trent particularly suited the production of Pale Ales, and the business expanded rapidly. By 1854, demand had outstripped the capacity of the original site on the banks of the Trent, so a new brewery was constructed alongside the Midland Railway in 1860. This, when built, was the largest brewery in Britain and was one of the wonders of the age. The proximity of the Midland Railway meant that distribution was switched to rail, and distribution depots were set up around the country; the most notable being that located in the goods yard beneath St. Pancras Station. The business became over-extended in the 1890s, when they built a larger brewery and went into receivership. The company struggled on and eventually merged with Ind Coope Ltd in 1934, who operated a brewery in Burton on Trent adjacent to Samuel Allsopp’s new brewery. Subsequently, the two breweries were operated as one enterprise. In later years, the fortunes of the business were founded on the pale ale developed by Allsopps which became Double Diamond. Today, the Ind Coope and Allsopp brewery in Burton on Trent is operated by Molson Coors and operates as Burton North Brewery. (RCR 11304)
During the Second World War, the Railway was extremely busy; at times trains of over 100 wagons were operated with two locomotives hauling, and one banking. An average of 60 wagons per day carrying a variety of market produce, potatoes, root crops, and even bullocks, were delivered to Abbey station. During the sugar beet campaign, three trains a day would operate, moving beet from loading sidings to the Factory.
In 1947, the whole of the railway, excluding the section between the Sugar Beet Factory and Abbey station, was acquired by the Ministry of Agriculture and the British Sugar Corporation continued to operate it, as per the previous arrangement. By 1955, traffic was beginning to decline, though the Railway remained profitable, and discussions commenced about the closure of the greater part of the railway. The formal decision to close the railway south of the factory was made in June 1956, and in May 1957, the greater part of the Wissington Railway was sold for scrap. The remaining section which linked the British Sugar Corporation Factory to British Railways at Abbey Station survived until December 1981.
The line was predominantly operated by small six-wheel contractors’ locomotives of Manning Wardle and Hudswell Clarke origin, though a larger six coupled outside cylinder Andrew Barclay built saddle tank was used to work traffic from the factory to Abbey Station. For much of the last thirty years of its life, the Wissington Railway was surprisingly busy; in the year 1939-40 225,460 tons of traffic was handled by the Railway, in the year 1943-44 58,726 tons
was carried just on the section of the Railway south of the factory, and in the last year of operation, 19,620 tons was carried on the same section; almost all agricultural produce with limited inbound traffic including fertiliser, building materials and empty crates and sacks. Even in its later years, during the sugar beet campaign, two engines would be in steam, working extended shifts and hauling surprisingly lengthy trains.
The Wissington Railway, more than any other industrial railway, merged into the landscape; the trackbed was often covered in vegetation leaving just the rail heads appearing through the foliage. Once past Poppylot, there was no means of communicating with the trains, which were lost in the vastness of the fens. The latter years of the southern section of the Wissington Railway were captured by the late Dr Ian C Allen, doyen of East Anglian railway photographers, and many of his images grace the pages of ‘The Wissington Light Railway’ by Roger Darsley, published by The Industrial Railway Society, which is the source of much of the information contained in this chapter; it is one of the most informative industrial railway histories ever written. Anyone with any interest in the Wissington Light Railway should seek out this excellent book.
RC Riley did not photograph the Wissington Railway line until the closure of the section south of the Factory when it was a more conventional sort of railway, but his images still manage to capture the essence of this remarkable fenland railway as will be seen in subsequent pages.
Opposite top: Fig 259. A charming portrait taken on 16 December 1964 of Wissington at Abbey station. Wissington was the only steam locomotive supplied new to the Wissington Light Railway . It was ordered on 15 July 1938, for delivery in September of that year and cost the princely sum of £1,900. It was a six coupled 13 inch cylindered locomotive from the makers of the Countess of Warwick class; essentially a late build contractors’ locomotive. Many locomotives of this design built for Sir Robert McAlpine and Co between the Wars found employment on major projects such as the construction of munitions factories and Ebbw Vale Steelworks. The locomotive was assigned works number 1700. To enable it to work out on the Fens, it was originally fitted with a water lifter and 30 foot of hose so that it could pull water from ditches and drains to replenish the tank. This device was removed after the closure of the lines south of the Sugar Beet Factory in 1957. The picture also shows that Wissington must have been involved in a spot of robust shunting, which left the footplate a bit buckled. (RCR 17771)
Opposite bottom: Fig 260. Wissington setting back on a long line of 16 ton mineral wagons and 12 ton vans, awaiting transfer to the sugar factory. The wagons have been left on the remains of the BR line from Abbey Station to Stoke Ferry. The well manicured track, bull head rail, sleepers laid on stone ballast, shows that this picture is not taken on Wissington Light Railway track. This picture, taken on 16 December 1964, captures something of the vast, misty, emptiness of the Fens. (RCR 17764)
‘Industrial Railways’ offers a compelling glimpse into Britain’s industrial railways of the 1950s and 1960s through the lens of RC Riley. Known for his meticulous composition and attention to detail, Riley’s black-and-white photographs capture the essence of a bygone era.
Arranged by type of system, the book allows readers to compare different practices and designs across various industrial settings. The photographs capture the intricate details of these now long-forgotten railways, offering a rare look at the infrastructure that once powered Britain’s industries. Many of these images have never been published before, making this collection a valuable resource for enthusiasts and historians alike.
£17.95
