A group of ICI workmen take a break from work as they pose for the camera. Does anyone know what they are stood in front of? Date unknown.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A group of ICI workmen take a break from work as they pose for the camera. Does anyone know what they are stood in front of? Date unknown.
The large six pointed star seen on tank wagons was introduced in 1913, and indicated the wagon was suitable for fast traffic (that is for trains with average speeds of 35 miles per hour and stops at intervals of no more than 40 miles). It was sometimes, rather optimistically and incorrectly, applied to some very old wagons such as a rectangular tank wagons on wooden chassis with a nine foot wheelbase, however this may have been simply for the purposes of publicity photographs. The star was 2 feet across and either black (on white or yellow tanks) or white. There were also two star wagons, authorised to run at higher speeds, and three star wagons, which could run in a passenger train (the use of non bogie stock in passenger trains was banned in the later 1950s). A sketch of a three starred beer tank wagon can be seen in the section ‘Goods rolling stock design – Tank wagons’…Source: https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/6-livy/odds/9-tankliv.htm
My father was a foreman at Billingham in 1937 at the ammonia plant. Later spent the war making mustard gas and phosgene, in Runcorn, then Wales, and later at Preston at the Springfield works… atomic energy.
Would personally love a copy of the image, as Thomas Crook Loraine was my grandfather, and was Distribution Manager for the Salt Union at Port Clarence before and after they were taken over by ICI in 1937. He was responsible for overseeing the eventual closure of both the Clarence Salt Works in 1952, and the Tennants Works in 1956, when he retired from ICI.
In regards to the image, the star signifies that the load can travel at relatively high speeds on the railways, of some 30 mph or so. The fact that it is black is to help stinguish it from its lighter, possibly white background. The hydrogenation plants at Billingham didn’t commence aircraft fuel production until the early1940s, and petro-chemicals were largely the domain of ICI Wilton post-war.
Consequently, if the photo is pre-WWII, then it won’t be petrol, and the brine theory would most likely be the best assumption, as coal tar or acid chemical tanks from Port Clarence would be darker in colour.
Just done a quick web search, and there is an image of an ICI tank wagon in very similar livery, white(ish), with black star, and possibly a thin red band. The tank wagon is of a slightly later period with the classic ICI roundel logo, so possibly from the 1950s. It conveys liquid ammonia, so would probably be from the ICI Billingham Works.
You can find the images on the Paul Bartlett web-site, with many ICI tank wagons, for acids, caustic soda, as well as ammonia..
Petrol Tankers, I believe the black star denoted petrol
Possibly one of the first shipment of ICI petrol from the hydrogenation process?
A railway tanker. You used to see them going past Cowpen Estate in the 40s and 50s. The boys used to dare to ride them.
It is certainly not acid as that needed heavier barrels than those shown also smaller as concentrated acid is heavy. I do not like guessing although would think those are brine barrels which came up from the Brine wells and as well as being used at Castle Works Billingham was shipped out to other firms making cleaning agents, brine being the base for most of them.
ICI also shipped out Ammonia NH3 although those barrels would have been well marked, they would have been the same type though.
When you consider ICI had it own rail network and masses of sidings within the works area with full trains leaving every night and coal coming in for the Boilers before they were changed to first oil then Gas plus other products used in the processes, we did lose a lot when they went.