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Restoration And Extension

5 Gas Works Traffic

The traffic to and from the gas works would form a major portion of the goods traffic on the layout and it was decided from the start of the project that attempts would be made to replicate this as convincingly as possible, albeit with the shorter trains dictated by the model's space constraints.

With the ready assistance of the staff at Salford Local History Library, volumes of the Council Proceedings and Treasurer's Abstracts were studied for a three year period during the 1930s from which it was established that approximately 50% of the coal used came from a range of collieries in Yorkshire. All was purchased through well known contractors, many of whom were based in the Manchester area, although companies from further afield were also used, while coal from some collieries was supplied by more than one contractor. For example, both Cawood Wharton of Leeds and James Beswick of Manchester had contracts for the supply of Hickleton Main coal to the works.

Establishing the sources of the remaining coal has proved to be rather more difficult since no mention appears in those council documents that are readily to hand in the Library.

A query to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester resulted in contact being made with a retired gas works manager who suggested that as much as 50% could have been indigenous Lancashire coal from collieries mainly around the Wigan and St. Helens areas and named several known from his own experience to have supplied gas coal. However, one major contractor to Salford had a financial interest in a North Staffordshire colliery company so it is possible, but not yet confirmed, that coal from this colliery could also have been supplied. Notwithstanding the general lack of information on locally sourced coal, a small contract was placed on Manchester Collieries for coal from the Bridgewater group, the only instance found of a contract placed directly on a colliery company.

Attention then turned to establishing the extent to which information sufficient for modelling to exhibition standard existed for the appropriate colliery and contractor wagons. So far, almost 70 wagons have been identified and more are expected to be added to the list in the near future as known sources not yet studied are accessed. Even so, there are some notable omissions and where there is a dearth of information on the colliery wagons, so a similar shortage applies to the contractor used by Salford to supply coal from that colliery.

Clearly, the layout neither needs nor could accommodate more than 70 privately operated coal wagons in addition to railway owned wagons of various types, but the opportunity exists to equip the model with representative wagons from most, if not all, of the operators whose wagons would have been seen at the gas works without all of them being RCH 1923 7 and 8 plank types as is, unfortunately, the case on many model railways.

The next stage was to assess those wagons for which an existing kit could be used with just additional detail to bring it up to the required exhibition standard; those for which an existing kit could be adapted without an excessive amount of corrective effort and those for which scratch building would be the most suitable option.

Eight colliery and five railway owned coal wagons were taken to Aylesbury while more are being built or upgraded to the necessary standard of detail.

Extensive use has been made of the published works of Bill Hudson, Tony Watts, Keith Turton and Keith Montagu together with magazine articles by Peter Matthews, Chris Crofts and others. Much valuable photographic information was found in John Hayes' "4mm Coal Wagon"

Discussion with Chris Crofts and correspondence with Keith Turton have been beneficial to the project and their contributions have been most welcome.

With regard to other traffic to the gas works, the former gas works manager advised that there was a thriving trade in coke via the Manchester Ship Canal to Scandinavia so a few coke wagons travelling between the gas works and Pomona can be added. It was also established that tar went to ICI for creosote production while benzole was also sold to outside customers. How these were transported and by whom has not been discovered so far. There would also have been wagon loads of general supplies to the works. We have been informed that Salford did not operate wagons on its own behalf and, to date, no evidence to the contrary has been found.