Where was Bmblbzz buzzing around on Sunday?

[whole diary]

[Bmblbzzz]

I was bumbling around on my lean green machine when I found this not so lean, equally green, mean machine (note that neither could be described as clean ).
Site identification should be easy but I'd be interested to know precisely what its function was and how long for?

[Red Squirrel]

Is that a Shimano Biopace chainwheel..?

[Bmblbzzz]

It's not even Shimano, let alone Biopace. Nor is it any other version of elliptical chainwheel.

[martyjon]

I was bumbling around on my lean green machine when I found this not so lean, equally green, mean machine (note that neither could be described as clean ).
Site identification should be easy but I'd be interested to know precisely what its function was and how long for?

It is a fireless steam engine used to shunt the coal wagons around the generating site, recharged by the copious amounts available of steam at site but where foto taken I haven't the foggiest.

[Western Pathfinder]

At a guess Sharpness ish ?..

[Bmblbzzz]

That's interesting in itself. And fits with the location, I'd say.

[Bmblbzzz]

At a guess Sharpness ish ?..

Not just ish, it is Sharpness docks. 

[stuving]

It is a fireless steam engine used to shunt the coal wagons around the generating site, recharged by the copious amounts available of steam at site but where foto taken I haven't the foggiest.

And long before hydrogen fuel cells it could boast, greenly, "nothing but water out of the exhaust".

[Bmblbzzz]

I had presumed it had been used at Berkeley nuclear power station, which is nearby, for shunting uranium flasks. Could it actually have been used at the docks for unloading/loading coal? But then why would it belong to CEGB? I'm not aware of any other power stations, current or former, around there. But then avoiding fire in the general vicinity of a reactor also seems a good idea, and there would certainly have been plenty of steam.

[bradshaw]

There is a photo in this site; scroll down the page
https://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/06/11/gloucester-docks-and-railways-part-3-over-junction-the-llanthony-branch-and-railways-to-the-west-side-of-the-docks/

[Bmblbzzz]

Thank you, that's interesting. Lots of new stuff (to me) in that link. I've noticed the remains of the docks line on Alney Island but had no idea there had been a power station there. There is still a sub-station but maybe that's coincidental. Slightly disappointed to find this engine – assuming it's the same one – was not in fact a "nuclear powered steam engine" but nevertheless good to have details!

[grahame]

Fireless locomotives are not as unusual as some might think - there was at least one on the Sittingbourne and Kemsely - I remember seeing it there in the early days of that in preservation (and it was surely preservation majoring on heritage in those days) though out of use, and there's one at Shildon too.  Anywhere that sparks from a fire would have been a danger, such as a paper mill with lots of inflammable dust around. 

The steam equivalent of the battery locomotive or bemu?  But there's another story.

[chuffed]

They could have done with one of these in Beirut yesterday.

Coinicides almost to the day to the 30th anniversary of the hottest day on record 38C in Cheltenham on Aug 3rd in 1990. That record was broken last year with 38.7 in Cambridge.

It was also the day when the Albright and Wilson liquid white  phosphorus plant in Portishead went up, caused by incorrect and careless  storage of an inflammable substance. The cloud of toxic gas and smoke was blown south westwards and despite only living a mile and a half away, I knew nothing about it,as my view of the cloud was obscured by the hill.

Totally oblivious, I turned on the telly to see people wearing face masks in Exeter!

I found this report on the event, in the Liverpool Echo no less !

 In August 1990 one of the most spectacular health and safety failures occurred when many drums of white phosphorus went up in smoke, and certainly put Portishead on the map.

It was reported afterwards that the warehouse contained more than 30 tonnes of P4 in 166 drums, each holding 200kg. The explanation into the cause was that overnight one of the drums had caught fire spreading to the others. Over 100 firemen brought the blaze under control and it was clear that toxic white phosphorus vapour and breakdown products were given off over a 15 mile area, just as they would at Oldbury some 19 years later. It apparently also set off smoke detectors in guest houses in Weston Super Mare- perhaps a throwback to one of the dismissed claims against the new factory made many years earlier.

Unfortunately as they always did, Albright and Wilson were quick to try to downplay this incident, blaming the hot weather and putting some form of “Dunkirk spirit” in the fantastical b******* written in Albright World. They claimed that 167 drums were damaged or destroyed out of 366 held. A sandbag lake was created to attempt to contain the obvious major pollution, though what effect this had is unclear. The dock lowered by 30 inches due to the volume of water being used to fight the fire- but where did all of this heavily contaminated phossy water go back to?

Struck (no pun intended) by the parallels with what we were lucky to avoid in Portishead, and an early use of face masks !

[CyclingSid]

For obvious reasons they also tended to prefer fireless locomotives at Ordnance Factories.

On Beirut, there seems to be some lack of clarity as to how much Ammonium Nitrate there was, hundreds or thousands of tons? Fortunately more than was ever got together in Northern Ireland, where it was known as ANFO/

[Oxonhutch]

Ammonium nitrate and diesel mixed together near the work site formed the most common explosive (Amflex) used on the South African gold mines. I can attest that the former is very comfortable to sit on when descending in a huge bucket down a newly sinking mine shaft.

You could always tell which of the houses on the mine estate was inhabited by a blasting ticket miner - his house would have the greenest lawn!