Sorry steam engine buffs, but I’m not a fan.
I have looked at how toxic and highly dangerous chemicals came to be carried through residential Oldbury HERE.
This post is an addition to that piece in that I came across a hand drawn and rather neat colour artefact of how this rail line ran into the Trinity Street works. Having viewed the MOS wartime factory plans, it is a very accurate representation of this former off spur. I know nothing however about who drew it and why but it states that it dates from a 1956 ordnance survey map.
The two canal arms, The Jim Crow arm shown on the right and a part of the Houghton Chemical arm is shown on the left. I’m curious as to “The dross tip” shown on this plan, as I have never seen this before and wonder what they meant by “dross”. Certainly no doubt that tip was either buried or the stuff transferred to another local well known tip in Tividale- no prizes for guessing where.
As for the older trains that pulled the deadly cargo, the picture below in my copyright shows one of these Peckett engines.
I am led to believe that this particular vehicle found its way to the Chasewater Railway located near Burntwood.
I have seen this many times but this attraction as it is now is bizarre in its antiquity and an anachronism in the climate zealots idea of future enterprise.
One wonders how all this abysmal stinking black fog became the norm all those years ago and what it did to people’s health, let alone what it transported which was even worse.
