Miscellaneous

Industrial Railways - Longford Power Station: misc_indust1478a

Close up of image 'misc_indust1478' showing Longford Generating Station's coal wagon tippler in action with a wagon about to be emptied. As can be seen, the wagon was uncoupled from its neighbours in order for it to rate 180 degrees. In this view the wagon is only half way through the cycle being at 90 degrees to the track. It was held in place by at least two sets of chains from the top of each side to the circular frame (one chain can be seen immediately above the wagon). The two poles to the right of the tippler were used by the shunters to uncouple the three link couplings.

Keith Turton writes: 'Based in Hertford Street, Coventry, Jackson was one of only a small number of Coventry coal merchants operating wagons, such was the influx of traders and factors from nearby Birmingham There would be no question of identifying his wagons with their main lettering covering five planks, neither could there be a question about the size of his operations, judging by the number of Jackson wagons in the lineup for the rotary tippler at the Coventry electricity generating station.

For a power station contract coal would have been sourced from local collieries, From the contracts recorded between 1933 and 1939, (some years are missing,) for an a annual usage of between 72,000 and 108,000 tons (compared with Birmingham's 350,000 tons) Contracts were let to Jackson for six month periods.

Up until the early years after the second word war canal transport to the power station was still in use, one advantage was that the canal were around three pence a ton cheaper, but this would have been offset by a more laborious method of discharging.

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