Tanks (Septic?) as wagon loads?

[barhamd]

After all the intellectual content from Virtual Scaleforum trust me to bring the tone down....

This wagon in the yard at Clare in the 1960s appears to be loaded with a round tank.

septic-tank.jpg (15.25 KiB) Viewed 2168 times

I have seen a similar loads in photographs of Sudbury goods yard though that load appears to be more like a giant round bottom flask.



I've been disappearing down the rabbit hole of internet research but thought there must be someone on the Scalefour forum who is an expert on this subject(!)

So, when did septic tanks become something you might have delivered, presumably made out of some kind of fibre glass?

David

[steamraiser]

The septic house where I used to live with my parents was brick built into the ground.

[David B]

The septic house where I used to live with my parents was brick built into the ground.

Isn't that called a cess pit? I found one in a house I moved in to 35 years ago. It was lined with brick - no mortar, dry laid - and the soil inside was wonderful stuff. I put it on the veg patch and got a great crop that year.

A septic house! That conjurs up some images.

[Rod Cameron]

Fibreglass septic tanks (made by the likes of Klargester) were certainly around in the late 1970s, not sure when they originated - possibly in the years after 1963 when regulations came in requiring discharges to ground to be licensed. They have an inlet and an outlet which leads to a herringbone network of field drains for the effluent. The accumulated sludge needs emptying from time to time. Brick-built structures are more likely to be cess pits which need regular emptying as they don't have an outlet (unless you knock a hole in the bottom which was more commonly done than you might think).

[DougN]

Interesting my house in Australia was built in 1968 and the sewer was brought through in about 1973. It's a precast concrete tank. (I know exactly where it is and have thought about demolishing it as it is empty and not been in use for a long time) they work on anaerobic reactions and digest a lot of the effluent. The water is then distributed through the soakage system. I also found that when extending the house. The soakage area would have covered about 6m x 3m area, I don't think it would have worked too well where I am as the ground is all brickmaking clay which would have not accepted much in the way of moisture!

Any how it reminds me of about 1978 when there is photos of me as a small boy having a great time on the JCB style front end loader that was parked in the back yard of a house I grew up in, in Glen Waverley.... some things never change I want to have go still in big excavators... a

[tmcsean]

Irrelevant rubbish: One of the funniest moments of my childhood was seeing one of my uncles falling through a flimsy outhouse floor into a disused (but still very cessy) cess pit. The memory of the look on his face still brings joy to my heart - and it is one of his most-told stories. Not hurt, no nasty after-effects just madly funny.

Tony

[Noel]

To return to the original question, the photograph is of too low a resolution to be at all sure, but I think that the tank at Clare in the 1960s is probably steel, and therefore not a septic tank. Glass reinforced plastic [GRP aka "fibreglass"] was known in the 1960s, but was, so far as I can remember, and ascertain from the internet, not in common use, as the plastics/resin technology was still being developed. Prior to the use of GRP, septic tanks were apparently brick or concrete, which would have been constructed in situ.

Another possible indicator is that the outer surface appears smooth and painted, neither of which is necessary for a buried GRP tank. Steel tanks were in use for fuel oil, TVO, paraffin, and petrol, and demand for most of these was growing at that time in country areas. Agricultural chemicals are another possibility, although perhaps less probable? I have seen a couple of photos of steel tanks about this size in 13T Highfits.

[barhamd]

I tend to agree that the tank in the wagon at Clare looks like it was steel but what do you make of this one at Sudbury?

sudbury-wagon.jpg (137.86 KiB) Viewed 1898 times

thanks
David

[Rod Cameron]

Looks like one to me David - date?

[bécasse]

Looks like a fibreglass one to me. Ones of that general design were certainly used the other side of the pond.

[barhamd]

Looks like one to me David - date?

1960 according to the date in the text...
David

[Rod Cameron]

So they originated a bit earlier than I thought then

[Noel]

The photograph at Sudbury is, in my view, far too fuzzy to decide what the load is made of. However, it is in a VB 8 plank opens, probably ex-SR rather than ex-GWR, in pre-TOPS livery, so the photo can be dated probably to circa 1960. I would therefore doubt, for the reasons given earlier, that it is GRP. It is very different from the tank shown in the original post, which has a tank of about 6ft diameter, and a neck of about 4ft with two connections. The one in the Sudbury wagon has a neck about 2ft, with no obvious connectors in it, although there are several possible connectors in a ring round the base of the neck. Its diameter is difficult to judge, but probably about 4-5ft, but the top is about 9ft above the wagon floor. There don't appear to be many ropes securing it, but it is standing upright which seems to imply a lot of hidden packing or, more likely, a flat base or feet.

I have no clue what it is, but am inclined to think it may be an industrial storage or process vessel of some sort, possibly in stainless steel. Post-WW2 Sudbury had a surprising amount of industry for a country market town.

[Will L]

I think there are lost of uses for a nondescript (probably) steel tanks like this, fuel oil/petrol for instance! Not sure why you should light on it being a septic tank in particular

That one looks like a pressure vessel possibly gas. CAV, later Lucas, was in Sudbury from from 1911 and was a "modern" high tech manufacture. For instance, they were turning out fuel injectors a from the end of the war onward with the help of my father in law. Quite likely to have the need for exotic gas supplies.

[barhamd]

That one looks like a pressure vessel possibly gas. CAV, later Lucas, was in Sudbury from from 1911 and was a "modern" high tech manufacture. For instance, they were turning out fuel injectors a from the end of the war onward with the help of my father in law. Quite likely to have the need for exotic gas supplies.

So do we reckon the 'load' was the contents of the tank rather than the tank itself?

If so do you think there are documents which would define how the cylinder was constructed, would it have been some kind of 'standard' designed for railway transport?

David

[Noel]

So do we reckon the 'load' was the contents of the tank rather than the tank itself?

No. The load is the empty tank. BR did have a number of demountable special tanks for a variety of contents, which travelled on Conflats A, with securing chains as with any container. Carrying a tank in the way seen at Sudbury would be dangerous if it contained liquid as the contents would surge under acceleration or braking and the tank would move.

[barhamd]

I drew up a few bits in Onshape and printed them out on my resin 3D printer.

The tank in a wagon at Clare end up like this:-

and as a wagon load looks like this:-

The strange cylindrical tank at Sudbury end up like this:-

which looks like this in a wagon:-

I also modeled up a fibre-glass septic tank, just for the fun of it!

lots of fun.

David

[Phil O]

We had an onion style septic tank in '74, we were told that this was the 2nd one sold in Devon.

Cheers

Phil.

[garethevans1986]

I drew up a few bits in Onshape and printed them out on my resin 3D printer.
David

David,

Which resin printer do you have?

Thanks
Gareth

[barhamd]

David,

Which resin printer do you have?

Thanks
Gareth

I'm just using Anycubic standard grey UV Wavelength 405nm

David

[garethevans1986]

Thank you