Neston

 
00, BR(LM), 12 x 4 foot

Neston is a platform (staffed halt handling parcels) on the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway.
The layout is set between 1948 and 1952 before the withdrawal of the passenger service.
The siding serves Holwell ironstone mine and a sand-lime brickworks.

Thru coach    Local Passenger    Thru goods    Local goods shunting

Platform    Brickworks    Holwell Mine    Narrow gauge

Panoramas    Work

SAND LIME BRICKWORKS        in the late nineteenth century German experiments in making artificial stone resulted in a sand-lime brick process, patented in 1881. Production began there in 1894 but did not reach England until ten years later. The bricks have high strength, uniform surface, & sharp corners and can make elegant walls that may eliminate plastering and painting, thus providing economical and superior alternative to conventional clay bricks. About 30 billion sand lime bricks are sold annually.

The ingredients are silica sand or siliceous waste, water and hydrated lime, which may be purchased already slaked or as quicklime to be slaked after mixing with the other materials. Slaking takes forty minutes in a rotary slaking drum or twenty-four hours by storage in silos. Pigments may be added to yield pinks, greys, yellows, and browns as may fine flint gravel to create texture. The whole is then thoroughly mixed in a rod mill, a rotating cylinder with loose steel rods, before being fed into powerful presses forming up to eight bricks at once under pressures of up to 200 tons. Two different coloured mixes can be fed into the same mould to produce multicoloured bricks, Steel trolleys carry a bricks to the autoclaves for curing, by saturated steam at 120 to 250 pounds per square inch. Curing lasts for four to twelve hours, depending on the strength and quality required. The pressure takes an hour or two to build up and release. A coal fired boiler produces the steam for the autoclaves. At the end of the cycle the autoclave door is unbolted and the train of trolleys winched out. A weak hydrochloric acid dip removes surface scum and the bricks are ready for despatch.

Converting Tallarn Green to Neston