Adrian Barr
Member
Port Talbot Steelworks
With the current proposals* to convert Tata's Port Talbot Steelworks to an electric arc furnace (i.e. to close down the blast furnaces and produce steel by melting scrap instead), and the imminent end of coal trains to the steelworks from Cwmbargoed, I thought this would be a good time to take a detailed look at what goes on at Port Talbot. I've focused on the internal rail network, the incoming and outgoing rail traffic, and the flows and uses of the bulk materials transported. I've done my best to understand and explain the steelmaking processes, as this in turn helps to explain the "why" behind the various movements of materials in and out by rail.
*more about the proposals here: https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/sustainability/green-steel-future-uk
I know what comes in and goes out of Port Talbot via Margam Yard, but I was interested to figure out more about the internal rail system, and what the different parts of the site do, from what I could find online. An excellent Industrial Railway Society book on the Redcar/Lackenby steelworks railway (Teesside Cast Products by John Cowburn) helped to explain the general operations of a steelworks railway, which was useful to figure out operations at Port Talbot. I should mention that I've never visited Port Talbot or Margam (unless you count looking out of the window of a passing train) but a lot of information can be found online.
(N.B. None of the photos or videos linked are mine, all credit to the people that uploaded them. The steelworks site and it's internal roads are not accessible to the public, although movements can be observed from the public footpath crossing the lines between Margam Yard and the steelworks).
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Introduction
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Port Talbot is an integrated steelworks which produces hot and cold rolled steel strip (steel coil)*. The works is located in a rectangular area of land between the coast and the South wales main line, which are aligned in a direction closer to north-south than east-west at this location.
*for a quick visual comparison of different types of semi-finished steel (coils, sections, rebar, wire rod, plate) see these images from Newport Docks: https://www.wedowds.co.uk/about/gallery
The video below includes a panorama of the works as viewed from a drone above the coastline, panning from north to south. Some timestamps for context:
0:10 Gas holder for the coke ovens, with coal yard in background (southwest corner of works). The tall silos receive coal from the stockyard on conveyors, which is then sent by further conveyors to the coke ovens.
0:35 Ore Jetty (Port Talbot Docks)
0:50 Blast furnaces in centre of frame, with sinter plant to the left (with tallest chimney) and blast furnace gas holder to the right
0:58 BOS Plant and continuous casting in centre of frame. The long pale yellow building behind it, extending either side, is the hot rolling mill.
In the foreground is the Harsco slag processing facility, with the BOS plant gas holder off to the left. The cooling tower is most likely used to cool the water that is sprayed onto the steel during continuous casting; there is a power station on site, mainly using gas byproducts created during the iron and steelmaking process, but this is at the extreme northern end of the site near the blast furnaces.
1:07 Coke ovens in centre of frame
1:15 Gantry crane (for handling slab) alongside the Hot Rolled Products Mill, with BOS plant in the distance
1:36 Loading coil into wagon 8446671752 inside the Cold Rolled Products mill
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: Port Talbot - View our UK Sites
At the opposite end of the site, in the southeast corner, is the rail connection to DB Cargo's Margam yard.
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Internal Steelworks Railway
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The internal steelworks railway at Port Talbot is effectively split into two halves, with the southern half handling coils (also the lime containers and tar tanks) while the northern half is the largely self-contained "hot metal railway," and also has the maintenance shed for the works locos. The only current physical link between these two halves of the system is along the eastern edge of the site alongside the cold rolling mill. The track layout has no doubt been altered over the years to reflect operational requirements at the time. Tata locos work at either end of the site (and into DB Cargo's Margam Yard) as required; there doesn't appear to be a specific sub-fleet allocated to the hot metal traffic.
The YouTube video below gives an excellent drone view from the southern end of Margam yard, with the loco sidings and wagon repair shed (for DB owned wagons and locos) on the left, past the stop boards at the northern edge of the yard which mark the entrance to the internal steelworks railway. Here there are three dead-end sidings forming a wagon maintenance facility (for coil wagons on hire from VTG, Touax e.t.c.) and more sidings with covered coil wagons as the drone follows the internal railway north along the side of the cold rolling mill, with the main line visible on the right at certain points. The drone then rises above the cold rolling mill and rotates to show the rest of the steelworks (note the sidings full of wagons with hot rolled coil).
YouTube Channel: RailPhotoAnthology | Video Title: Margam Yard, South Wales
There are more drone views of Margam Yard and the edge of the steelworks in a video by "Destination Trains Planes" titled "Aerial Views of Margam Railway Yard & Sidings at Tata Steel in Port Talbot."
On the Tata website is a site map of the steelworks. While it doesn't show the internal rail network, it helps when looking at google maps.
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/sites/default/files/tata-steel-port-talbot-works-site-directions.pdf
The Trackmaps book for Western & Wales has a useful track plan of the internal layout, although it has various minor inaccuracies. Fortunately the imagery on google maps is more than adequate to view the track layout.
A good ground-level view to compare with the drone footage comes from a lorry "cab ride," as it leaves the lorry park marked on the left of the site map and heads along Grange Road alongside the internal railway on one side and the cold rolling mill to the left. Beyond the end of this mill the road swings left alongside the hot rolling mill (with the blue gantries alongside) before heading away from the rail line towards the main road exit. Instead of heading over the bridge which crosses the disused Port Talbot Docks branch towards the main exit, this lorry turns right and the video ends up in an area that faces the north end of the cold rolling mill, next to the road we have just driven down:
YouTube Channel: maesteg boyo | Video Title: Steel works TRAIN PORT TALBOT Wales TaTa
At the beginning of that video we also have a bonus view of 66014 heading from Port Talbot Grange Sidings towards Margam Yard with empty SSA scrap wagons which will return to Trostre for loading. While the main part of the steelworks internal railway is operated exclusively by Tata's own loco fleet, the southernmost line entering the steelworks (which 66014 is on) is used by main line locomotives to access either the "P Field" sidings (slab loading) or Port Talbot Grange sidings (coal unloading, scrap unloading, slag loading for use as aggregate).
This line to the Grange sidings can be seen veering off to the left in another drone view starting at Margam Yard. Pausing at 1:13, the drone is approaching the weighbridge by the brick building. The hopper house for coal discharge at Grange sidings can be seen in the middle distance on the left - look for the small white shed next to a taller bunker with a conveyor rising to it, formerly used to load coal for Llanwern. Pausing again at 1:48, tracks can be seen entering the hot rolling mill at the right of the picture. In the centre is a container loading pad, with lime containers loaded to the FCA wagons either side, and tanktainers of tar loaded to FKA wagons. The sidings to the left seem to be used mainly for hot rolled coil wagons. The track on the extreme left is the siding into "P field" where steel slab is loaded next to the slab yard visible there.
YouTube Channel: RailPhotoAnthology | Video Title: Flight Over Knuckle Yard Margam 12-08-23a
The return flight to Margam is on the same channel (Flight Over Knuckle Yard Margam 12-08-23b). There are more drone videos of other interesting railway locations on this channel, with surprisingly few views: https://www.youtube.com/@RailPhotoAnthology/videos
Tata Loco Fleet
(This is a quick overview of the loco fleet, the Industrial Railway Society would no doubt have more detailed and accurate information available)
The Tata loco fleet consists of a mixture of new Clayton battery-diesel hybrids, "Trojans" built around 2010, and some very old Brush Bagnall locos dating back to the mid 1950s (3 of which were completely rebuilt by Hunslet in 1993). The Trojan locos have a wikipedia page explaining their origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corus_Trojan_locomotive
These are all Bo-Bo locos, but some 6 wheel designs have been in use recently too, such as this GEC machine numbered EM1 (previously Corus DE3) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mgowing/49254801241/
Another two similar locos (261 and 268) were briefly on hire from Ed Murray circa 2019 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/116405804@N02/49893061843
There is a loco shed for the works fleet at the northeast part of the site near the blast furnaces. This photo of the shed appears to be from the early 1980s, and shows a couple of the now withdrawn Brush Bagnall 0-4-0 Diesel Electric locos (the previous photo in the photostream shows a couple of now-withdrawn Brush Bagnall Bo-Bo locos 952 and 953 inside the shed): https://www.flickr.com/photos/25747139@N05/13802991813/in/photostream/
I found a couple of websites with good photo galleries of the fleet:
https://cerikiff.smugmug.com/Trains/Featured-Galleries/Steel-Shunters/
https://www.philt.org.uk/Industrial/PT/i-3fs3Tx5
Some info about the new Claytons (from March 2020) mentions that the locos are intended to replace "more of the current, ageing 14-strong company fleet." - https://claytonequipment.co.uk/new-locomotives-for-tata-steel-pull-their-weight/
("Bay 18" seen in that photo is at the north end of the cold rolling mill; the siding now seems to be used for loco stabling. The north-south internal railway link is seen to the left, with a wagon conveying hot rolled coil for further processing in the cold rolling mill).
August 2021 update: https://claytonequipment.co.uk/fift...motive-to-join-tata-steel-port-talbots-fleet/
August 2023 update: https://claytonequipment.co.uk/clay...h-sixth-and-seventh-hybrid-cbd90-locomotives/
The mention of an existing 14-loco fleet gives an idea of the active fleet size prior to the introduction of the Claytons.
The Trojan locos apparently replaced the older 500 series 4-wheel machines. In turn, the Claytons are presumably intended to replace the Bagnall machines when the full order of 7 locos is completed. Listed below are the 13 Bo-Bo locos in service during the 2010s after the arrival of the Trojans. The fourteenth loco mentioned in the Clayton article may possibly have been the 6-wheel loco built by GEC in 1977 numbered EM1, described elsewhere as a long-term hire to cover a fire-damaged loco. With the recent deliveries of Claytons it is likely that some of the Bagnalls listed are now out of service. (N.B the "active" date just shows the most recent photo I can find of the loco in service based on a quick search).
Existing fleet (from 2010s onward):
07 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2023 (ex Bagnall 907)
08 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2019 (ex Bagnall 908)
09 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2016 (ex Bagnall 909)
901 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2022
902 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2014
903 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2023
904 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo Active 2023
905 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo Active 2022
906 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo DE Active 2021
920 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Branwen"
921 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Rhiannon"
922 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Guinevere"
923 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Aurora" - went to Barton-Under-Needwood (there in 2022)
New locos:
930 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered Spring 2019 after testing) "Fiona"
931 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered Feb 2020)
932 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered March 2020) "Betsy"
933 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered July 2021)
934 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered August 2021) "Abigail"
On order:
935 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (order announced Aug 2023)
936 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (order announced Aug 2023)
The venerable Bagnall locos look very impressive and imposing, I particularly like this shot of 905 and 903 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/msrail_photography/29479705350/
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Views from Margam Yard
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Rather conveniently, at the boundary between Margam yard and the internal steelworks railway is a public foot crossing which makes it possible to film the frequent movements between the yard and the steelworks, with Tata locos working into Margam yard, which effectively acts as the exchange sidings for the works. Judging from YouTube comments, in these safety conscious days it is not encouraged for people to loiter on the parts of the footpath which are in-between the various lines.
There's plenty of footage on YouTube; these two videos are not very recent but show a good selection of the works locos (there's another similar video from Mike Wilcock titled "Margam Yard 2000/01 British Steels 4 locos in action" which might be the 2nd part mentioned in the video below):
YouTube Channel: Rob Catt | Video Title: Margam Freight Centre
YouTube Channel: Mike Wilcock | Video Title: Corus Shunters work Margam Yard 17 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXl2mc_fYh8
Also featured in that video are the iron ore trains passing Margam on the way to Llanwern; traffic which stopped in 2001 due to the closure of steelmaking at Llanwern (which survived to process slab and coil from Port Talbot). The branch to Port Talbot docks was not part of the internal steelworks railway; it diverged from the reversible goods line (Up & Down OVE) north of Margam yard: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74165767@N05/50737054718/
The line ran along the northern edge of the steelworks to the port at the north-west corner - the trackbed is still visible on google maps satellite imagery, although the rail loading facility at the end appears to have been obliterated.
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Raw Materials
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This brings us to the raw materials used in steelmaking, and the steelmaking process itself. There is a useful summary of activities at Port Talbot on the Tata website:
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/port-talbot
I've tried to explain the main processes and raw material flows in basic terms, with an emphasis on those that involve rail movement. Although there is plenty of information online about steelmaking, it often either glosses over certain things which remain unexplained, or goes into so much detail that it's difficult to absorb a basic understanding of the key processes. I've taken information from various sources and tried to combine it into a coherent whole in my own words (I've quoted wikipedia where it phrases or explains something better than I could).
The quick introductory video below gives some good views of the Port Talbot site and its production processes. Of rail interest is the drone footage starting at 0:39 showing a Trojan loco pulling a pair of torpedo wagons. Pausing at 0:42, the tracks branching off to the left can be seen entering blast furnace #5, while the Trojan is heading for blast furnace #4. The track embedded in the road at the bottom left gives access to the loco depot mentioned earlier. The brief scene at 0:45 is inside the BOS plant, where the torpedo would be rotated to pour the molten iron into a transfer ladle inside the pit (this "transfer ladle" is the huge thing seen at 0:54; similar ladles used to carry the resulting steel at the end of the process are 18 feet tall and weigh 470 tons when fully laden). At 2:12 we see hot rolled coil being loaded into BCA / BLA wagons by a gantry crane inside the hot rolling mill. At 2:26 are the sidings full of hot rolled coil that were seen in the drone footage linked earlier. At 2:32 we teleport to Shotton works (Dee Marsh) where 08788 zooms past with coil and shunts it into the unloading bay.
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: How steel is made and coated with colour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ9gllcKioE
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Iron Ore and Sinter Plant
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Iron Ore is imported from far-flung places like China, Brazil, Australia and arrives in bulk carriers at the iron ore jetty at Port Talbot Docks, from where it moves by conveyors to the stockyards nearby, at the northwest corner of the steelworks. The jetty is seen in this photo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/schooly1/27397562878 . For a drone view of the jetty and stockyard area, including a bulk carrier at the jetty, search for "Port Talbot Steelworks by Drone Dji Mavic 2 Zoom" on YouTube.
The process of crushing iron ore creates "lump ore" of a suitable size for use in a blast furnace, together with "fines" that can either be processed and sold as pellets, or used in sinter. These fines would hinder the free movement of gases necessary to the chemical reactions if placed directly into the blast furnace. Various grades and sizes of material are blended in the stockyards and fed to the sinter plant, as described on the Tata website:
Sintering fuses the fine materials together into a porous form ideal for use in the blast furnace. The "barrel reclaimers" mentioned are designed to scrape up the blended material along the full length of the sinter bed and load it onto a conveyor. I can spot one on google maps right at the north end of the stockyards. For a better idea of what a barrel reclaimer is: https://www.metso.com/mining/material-handling/reclaimers/barrel-reclaimers/
Other giant machines in use in these stockyards (also in the coal yard further south) are "stackers" (which have a moveable boom to deposit material from conveyors) and bucket reclaimers (which do the opposite - scoop up material and load it onto conveyors).
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Coke and Coal
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The main function of coke at the steelworks is in the reduction of iron ore to iron in the blast furnace, explained in the blast furnace section below.
The coke "breeze" used in the sinter plant is fine materal (less than 10mm) that would not be suitable for use directly in the blast furnace. "Nut coke" is the next biggest size (up to 30mm), and this has been occasionally imported through Newport Docks, as seen here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/70710639@N05/51581878458/in/photostream/
The preferred size for use in a blast furnace is the larger "bell coke" (defined as 30-80mm), but the cheaper nut coke can be used in smaller quantities.
Most of the coke used at Port Talbot is produced at the Morfa coke ovens at the south west corner of the site. Coal suitable for coking (metallurgical coal) is imported through the docks from places like Australia and Brazil, but is also received in daily trainloads from Cwmbargoed to Port Talbot Grange sidings. The HTA wagons are unloaded in a hopper house linked to conveyors, with the coal then being moved to the nearby coal stockyard for blending and use in the coke ovens. Some coal is also injected directly into the blast furnace.
66019 is seen here departing Margam yard, heading to Port Talbot Grange sidings with coal - https://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_hoare/48937426458/
The production of coke is intended to remove volatile components in the coal, leaving a hard product which is almost entirely carbon. Coke production involves heating coal to high temperatures in an airless kiln. During this process various byproducts are removed, one of which is "coal tar" which can be used as a chemical feedstock. This is processed and dispatched in tank containers on FKA wagons to Middlesbrough Goods, for onward road movement to a tar distillation plant at Port Clarence -
www.portofmiddlesbrough.com
The "tar tanks" are seen here leaving Port Talbot works behind Bagnall 903 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/99466199@N05/53043231462/
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Limestone
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In addition to iron ore, sinter and coke, the other main requirement of the blast furnace is limestone. This acts as a "flux" to absorb chemical impurities and is later skimmed off in the form of slag. "Lump lime" used in the blast furnace is (according to a 2002 press release) sourced from a Hanson quarry at Batts Combe near Cheddar. The same quarry also supplies the fine crushed lime dust ("sinter dust") required for the sinter plant. These products move by road. The other type of limestone used at Port Talbot is in the form of burnt lime (for the BOS plant). Some is sent by road from Batts Combe, but the majority is supplied by rail from the lime kilns at Tata's Shapfell plant (Hardendale). Shapfell quarry itself has been exhausted, so the limestone used in the kilns at Shapfell comes from the nearby Shap Beck quarry by road, and is also sent to Hardendale by rail from Tunstead.
The burnt lime (quicklime / calcium oxide) is railed from Hardendale in covered containers on FCA wagons. The containers are offloaded by reach stackers at the container pad within the main area of rail sidings at the south end of the works, which are seen in a drone photo here (and in the earlier YouTube drone footage):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nat37670/26208421517/
A closer view of the containers used for the lime can be seen in this view of 901 hauling them into Margam yard: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22543000@N04/52086911158/
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***MAKING IRON AND STEEL***
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Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, with the iron coming from iron ore, and the carbon from coke. Ironmaking (in the blast furnace) and steelmaking (in the BOS plant) are two separate processes. The "pig iron" from the blast furnace ends up with a carbon content of around 4% because that's the natural "saturation level" for carbon in iron at blast furnace temperatures. This level of carbon is too high for steel, and is reduced to less then 1% at the BOS plant (basic oxygen steelmaking). The main phases of steelmaking are described below, although I've not tried to cover everything (such as the processes that add small quantities of material to create various different grades of steel and steel alloys).
A good YouTube video that summarizes the steelmaking processes is this one originally produced by Corus. The Blast furnaces at Port Talbot are briefly seen, and another brief clip of railway interest is in the otherwise unrelated section on the Electric Arc method of making steel from scrap - at 8:04 note the SSA scrap wagons in the scrap bay of what is probably Aldwarke works (at one time owned by Corus Engineering Steels).
YouTube Channel: Matallurgy | Video Title: Steel Manufacturing (Including Blast Furnace and BOS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otVFDo9YSM8
The steelmaking process at Port Talbot is seen up close in this video which "visits the Blast Furnaces, Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) Plant and Hot Mill to discover how iron is created from raw materials, converted into steel, cast into slabs and rolled and wound into coils."
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: Alec Steele's visit to Tata Steel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5-SADb8WnE
The overall steelmaking process is also explained clearly in this video from Arcelor Mittal. Like Port Talbot, the steelworks in the video is producing strip coil, so the processes are largely the same. Incidentally, some of the coils from Arcelor Mittal's French and Belgian plants are shipped to the UK and railed from Boston Docks to Wolverhampton Steel Terminal.
YouTube Channel: ArcelorMittal Belgium | Video Title: Discover how ArcelorMittal Belgium produces high-quality steel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHOI6MfGB0
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Blast Furnace
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The coke, iron ore, sinter and limestone flux are placed in layers within the blast furnace and, as the name suggests, blasted with extremely hot air (and some pulverized coal). This coal (and also the coke) act as fuel to create the heat required for the chemical reactions involved. However, the main function of the coke is that the heated carbon in the coke acts as a reducing agent to remove the oxygen from the iron ore, which is transformed from iron oxide to iron. The heated coke gives off carbon monoxide, which reacts with the iron ore (iron oxide) to create pure iron and carbon dioxide. In addition, a small amount of the carbon in the coke bonds with the iron, leaving "pig iron" with a relatively high carbon content.
The limestone is there to react with impurities in the iron. As Wikipedia puts it "Silica has to be removed from the pig iron. It reacts with calcium oxide (burned limestone) and forms silicates, which float to the surface of the molten pig iron as slag." The limestone in the blast furnace heats up to form burnt lime (calcium oxide) which then reacts with the silica to form a slag which is mainly calcium silicate. Once the process is finished, the furnace is "tapped" at the bottom. The slag is skimmed off and the molten pig iron is transferred to "torpedo wagons" in position beneath the blast furnance. Each torpedo can carry up to 350 tons of molten iron, and this type of wagon (lined with refractory bricks) weighs in the region of 300 tons even when empty. The torpedo is suspended between a pair of 6-wheel bogies. As I understand it, the shed-like structure at one end houses controls to rotate the torpedo for emptying (although this is probably done remotely in normal use).
Side view of torpedo wagon 41: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/6992142312
Torpedo wagons outside #4 Blast Furnace with loco 904: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/7073203467/
Blast Furnace #5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/7138223045/in/photostream/
(These photos are part of a sequence of shots taken at the steelworks in 2008)
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Hot Metal Railway
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The main function of the northern half of the internal railway system is to move torpedoes of "hot metal" (pig iron) to the BOS plant. Blast furnaces 4 and 5 are at the northern end of the works. A siding extending further north appears to be a stub of the connection to the (now demolished) blast furnace #3. Close to the junction of the lines from the two blast furnaces is a connection which gives access to the loco depot, the siding mentioned above, a building with torpedo wagons outside labelled as "mould bay store" in my Trackmaps book, and the link to the southern part of the internal railway.
Beyond this connection, the hot metal railway continues to the BOS plant. The mainly three-track layout seems generous, and is probably intended to give some redundancy so that maintenace can take place, or track faults be fixed, without disrupting the flow of hot metal. Just north of the BOS plant are two other connections. One gives access to the main engineering workshops, where three of the old 0-4-0 locos, probably the 500 series Bagnalls, can be seen on the satellite view. The other connection gives access to the Harsco facility (which also processes slag).
Blast furnaces cannot be "switched off" to temporarily halt production. In the event that the BOS Plant cannot accept a torpedo wagon due to any interruption to production, rather than let the molten iron solidify in the torpedo, they would be rotated and emptied at the "iron ponds" (at least this was the name given to a similar area at Redcar). The brittle nature of pig iron is demonstrated by the fact that, at least at Redcar, a machine was used to drop a steel ball onto the cooled iron, which would shatter it into manageable pieces to be recycled back into the steelmaking process. The siding seen by the Harsco facility on google maps appears to have a similar function.
In terms of an internal wagon fleet, the torpedo wagons seem to be the only internal-use wagons on the system (with the likely exception of a few wagons used for track maintenance, and possibly some internal-user BLAs for movements of coil between the hot and cold mill). Internal movements of slab use special machines known as Kress carriers (see the section on Continuous Casting).
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Blast Furnace Slag
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Blast furnace slag is a useful product that comes in two main types. Rapidly cooled (water quenched) slag has similar properties to Portland Cement, and can be used in the production of concrete, replacing part of the cement content. It is first ground into a sand-like substance known as GGBS (ground granulated blast furnace slag). This is not moved by rail (some is sent out by ship from Port Talbot docks), although imported GGBS (with an appearance of a whitish sandy powder) has previously been railed from Redcar to Scunthorpe for LKAB minerals: an odd case of slag being sent to a steelworks, to supplement locally sourced GGBS from Scunthorpe itself.
Harsco crush and process the slag at their facility near the BOS plant.
Air-cooled slags are denser and more crystalline, making them suitable for use as an aggregate (as a sub-base in road construction and also in road surfacing). This product is dispatched by rail in hopper wagons from Port Talbot Grange Sidings to Tarmac asphalt plants at Radlett, Elstow, Hayes and occasionally Hothfield. Freightliner haul these trains, as seen here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/153712773@N08/49727883452
There have also been some movements in MWA wagons to Park Royal - https://www.flickr.com/photos/50022anson/51963155034/
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BOS Plant (Basic Oxygen Steelmaking)
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The BOS plant receives torpedo wagons conveying up to 350 tons of molten pig iron with a relatively high carbon content, which requires further processing to convert it into steel. The torpedo is positioned beside a giant pit, where the contents are poured into a waiting charging ladle. Transfer cars [I assume on some sort of traverser arrangement] move the ladles into the main part of the BOS plant, where they are lifted by a giant gantry crane and used to "charge" the converter vessel.
Before adding the molten pig iron, the converter is first "charged" with scrap metal, which helps to control the temperature during the steel production. Some of this scrap used in the BOS plant is brought in by a weekly train of SSA wagons from the tinplate works at Trostre, which is offloaded in the Grange sidings. Effectively Tata are recycling their own offcuts from coils which were originally produced at Port Talbot. On google maps imagery, unloading is in progress in a siding beyond the coal bunker, with scrap being transferred from SSAs using a magnet into a dumper truck for movement to the scrap storage area.
Inside the converter, oxygen is used to burn off excess carbon with a special type of oxygen lance. To quote wikipedia:
As mentioned already, the BOS plant uses burnt lime to remove impurities, and the resulting slag can also be processed into aggregate. The main function of the BOS process is to lower the carbon content of the iron. Although steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, the carbon content needs to be reduced from around 4% in the pig iron to below 1% in the finished steel.
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Continuous Casting
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A similar system of ladle, transfer car and gantry crane brings the molten steel to the adjacent continous casting (concast) building. The steel is discharged from the bottom of the ladle into a "tundish" which controls the flow of steel into the casting machine. The molten steel is fed through moulds and shaped into a rectangular cross section roughly 9 inches thick and 3 to 5 feet wide. The continuous flow of metal is cut into lengths of slab. These slabs are transferred to the slab yard, and then on to the nearby hot rolling mill. Slabs are not moved internally by rail, they are carried in the jaws of giant "Kress carriers" - http://www.kresscarrier.com/CarriersSlab.html
For some pictures and footage of these beasts in action, google "kress carrier port talbot facebook." I'm not a user of Facebook, but even without logging in I was able to look at a good video by Tata of these machines in action, including a time lapse sequence of a movement from the slab yard to the hot rolling mill (after a while Facebook will not display anything until you log in). The same search result also had some good photos by Runtech (contractor) of the kress carriers in action. There's also a quick clip of a Kress Carrier on YouTube (search "Steel carrier 140ton"). You can judge the size by the cab - an adult can easily walk between the pincers that hold the slabs without needing to duck.
Although Llanwern has the capability to process slabs into coil, this line is currently mothballed (all the product sent to Llanwern for processing is in the form of coil). Some slab is despatched by rail from Port Talbot to Newport Docks, loaded onto BTA wagons. These are BDA-type wagons converted back from pipe carriers by having the full-height stanchions removed, leaving a central pair of half-height stanchions . These wagons are loaded at the "P Field" siding at the south end of the works, which is shunted by main line locos.
Slab can also sometimes be imported through Newport Docks and sent to Port Talbot, in which case it may well also be offloaded at the P Field sidings and transferred to the slab yards - search "66080 6F07 Margam T C Newport Docks" on YouTube for some footage of the BTA wagon set used on these flows.
I'm not sure how the wagons are loaded, but with fixed stanchions they are most likely loaded by some sort of reach stacker with either a grapple or magnet attachment, like this -
https://extranet.hysterdealer.eu/HysterSteelApplications/content/slab-handling/grapple.html
Reach stackers can be fitted with interchangeable attachments, so it's possible that the reach stackers used at the container pad (to load and unload lime containers and tar tanks) are also used to load slab to wagons in the nearby P Field siding. Slab weights can vary from 15 to 25 tons, with 3 or 4 usually loaded on a wagon depending on the type (the BTAs usually carry 3).
--------------------
Hot Rolling Mill
--------------------
The majority of slab produced at Port Talbot ends up in the hot rolling mill. Kress carriers bring the slabs from the slab yard, and the hot mill has a gantry crane along the outside of the building running above another small slab yard. The gantry crane presumably feeds the slabs into the mill itself.
Slab is reheated to around 1250°C and the thickness gradually reduced through a series of mill stands - https://www.flickr.com/photos/130498442@N08/17169606720/in/photostream/
The hot rolled coil is loaded to wagons by an overhead gantry crane, while still at a high temperature. For this reason "open" coil wagons are used, as the heat would otherwise cause problems with covered wagons, such as jamming the telescopic hood on BYA wagons as the metal expands, or melting the plastic on the IHA curtain-sided types. Covered wagons are occasionally used on flows of hot rolled coil (for instance to Hartlepool when there were problems with the BLA/BCA/BZA types) but the coil would need to cool before loading. A video linked earlier shows hot rolled coil being loaded to wagons (2:12 in "How steel is made and coated with colour")
Some of the hot rolled coil is for internal movement to the cold rolling mill. In the short video below, 904 and another Bagnall top and tail 5 BLA wagons of hot rolled coil with another Bagnall loco northwards alongside the cold rolling mill, at the point where it crosses Grange Road:
YouTube Channel: maesteg boyo | Video Title: Tata Steelworks Train Port Talbot South Wales coil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7oGY7OqLFY
These BLA wagons appear to have large blue squares on the sides, which may indicate they are for internal use only. I think these will enter the cold rolling mill at the extreme north end (bay 21), where on google maps satellite imagery a pair of rails embedded in concrete can be seen entering the mill. On the lorry cab ride video linked earlier, this siding can be seen with a little red barrier right next to the internal road, and again at the end of the video where the bay number is visible. An oddity of this internal flow of hot rolled coil to the cold rolling mill is that the track layout must entail a reversal in Margam yard.
Rail-served destinations for hot rolled coil from Port Talbot are Corby (for making into tubes), Hartlepool (for making into pipes), Trostre (for making into tinplate) and Llanwern (for cold rolling and further processing). Coil weights vary within an approximate range of 15 to 30 tons each, typically 3 or 4 coils per wagon.
-----------------------
Cold Rolling Mill
-----------------------
The incoming hot rolled coils are processed at room temperature (cold rolled). They are first "pickled" on a pickle line, which uses heated acid to remove scale (iron oxide / rust). The coils are then "reduced" (in thickness) by rolling them through mill stands. The cold rolling process makes the steel more brittle. For this reason it is "annealed" which involves heating the steel to high temperature which allows the crystal lattice structure of the steel to reform (recystallize) as it cools again, regaining the strength of the steel while making it easier to work with (more ductile).
This type of cold-rolled steel is used for things like car body panels, domestic appliances and other manufactured products. A further process often carried out with cold rolled coil is galvanizing, which involves running it through a bath of molten zinc to provide a corrosion-resistant coating. A typical example of galvanized steel from cold rolled coil would be the ubiquitous crash barriers at the side of roads. However, according to https://www.coatedsteelhistory.com/ the hot-dip galvanizing line at Port Talbot was closed and sold to India circa 2000, soon after British Steel became Corus. Tata have galvanizing plants at Llanwern and Shotton, which partly explains the large volumes of coil moved to Llanwern from Port Talbot.
The cold rolled coils are loaded into covered wagons to protect them from moisture. I suspect the despatch bay is the siding that exits the side of the cold rolling mill not far from the level crossing over Grange Road, next to the north end of a small car park. There is another bay (bay 14) exiting the mill just south of here, but the track to it has been disconnected. A video of coil being loaded inside the cold rolling mill was linked earlier (1:36 in "Port Talbot - View our UK Sites").
Loco 08 brings covered coil wagons from the sidings beside the cold rolling mill: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nat37670/9256827698/
Cold rolled coil (sometimes referred to as cold reduced coil) is sent by rail in trainloads to Newport Docks (for export), Llanwern (for galvanizing and other processing such as cutting into sheets), Round Oak (for road movement to Tata's Wednesfield "Steelpark" facility)*, Shotton (for galvanizing and other specialist coatings including coloured steel), and both Hull and Immingham Docks (for export). The Hull Docks traffic is usually combined with Immingham traffic and detached at Rotherham. Hull Docks both imports and exports coils, but the Tata traffic can be distinguished by using a variety of different wagons (mostly IHAs) compared to the import traffic for Wolverhampton entirely in BYAs.
*As an example of processing done at Tata's Steelpark, the frames for the Clayton locos used steel supplied from the Plate Profiling centre there.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/railways-illustrated/20201201/282239488222683
Trains calling at Llanwern will often drop off hot or cold rolled coil wagons destined for Llanwern, and/or pick up further cold rolled coil traffic for the same destinations.
======================
List of rail flows via Margam Yard:
======================
Headcodes quoted are outward (from Margam) and return
HRC = hot rolled coil (open wagons)
CRC = cold rolled coil (covered wagons)
--------------------------------------
Corby - HRC to Tata's Corby Tube works
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/corby
Scrap (in SSA wagons, usually 5 at a time) has also been conveyed to Port Talbot attached to the Corby coil trains - I believe this traffic was a result of redevelopment at Corby to consolidate several buildings into a single computer-controlled warehouse.
6M94/6V92
------------------------
Hartlepool - HRC to Tata's 20" pipe mill
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/hartlepool
6E30 (direct to Hartlepool)
6N27 to Tees Yard, then 6V02 (does not call at Llanwern) or 6V03 (via Llanwern) back to Margam
------------------------
Middlesbrough Goods, AV Dawson
https://www.automotivelogistics.med...eel-supply-to-nissan-sunderland/13592.article
(CRC for warehouse supplying Nissan Sunderland, onward movement by road)
(Tar Tank Containers offloaded for onward road transport to tar distillation plant at Industrial Chemicals Limited, Port Clarence)
6E47 to Middlesbrough Goods
6N52 to Tees Yard, then 6V02 (does not call at Llanwern) or 6V03 (via Llanwern) back to Margam
---------------------------------------------
Llanwern (Tata - further processing of coils e.g. cold rolling, galvanising, cutting into strip)
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/llanwern
Various headcodes as required, number of trains varies from week to week, examples below
6H25/6H26
6H27/6B04
6H31/6H32
------------------------------
Trostre (HRC to Tata tinplate works)
"Trostre Works manufactures approximately 400,000 tonnes per annum of tin, chrome and ‘polymer’ coated steels for the packaging industries."
Scrap is also conveyed from Trostre to Port Talbot in a weekly train of SSA wagons, offloaded in the Grange Sidings.
6B26/6B20
-------------------------
Round Oak (warehouse supplying Tata's Wolverhampton Steelpark by road)
6M11/6V05
6M41/6V61
-------------------------
Newport Docks (mostly coil exports, also some slab exports)
Number of daily trains varies, examples below. Some trains run via Llanwern, others run round at AD Junction (Courtybella).
6B01/6B10
6F07/6F09
-------------------------
Swindon (CRC to Preymesser warehouse, for road delivery to the BMW mini plant at Cowley)
6B51/6B52
------------------------
Hardendale (Tata Shapfell - Lime kilns - lime despatched to Port Talbot in containers on FCA wagons)
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/about-us/sites-and-facilities/shapfell-lime
6M73/6V71
-------------------------
Cwmbargoed (Metallurgical grade coal for discharge at Port Talbot Grange Sidings)
4C83/6C83
-------------------------
Immingham - Nordic Terminal (coil exports)
6Z20/6V19
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Hull Docks (coil exports)
Uses Immingham train 6Z20/6V19 with traffic detached/attached at Rotherham for 6D94/6J94 Hull trip
-------------------------
Dee Marsh (CRC to Tata's Shotton Works - galvanising and coating lines)
"manufactures metallic coated and pre-finished steel for building envelope, domestic and consumer applications."
6M75/6V75 (GBRF operated)
-------------------------
Processed Slag (loaded at Grange Sidings for use as aggregate in road surfacing)
Freightliner trains using bogie aggregate hoppers run to Tarmac asphalt plants at Radlett, Elstow, Hayes and occasionally Hothfield.
These movements (to and from Port Talbot Grange Sidings) are often staged at East Usk.
(Headcodes not covered here as I've not looked at the workings in detail recently)
----------
THE END
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Any comments / questions / corrections / explanations / updates / discussion or further info are welcome!
I put this together mainly for my own interest (to understand the steelmaking process better) but I hope others find it interesting too.
With the current proposals* to convert Tata's Port Talbot Steelworks to an electric arc furnace (i.e. to close down the blast furnaces and produce steel by melting scrap instead), and the imminent end of coal trains to the steelworks from Cwmbargoed, I thought this would be a good time to take a detailed look at what goes on at Port Talbot. I've focused on the internal rail network, the incoming and outgoing rail traffic, and the flows and uses of the bulk materials transported. I've done my best to understand and explain the steelmaking processes, as this in turn helps to explain the "why" behind the various movements of materials in and out by rail.
*more about the proposals here: https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/sustainability/green-steel-future-uk
I know what comes in and goes out of Port Talbot via Margam Yard, but I was interested to figure out more about the internal rail system, and what the different parts of the site do, from what I could find online. An excellent Industrial Railway Society book on the Redcar/Lackenby steelworks railway (Teesside Cast Products by John Cowburn) helped to explain the general operations of a steelworks railway, which was useful to figure out operations at Port Talbot. I should mention that I've never visited Port Talbot or Margam (unless you count looking out of the window of a passing train) but a lot of information can be found online.
(N.B. None of the photos or videos linked are mine, all credit to the people that uploaded them. The steelworks site and it's internal roads are not accessible to the public, although movements can be observed from the public footpath crossing the lines between Margam Yard and the steelworks).
---------------
Introduction
---------------
Port Talbot is an integrated steelworks which produces hot and cold rolled steel strip (steel coil)*. The works is located in a rectangular area of land between the coast and the South wales main line, which are aligned in a direction closer to north-south than east-west at this location.
*for a quick visual comparison of different types of semi-finished steel (coils, sections, rebar, wire rod, plate) see these images from Newport Docks: https://www.wedowds.co.uk/about/gallery
The video below includes a panorama of the works as viewed from a drone above the coastline, panning from north to south. Some timestamps for context:
0:10 Gas holder for the coke ovens, with coal yard in background (southwest corner of works). The tall silos receive coal from the stockyard on conveyors, which is then sent by further conveyors to the coke ovens.
0:35 Ore Jetty (Port Talbot Docks)
0:50 Blast furnaces in centre of frame, with sinter plant to the left (with tallest chimney) and blast furnace gas holder to the right
0:58 BOS Plant and continuous casting in centre of frame. The long pale yellow building behind it, extending either side, is the hot rolling mill.
In the foreground is the Harsco slag processing facility, with the BOS plant gas holder off to the left. The cooling tower is most likely used to cool the water that is sprayed onto the steel during continuous casting; there is a power station on site, mainly using gas byproducts created during the iron and steelmaking process, but this is at the extreme northern end of the site near the blast furnaces.
1:07 Coke ovens in centre of frame
1:15 Gantry crane (for handling slab) alongside the Hot Rolled Products Mill, with BOS plant in the distance
1:36 Loading coil into wagon 8446671752 inside the Cold Rolled Products mill
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: Port Talbot - View our UK Sites
At the opposite end of the site, in the southeast corner, is the rail connection to DB Cargo's Margam yard.
-------------------------------
Internal Steelworks Railway
-------------------------------
The internal steelworks railway at Port Talbot is effectively split into two halves, with the southern half handling coils (also the lime containers and tar tanks) while the northern half is the largely self-contained "hot metal railway," and also has the maintenance shed for the works locos. The only current physical link between these two halves of the system is along the eastern edge of the site alongside the cold rolling mill. The track layout has no doubt been altered over the years to reflect operational requirements at the time. Tata locos work at either end of the site (and into DB Cargo's Margam Yard) as required; there doesn't appear to be a specific sub-fleet allocated to the hot metal traffic.
The YouTube video below gives an excellent drone view from the southern end of Margam yard, with the loco sidings and wagon repair shed (for DB owned wagons and locos) on the left, past the stop boards at the northern edge of the yard which mark the entrance to the internal steelworks railway. Here there are three dead-end sidings forming a wagon maintenance facility (for coil wagons on hire from VTG, Touax e.t.c.) and more sidings with covered coil wagons as the drone follows the internal railway north along the side of the cold rolling mill, with the main line visible on the right at certain points. The drone then rises above the cold rolling mill and rotates to show the rest of the steelworks (note the sidings full of wagons with hot rolled coil).
YouTube Channel: RailPhotoAnthology | Video Title: Margam Yard, South Wales
There are more drone views of Margam Yard and the edge of the steelworks in a video by "Destination Trains Planes" titled "Aerial Views of Margam Railway Yard & Sidings at Tata Steel in Port Talbot."
On the Tata website is a site map of the steelworks. While it doesn't show the internal rail network, it helps when looking at google maps.
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/sites/default/files/tata-steel-port-talbot-works-site-directions.pdf
The Trackmaps book for Western & Wales has a useful track plan of the internal layout, although it has various minor inaccuracies. Fortunately the imagery on google maps is more than adequate to view the track layout.
A good ground-level view to compare with the drone footage comes from a lorry "cab ride," as it leaves the lorry park marked on the left of the site map and heads along Grange Road alongside the internal railway on one side and the cold rolling mill to the left. Beyond the end of this mill the road swings left alongside the hot rolling mill (with the blue gantries alongside) before heading away from the rail line towards the main road exit. Instead of heading over the bridge which crosses the disused Port Talbot Docks branch towards the main exit, this lorry turns right and the video ends up in an area that faces the north end of the cold rolling mill, next to the road we have just driven down:
YouTube Channel: maesteg boyo | Video Title: Steel works TRAIN PORT TALBOT Wales TaTa
At the beginning of that video we also have a bonus view of 66014 heading from Port Talbot Grange Sidings towards Margam Yard with empty SSA scrap wagons which will return to Trostre for loading. While the main part of the steelworks internal railway is operated exclusively by Tata's own loco fleet, the southernmost line entering the steelworks (which 66014 is on) is used by main line locomotives to access either the "P Field" sidings (slab loading) or Port Talbot Grange sidings (coal unloading, scrap unloading, slag loading for use as aggregate).
This line to the Grange sidings can be seen veering off to the left in another drone view starting at Margam Yard. Pausing at 1:13, the drone is approaching the weighbridge by the brick building. The hopper house for coal discharge at Grange sidings can be seen in the middle distance on the left - look for the small white shed next to a taller bunker with a conveyor rising to it, formerly used to load coal for Llanwern. Pausing again at 1:48, tracks can be seen entering the hot rolling mill at the right of the picture. In the centre is a container loading pad, with lime containers loaded to the FCA wagons either side, and tanktainers of tar loaded to FKA wagons. The sidings to the left seem to be used mainly for hot rolled coil wagons. The track on the extreme left is the siding into "P field" where steel slab is loaded next to the slab yard visible there.
YouTube Channel: RailPhotoAnthology | Video Title: Flight Over Knuckle Yard Margam 12-08-23a
The return flight to Margam is on the same channel (Flight Over Knuckle Yard Margam 12-08-23b). There are more drone videos of other interesting railway locations on this channel, with surprisingly few views: https://www.youtube.com/@RailPhotoAnthology/videos
Tata Loco Fleet
(This is a quick overview of the loco fleet, the Industrial Railway Society would no doubt have more detailed and accurate information available)
The Tata loco fleet consists of a mixture of new Clayton battery-diesel hybrids, "Trojans" built around 2010, and some very old Brush Bagnall locos dating back to the mid 1950s (3 of which were completely rebuilt by Hunslet in 1993). The Trojan locos have a wikipedia page explaining their origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corus_Trojan_locomotive
These are all Bo-Bo locos, but some 6 wheel designs have been in use recently too, such as this GEC machine numbered EM1 (previously Corus DE3) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mgowing/49254801241/
Another two similar locos (261 and 268) were briefly on hire from Ed Murray circa 2019 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/116405804@N02/49893061843
There is a loco shed for the works fleet at the northeast part of the site near the blast furnaces. This photo of the shed appears to be from the early 1980s, and shows a couple of the now withdrawn Brush Bagnall 0-4-0 Diesel Electric locos (the previous photo in the photostream shows a couple of now-withdrawn Brush Bagnall Bo-Bo locos 952 and 953 inside the shed): https://www.flickr.com/photos/25747139@N05/13802991813/in/photostream/
I found a couple of websites with good photo galleries of the fleet:
https://cerikiff.smugmug.com/Trains/Featured-Galleries/Steel-Shunters/
https://www.philt.org.uk/Industrial/PT/i-3fs3Tx5
Some info about the new Claytons (from March 2020) mentions that the locos are intended to replace "more of the current, ageing 14-strong company fleet." - https://claytonequipment.co.uk/new-locomotives-for-tata-steel-pull-their-weight/
("Bay 18" seen in that photo is at the north end of the cold rolling mill; the siding now seems to be used for loco stabling. The north-south internal railway link is seen to the left, with a wagon conveying hot rolled coil for further processing in the cold rolling mill).
August 2021 update: https://claytonequipment.co.uk/fift...motive-to-join-tata-steel-port-talbots-fleet/
August 2023 update: https://claytonequipment.co.uk/clay...h-sixth-and-seventh-hybrid-cbd90-locomotives/
The mention of an existing 14-loco fleet gives an idea of the active fleet size prior to the introduction of the Claytons.
The Trojan locos apparently replaced the older 500 series 4-wheel machines. In turn, the Claytons are presumably intended to replace the Bagnall machines when the full order of 7 locos is completed. Listed below are the 13 Bo-Bo locos in service during the 2010s after the arrival of the Trojans. The fourteenth loco mentioned in the Clayton article may possibly have been the 6-wheel loco built by GEC in 1977 numbered EM1, described elsewhere as a long-term hire to cover a fire-damaged loco. With the recent deliveries of Claytons it is likely that some of the Bagnalls listed are now out of service. (N.B the "active" date just shows the most recent photo I can find of the loco in service based on a quick search).
Existing fleet (from 2010s onward):
07 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2023 (ex Bagnall 907)
08 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2019 (ex Bagnall 908)
09 Hunslet 1993 Bo-Bo Rebuild - Active 2016 (ex Bagnall 909)
901 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2022
902 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2014
903 Brush Bagnall 1955 Bo-Bo Active 2023
904 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo Active 2023
905 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo Active 2022
906 Brush Bagnall 1957 Bo-Bo DE Active 2021
920 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Branwen"
921 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Rhiannon"
922 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Guinevere"
923 CNES Trojan 2010 Bo-BoDH "Aurora" - went to Barton-Under-Needwood (there in 2022)
New locos:
930 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered Spring 2019 after testing) "Fiona"
931 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered Feb 2020)
932 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered March 2020) "Betsy"
933 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered July 2021)
934 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (delivered August 2021) "Abigail"
On order:
935 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (order announced Aug 2023)
936 Clayton Bo-Bo CBD90 Hybrid Diesel (order announced Aug 2023)
The venerable Bagnall locos look very impressive and imposing, I particularly like this shot of 905 and 903 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/msrail_photography/29479705350/
----------------------------
Views from Margam Yard
----------------------------
Rather conveniently, at the boundary between Margam yard and the internal steelworks railway is a public foot crossing which makes it possible to film the frequent movements between the yard and the steelworks, with Tata locos working into Margam yard, which effectively acts as the exchange sidings for the works. Judging from YouTube comments, in these safety conscious days it is not encouraged for people to loiter on the parts of the footpath which are in-between the various lines.
There's plenty of footage on YouTube; these two videos are not very recent but show a good selection of the works locos (there's another similar video from Mike Wilcock titled "Margam Yard 2000/01 British Steels 4 locos in action" which might be the 2nd part mentioned in the video below):
YouTube Channel: Rob Catt | Video Title: Margam Freight Centre
YouTube Channel: Mike Wilcock | Video Title: Corus Shunters work Margam Yard 17 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXl2mc_fYh8
Also featured in that video are the iron ore trains passing Margam on the way to Llanwern; traffic which stopped in 2001 due to the closure of steelmaking at Llanwern (which survived to process slab and coil from Port Talbot). The branch to Port Talbot docks was not part of the internal steelworks railway; it diverged from the reversible goods line (Up & Down OVE) north of Margam yard: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74165767@N05/50737054718/
The line ran along the northern edge of the steelworks to the port at the north-west corner - the trackbed is still visible on google maps satellite imagery, although the rail loading facility at the end appears to have been obliterated.
----------------
Raw Materials
----------------
This brings us to the raw materials used in steelmaking, and the steelmaking process itself. There is a useful summary of activities at Port Talbot on the Tata website:
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/port-talbot
I've tried to explain the main processes and raw material flows in basic terms, with an emphasis on those that involve rail movement. Although there is plenty of information online about steelmaking, it often either glosses over certain things which remain unexplained, or goes into so much detail that it's difficult to absorb a basic understanding of the key processes. I've taken information from various sources and tried to combine it into a coherent whole in my own words (I've quoted wikipedia where it phrases or explains something better than I could).
The quick introductory video below gives some good views of the Port Talbot site and its production processes. Of rail interest is the drone footage starting at 0:39 showing a Trojan loco pulling a pair of torpedo wagons. Pausing at 0:42, the tracks branching off to the left can be seen entering blast furnace #5, while the Trojan is heading for blast furnace #4. The track embedded in the road at the bottom left gives access to the loco depot mentioned earlier. The brief scene at 0:45 is inside the BOS plant, where the torpedo would be rotated to pour the molten iron into a transfer ladle inside the pit (this "transfer ladle" is the huge thing seen at 0:54; similar ladles used to carry the resulting steel at the end of the process are 18 feet tall and weigh 470 tons when fully laden). At 2:12 we see hot rolled coil being loaded into BCA / BLA wagons by a gantry crane inside the hot rolling mill. At 2:26 are the sidings full of hot rolled coil that were seen in the drone footage linked earlier. At 2:32 we teleport to Shotton works (Dee Marsh) where 08788 zooms past with coil and shunts it into the unloading bay.
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: How steel is made and coated with colour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ9gllcKioE
-------------------------
Iron Ore and Sinter Plant
-------------------------
Iron Ore is imported from far-flung places like China, Brazil, Australia and arrives in bulk carriers at the iron ore jetty at Port Talbot Docks, from where it moves by conveyors to the stockyards nearby, at the northwest corner of the steelworks. The jetty is seen in this photo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/schooly1/27397562878 . For a drone view of the jetty and stockyard area, including a bulk carrier at the jetty, search for "Port Talbot Steelworks by Drone Dji Mavic 2 Zoom" on YouTube.
The process of crushing iron ore creates "lump ore" of a suitable size for use in a blast furnace, together with "fines" that can either be processed and sold as pellets, or used in sinter. These fines would hinder the free movement of gases necessary to the chemical reactions if placed directly into the blast furnace. Various grades and sizes of material are blended in the stockyards and fed to the sinter plant, as described on the Tata website:
Sintering fuses the fine materials together into a porous form ideal for use in the blast furnace. The "barrel reclaimers" mentioned are designed to scrape up the blended material along the full length of the sinter bed and load it onto a conveyor. I can spot one on google maps right at the north end of the stockyards. For a better idea of what a barrel reclaimer is: https://www.metso.com/mining/material-handling/reclaimers/barrel-reclaimers/
Other giant machines in use in these stockyards (also in the coal yard further south) are "stackers" (which have a moveable boom to deposit material from conveyors) and bucket reclaimers (which do the opposite - scoop up material and load it onto conveyors).
-------------
Coke and Coal
-------------
The main function of coke at the steelworks is in the reduction of iron ore to iron in the blast furnace, explained in the blast furnace section below.
The coke "breeze" used in the sinter plant is fine materal (less than 10mm) that would not be suitable for use directly in the blast furnace. "Nut coke" is the next biggest size (up to 30mm), and this has been occasionally imported through Newport Docks, as seen here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/70710639@N05/51581878458/in/photostream/
The preferred size for use in a blast furnace is the larger "bell coke" (defined as 30-80mm), but the cheaper nut coke can be used in smaller quantities.
Most of the coke used at Port Talbot is produced at the Morfa coke ovens at the south west corner of the site. Coal suitable for coking (metallurgical coal) is imported through the docks from places like Australia and Brazil, but is also received in daily trainloads from Cwmbargoed to Port Talbot Grange sidings. The HTA wagons are unloaded in a hopper house linked to conveyors, with the coal then being moved to the nearby coal stockyard for blending and use in the coke ovens. Some coal is also injected directly into the blast furnace.
66019 is seen here departing Margam yard, heading to Port Talbot Grange sidings with coal - https://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_hoare/48937426458/
The production of coke is intended to remove volatile components in the coal, leaving a hard product which is almost entirely carbon. Coke production involves heating coal to high temperatures in an airless kiln. During this process various byproducts are removed, one of which is "coal tar" which can be used as a chemical feedstock. This is processed and dispatched in tank containers on FKA wagons to Middlesbrough Goods, for onward road movement to a tar distillation plant at Port Clarence -
New tar contract is first for AV Dawson's £2.6 million rail hub
Freight logistics firm AV Dawson is celebrating after securing its first contract to move containers by rail since work on its intermodal freight facility was completed.
www.portofmiddlesbrough.com
The "tar tanks" are seen here leaving Port Talbot works behind Bagnall 903 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/99466199@N05/53043231462/
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Limestone
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In addition to iron ore, sinter and coke, the other main requirement of the blast furnace is limestone. This acts as a "flux" to absorb chemical impurities and is later skimmed off in the form of slag. "Lump lime" used in the blast furnace is (according to a 2002 press release) sourced from a Hanson quarry at Batts Combe near Cheddar. The same quarry also supplies the fine crushed lime dust ("sinter dust") required for the sinter plant. These products move by road. The other type of limestone used at Port Talbot is in the form of burnt lime (for the BOS plant). Some is sent by road from Batts Combe, but the majority is supplied by rail from the lime kilns at Tata's Shapfell plant (Hardendale). Shapfell quarry itself has been exhausted, so the limestone used in the kilns at Shapfell comes from the nearby Shap Beck quarry by road, and is also sent to Hardendale by rail from Tunstead.
The burnt lime (quicklime / calcium oxide) is railed from Hardendale in covered containers on FCA wagons. The containers are offloaded by reach stackers at the container pad within the main area of rail sidings at the south end of the works, which are seen in a drone photo here (and in the earlier YouTube drone footage):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nat37670/26208421517/
A closer view of the containers used for the lime can be seen in this view of 901 hauling them into Margam yard: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22543000@N04/52086911158/
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***MAKING IRON AND STEEL***
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Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, with the iron coming from iron ore, and the carbon from coke. Ironmaking (in the blast furnace) and steelmaking (in the BOS plant) are two separate processes. The "pig iron" from the blast furnace ends up with a carbon content of around 4% because that's the natural "saturation level" for carbon in iron at blast furnace temperatures. This level of carbon is too high for steel, and is reduced to less then 1% at the BOS plant (basic oxygen steelmaking). The main phases of steelmaking are described below, although I've not tried to cover everything (such as the processes that add small quantities of material to create various different grades of steel and steel alloys).
A good YouTube video that summarizes the steelmaking processes is this one originally produced by Corus. The Blast furnaces at Port Talbot are briefly seen, and another brief clip of railway interest is in the otherwise unrelated section on the Electric Arc method of making steel from scrap - at 8:04 note the SSA scrap wagons in the scrap bay of what is probably Aldwarke works (at one time owned by Corus Engineering Steels).
YouTube Channel: Matallurgy | Video Title: Steel Manufacturing (Including Blast Furnace and BOS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otVFDo9YSM8
The steelmaking process at Port Talbot is seen up close in this video which "visits the Blast Furnaces, Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) Plant and Hot Mill to discover how iron is created from raw materials, converted into steel, cast into slabs and rolled and wound into coils."
YouTube Channel: Tata Steel UK | Video Title: Alec Steele's visit to Tata Steel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5-SADb8WnE
The overall steelmaking process is also explained clearly in this video from Arcelor Mittal. Like Port Talbot, the steelworks in the video is producing strip coil, so the processes are largely the same. Incidentally, some of the coils from Arcelor Mittal's French and Belgian plants are shipped to the UK and railed from Boston Docks to Wolverhampton Steel Terminal.
YouTube Channel: ArcelorMittal Belgium | Video Title: Discover how ArcelorMittal Belgium produces high-quality steel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHOI6MfGB0
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Blast Furnace
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The coke, iron ore, sinter and limestone flux are placed in layers within the blast furnace and, as the name suggests, blasted with extremely hot air (and some pulverized coal). This coal (and also the coke) act as fuel to create the heat required for the chemical reactions involved. However, the main function of the coke is that the heated carbon in the coke acts as a reducing agent to remove the oxygen from the iron ore, which is transformed from iron oxide to iron. The heated coke gives off carbon monoxide, which reacts with the iron ore (iron oxide) to create pure iron and carbon dioxide. In addition, a small amount of the carbon in the coke bonds with the iron, leaving "pig iron" with a relatively high carbon content.
The limestone is there to react with impurities in the iron. As Wikipedia puts it "Silica has to be removed from the pig iron. It reacts with calcium oxide (burned limestone) and forms silicates, which float to the surface of the molten pig iron as slag." The limestone in the blast furnace heats up to form burnt lime (calcium oxide) which then reacts with the silica to form a slag which is mainly calcium silicate. Once the process is finished, the furnace is "tapped" at the bottom. The slag is skimmed off and the molten pig iron is transferred to "torpedo wagons" in position beneath the blast furnance. Each torpedo can carry up to 350 tons of molten iron, and this type of wagon (lined with refractory bricks) weighs in the region of 300 tons even when empty. The torpedo is suspended between a pair of 6-wheel bogies. As I understand it, the shed-like structure at one end houses controls to rotate the torpedo for emptying (although this is probably done remotely in normal use).
Side view of torpedo wagon 41: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/6992142312
Torpedo wagons outside #4 Blast Furnace with loco 904: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/7073203467/
Blast Furnace #5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deltic_baggie/7138223045/in/photostream/
(These photos are part of a sequence of shots taken at the steelworks in 2008)
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Hot Metal Railway
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The main function of the northern half of the internal railway system is to move torpedoes of "hot metal" (pig iron) to the BOS plant. Blast furnaces 4 and 5 are at the northern end of the works. A siding extending further north appears to be a stub of the connection to the (now demolished) blast furnace #3. Close to the junction of the lines from the two blast furnaces is a connection which gives access to the loco depot, the siding mentioned above, a building with torpedo wagons outside labelled as "mould bay store" in my Trackmaps book, and the link to the southern part of the internal railway.
Beyond this connection, the hot metal railway continues to the BOS plant. The mainly three-track layout seems generous, and is probably intended to give some redundancy so that maintenace can take place, or track faults be fixed, without disrupting the flow of hot metal. Just north of the BOS plant are two other connections. One gives access to the main engineering workshops, where three of the old 0-4-0 locos, probably the 500 series Bagnalls, can be seen on the satellite view. The other connection gives access to the Harsco facility (which also processes slag).
Blast furnaces cannot be "switched off" to temporarily halt production. In the event that the BOS Plant cannot accept a torpedo wagon due to any interruption to production, rather than let the molten iron solidify in the torpedo, they would be rotated and emptied at the "iron ponds" (at least this was the name given to a similar area at Redcar). The brittle nature of pig iron is demonstrated by the fact that, at least at Redcar, a machine was used to drop a steel ball onto the cooled iron, which would shatter it into manageable pieces to be recycled back into the steelmaking process. The siding seen by the Harsco facility on google maps appears to have a similar function.
In terms of an internal wagon fleet, the torpedo wagons seem to be the only internal-use wagons on the system (with the likely exception of a few wagons used for track maintenance, and possibly some internal-user BLAs for movements of coil between the hot and cold mill). Internal movements of slab use special machines known as Kress carriers (see the section on Continuous Casting).
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Blast Furnace Slag
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Blast furnace slag is a useful product that comes in two main types. Rapidly cooled (water quenched) slag has similar properties to Portland Cement, and can be used in the production of concrete, replacing part of the cement content. It is first ground into a sand-like substance known as GGBS (ground granulated blast furnace slag). This is not moved by rail (some is sent out by ship from Port Talbot docks), although imported GGBS (with an appearance of a whitish sandy powder) has previously been railed from Redcar to Scunthorpe for LKAB minerals: an odd case of slag being sent to a steelworks, to supplement locally sourced GGBS from Scunthorpe itself.
Harsco crush and process the slag at their facility near the BOS plant.
Air-cooled slags are denser and more crystalline, making them suitable for use as an aggregate (as a sub-base in road construction and also in road surfacing). This product is dispatched by rail in hopper wagons from Port Talbot Grange Sidings to Tarmac asphalt plants at Radlett, Elstow, Hayes and occasionally Hothfield. Freightliner haul these trains, as seen here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/153712773@N08/49727883452
There have also been some movements in MWA wagons to Park Royal - https://www.flickr.com/photos/50022anson/51963155034/
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BOS Plant (Basic Oxygen Steelmaking)
--------------------------------------------
The BOS plant receives torpedo wagons conveying up to 350 tons of molten pig iron with a relatively high carbon content, which requires further processing to convert it into steel. The torpedo is positioned beside a giant pit, where the contents are poured into a waiting charging ladle. Transfer cars [I assume on some sort of traverser arrangement] move the ladles into the main part of the BOS plant, where they are lifted by a giant gantry crane and used to "charge" the converter vessel.
Before adding the molten pig iron, the converter is first "charged" with scrap metal, which helps to control the temperature during the steel production. Some of this scrap used in the BOS plant is brought in by a weekly train of SSA wagons from the tinplate works at Trostre, which is offloaded in the Grange sidings. Effectively Tata are recycling their own offcuts from coils which were originally produced at Port Talbot. On google maps imagery, unloading is in progress in a siding beyond the coal bunker, with scrap being transferred from SSAs using a magnet into a dumper truck for movement to the scrap storage area.
Inside the converter, oxygen is used to burn off excess carbon with a special type of oxygen lance. To quote wikipedia:
As mentioned already, the BOS plant uses burnt lime to remove impurities, and the resulting slag can also be processed into aggregate. The main function of the BOS process is to lower the carbon content of the iron. Although steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, the carbon content needs to be reduced from around 4% in the pig iron to below 1% in the finished steel.
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Continuous Casting
---------------------------
A similar system of ladle, transfer car and gantry crane brings the molten steel to the adjacent continous casting (concast) building. The steel is discharged from the bottom of the ladle into a "tundish" which controls the flow of steel into the casting machine. The molten steel is fed through moulds and shaped into a rectangular cross section roughly 9 inches thick and 3 to 5 feet wide. The continuous flow of metal is cut into lengths of slab. These slabs are transferred to the slab yard, and then on to the nearby hot rolling mill. Slabs are not moved internally by rail, they are carried in the jaws of giant "Kress carriers" - http://www.kresscarrier.com/CarriersSlab.html
For some pictures and footage of these beasts in action, google "kress carrier port talbot facebook." I'm not a user of Facebook, but even without logging in I was able to look at a good video by Tata of these machines in action, including a time lapse sequence of a movement from the slab yard to the hot rolling mill (after a while Facebook will not display anything until you log in). The same search result also had some good photos by Runtech (contractor) of the kress carriers in action. There's also a quick clip of a Kress Carrier on YouTube (search "Steel carrier 140ton"). You can judge the size by the cab - an adult can easily walk between the pincers that hold the slabs without needing to duck.
Although Llanwern has the capability to process slabs into coil, this line is currently mothballed (all the product sent to Llanwern for processing is in the form of coil). Some slab is despatched by rail from Port Talbot to Newport Docks, loaded onto BTA wagons. These are BDA-type wagons converted back from pipe carriers by having the full-height stanchions removed, leaving a central pair of half-height stanchions . These wagons are loaded at the "P Field" siding at the south end of the works, which is shunted by main line locos.
Slab can also sometimes be imported through Newport Docks and sent to Port Talbot, in which case it may well also be offloaded at the P Field sidings and transferred to the slab yards - search "66080 6F07 Margam T C Newport Docks" on YouTube for some footage of the BTA wagon set used on these flows.
I'm not sure how the wagons are loaded, but with fixed stanchions they are most likely loaded by some sort of reach stacker with either a grapple or magnet attachment, like this -
https://extranet.hysterdealer.eu/HysterSteelApplications/content/slab-handling/grapple.html
Reach stackers can be fitted with interchangeable attachments, so it's possible that the reach stackers used at the container pad (to load and unload lime containers and tar tanks) are also used to load slab to wagons in the nearby P Field siding. Slab weights can vary from 15 to 25 tons, with 3 or 4 usually loaded on a wagon depending on the type (the BTAs usually carry 3).
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Hot Rolling Mill
--------------------
The majority of slab produced at Port Talbot ends up in the hot rolling mill. Kress carriers bring the slabs from the slab yard, and the hot mill has a gantry crane along the outside of the building running above another small slab yard. The gantry crane presumably feeds the slabs into the mill itself.
Slab is reheated to around 1250°C and the thickness gradually reduced through a series of mill stands - https://www.flickr.com/photos/130498442@N08/17169606720/in/photostream/
The hot rolled coil is loaded to wagons by an overhead gantry crane, while still at a high temperature. For this reason "open" coil wagons are used, as the heat would otherwise cause problems with covered wagons, such as jamming the telescopic hood on BYA wagons as the metal expands, or melting the plastic on the IHA curtain-sided types. Covered wagons are occasionally used on flows of hot rolled coil (for instance to Hartlepool when there were problems with the BLA/BCA/BZA types) but the coil would need to cool before loading. A video linked earlier shows hot rolled coil being loaded to wagons (2:12 in "How steel is made and coated with colour")
Some of the hot rolled coil is for internal movement to the cold rolling mill. In the short video below, 904 and another Bagnall top and tail 5 BLA wagons of hot rolled coil with another Bagnall loco northwards alongside the cold rolling mill, at the point where it crosses Grange Road:
YouTube Channel: maesteg boyo | Video Title: Tata Steelworks Train Port Talbot South Wales coil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7oGY7OqLFY
These BLA wagons appear to have large blue squares on the sides, which may indicate they are for internal use only. I think these will enter the cold rolling mill at the extreme north end (bay 21), where on google maps satellite imagery a pair of rails embedded in concrete can be seen entering the mill. On the lorry cab ride video linked earlier, this siding can be seen with a little red barrier right next to the internal road, and again at the end of the video where the bay number is visible. An oddity of this internal flow of hot rolled coil to the cold rolling mill is that the track layout must entail a reversal in Margam yard.
Rail-served destinations for hot rolled coil from Port Talbot are Corby (for making into tubes), Hartlepool (for making into pipes), Trostre (for making into tinplate) and Llanwern (for cold rolling and further processing). Coil weights vary within an approximate range of 15 to 30 tons each, typically 3 or 4 coils per wagon.
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Cold Rolling Mill
-----------------------
The incoming hot rolled coils are processed at room temperature (cold rolled). They are first "pickled" on a pickle line, which uses heated acid to remove scale (iron oxide / rust). The coils are then "reduced" (in thickness) by rolling them through mill stands. The cold rolling process makes the steel more brittle. For this reason it is "annealed" which involves heating the steel to high temperature which allows the crystal lattice structure of the steel to reform (recystallize) as it cools again, regaining the strength of the steel while making it easier to work with (more ductile).
This type of cold-rolled steel is used for things like car body panels, domestic appliances and other manufactured products. A further process often carried out with cold rolled coil is galvanizing, which involves running it through a bath of molten zinc to provide a corrosion-resistant coating. A typical example of galvanized steel from cold rolled coil would be the ubiquitous crash barriers at the side of roads. However, according to https://www.coatedsteelhistory.com/ the hot-dip galvanizing line at Port Talbot was closed and sold to India circa 2000, soon after British Steel became Corus. Tata have galvanizing plants at Llanwern and Shotton, which partly explains the large volumes of coil moved to Llanwern from Port Talbot.
The cold rolled coils are loaded into covered wagons to protect them from moisture. I suspect the despatch bay is the siding that exits the side of the cold rolling mill not far from the level crossing over Grange Road, next to the north end of a small car park. There is another bay (bay 14) exiting the mill just south of here, but the track to it has been disconnected. A video of coil being loaded inside the cold rolling mill was linked earlier (1:36 in "Port Talbot - View our UK Sites").
Loco 08 brings covered coil wagons from the sidings beside the cold rolling mill: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nat37670/9256827698/
Cold rolled coil (sometimes referred to as cold reduced coil) is sent by rail in trainloads to Newport Docks (for export), Llanwern (for galvanizing and other processing such as cutting into sheets), Round Oak (for road movement to Tata's Wednesfield "Steelpark" facility)*, Shotton (for galvanizing and other specialist coatings including coloured steel), and both Hull and Immingham Docks (for export). The Hull Docks traffic is usually combined with Immingham traffic and detached at Rotherham. Hull Docks both imports and exports coils, but the Tata traffic can be distinguished by using a variety of different wagons (mostly IHAs) compared to the import traffic for Wolverhampton entirely in BYAs.
*As an example of processing done at Tata's Steelpark, the frames for the Clayton locos used steel supplied from the Plate Profiling centre there.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/railways-illustrated/20201201/282239488222683
Trains calling at Llanwern will often drop off hot or cold rolled coil wagons destined for Llanwern, and/or pick up further cold rolled coil traffic for the same destinations.
======================
List of rail flows via Margam Yard:
======================
Headcodes quoted are outward (from Margam) and return
HRC = hot rolled coil (open wagons)
CRC = cold rolled coil (covered wagons)
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Corby - HRC to Tata's Corby Tube works
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/corby
Scrap (in SSA wagons, usually 5 at a time) has also been conveyed to Port Talbot attached to the Corby coil trains - I believe this traffic was a result of redevelopment at Corby to consolidate several buildings into a single computer-controlled warehouse.
6M94/6V92
------------------------
Hartlepool - HRC to Tata's 20" pipe mill
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/hartlepool
6E30 (direct to Hartlepool)
6N27 to Tees Yard, then 6V02 (does not call at Llanwern) or 6V03 (via Llanwern) back to Margam
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Middlesbrough Goods, AV Dawson
https://www.automotivelogistics.med...eel-supply-to-nissan-sunderland/13592.article
(CRC for warehouse supplying Nissan Sunderland, onward movement by road)
(Tar Tank Containers offloaded for onward road transport to tar distillation plant at Industrial Chemicals Limited, Port Clarence)
6E47 to Middlesbrough Goods
6N52 to Tees Yard, then 6V02 (does not call at Llanwern) or 6V03 (via Llanwern) back to Margam
---------------------------------------------
Llanwern (Tata - further processing of coils e.g. cold rolling, galvanising, cutting into strip)
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/construction/sustainability/performance-at-our-sites/llanwern
Various headcodes as required, number of trains varies from week to week, examples below
6H25/6H26
6H27/6B04
6H31/6H32
------------------------------
Trostre (HRC to Tata tinplate works)
"Trostre Works manufactures approximately 400,000 tonnes per annum of tin, chrome and ‘polymer’ coated steels for the packaging industries."
Scrap is also conveyed from Trostre to Port Talbot in a weekly train of SSA wagons, offloaded in the Grange Sidings.
6B26/6B20
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Round Oak (warehouse supplying Tata's Wolverhampton Steelpark by road)
6M11/6V05
6M41/6V61
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Newport Docks (mostly coil exports, also some slab exports)
Number of daily trains varies, examples below. Some trains run via Llanwern, others run round at AD Junction (Courtybella).
6B01/6B10
6F07/6F09
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Swindon (CRC to Preymesser warehouse, for road delivery to the BMW mini plant at Cowley)
6B51/6B52
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Hardendale (Tata Shapfell - Lime kilns - lime despatched to Port Talbot in containers on FCA wagons)
https://www.tatasteeleurope.com/about-us/sites-and-facilities/shapfell-lime
6M73/6V71
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Cwmbargoed (Metallurgical grade coal for discharge at Port Talbot Grange Sidings)
4C83/6C83
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Immingham - Nordic Terminal (coil exports)
6Z20/6V19
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Hull Docks (coil exports)
Uses Immingham train 6Z20/6V19 with traffic detached/attached at Rotherham for 6D94/6J94 Hull trip
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Dee Marsh (CRC to Tata's Shotton Works - galvanising and coating lines)
"manufactures metallic coated and pre-finished steel for building envelope, domestic and consumer applications."
6M75/6V75 (GBRF operated)
-------------------------
Processed Slag (loaded at Grange Sidings for use as aggregate in road surfacing)
Freightliner trains using bogie aggregate hoppers run to Tarmac asphalt plants at Radlett, Elstow, Hayes and occasionally Hothfield.
These movements (to and from Port Talbot Grange Sidings) are often staged at East Usk.
(Headcodes not covered here as I've not looked at the workings in detail recently)
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THE END
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Any comments / questions / corrections / explanations / updates / discussion or further info are welcome!
I put this together mainly for my own interest (to understand the steelmaking process better) but I hope others find it interesting too.
