Fletton Fly Ash (1970)
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- Опубликовано: 24 авг 2024
- When the brick yards around Peterborough began to close, as the raw material, clay ran out, large "knot holes" were left. Some of these were full of water and some just a blot on the landscape. There would have been more clay to dig out around Peterborough, but over the years houses were built on what could have been clay pits.
The coal fired power stations made tons of ash of a very fine type known as fly-ash. Some were to put this ash was needed. The clay pits around Peterborough were chosen, with transport by rail. Presfro wagons which had been used for cement were what the ash was to be transported in.
As the power stations had merry go round facilities, this was also put in place at the Peterborough end. A new railway line was made from Fletton junction to a plant which then pumped the ash out with water and pumped this slurry which was a semi-liquid mixture of fine ash particles and water into the old clay pits were the ash sunk to the bottom and the water was later pumped away. When the pit was nearly full top soil was placed on the ash. The new Peterborough township of Hampton with its many new houses and a large Tesco store was once clay pits.
- text from ukrailways1970t...
As someone who's a native of that area, I remember the pipes filling the knott-holes with flyash well and the dire warnings not to walk on the recently-pumped flyash! The areas to the east of the ECML became warehousing, but also the Crown Lakes Country Park at Farcet (Crown Works in Farcet was one of the first to close as its age meant it wasn't suitable for mechanised loading of the kilns). In my teenage train-spotting years you could see the trains coming onto the flyash loop from some of the classrooms at the now-demolished Stanground School and this would often lead me to walk/cycle down there and see what locomotive was hauling it: IIRC the most interesting stuff hauled the trains from Ratcliffe power station.
Excellent film.
Crops didn't grow on the reclaimed land, but housing estates have.
That's where the smell in summer at Tesco's Hampton comes from.
Dundee famous for its cake, Nottingham it's lace and Lincoln it's biscuits etc etc and...Peterborough?.......it's fly ash . LoL
We have one of the wagons - Rev Richard Paten saved one for his home city of Peterborough ..