Hill, Evans & Co Ltd were vinegar manufacturers based in Worcester, England. Founded in 1830 and at one time the world's largest producer of vinegar, the works closed in 1965. [1]
Hill, Evans & Co was founded in the centre of Worcester in 1830 by two chemists, William Hill and Edward Evans. The pair started producing vinegar, but later the company also produced: wines from raisin, gooseberry, orange, cherry, cowslip, elderberry; ginger beer; fortified wines including port and sherry; as well as Robert Waters branded original quinine which was drunk to combat malaria. [1] [2]
As the company quickly expanded, they purchased a 6 acres (2.4 ha) site at Lowesmoor. [3] In 1850 the company built the Great Filling Hall, containing the world's largest vat, which at 12 metres (39 ft) high could hold 521,287 litres (114,667 imp gal; 137,709 US gal) of liquid. [1] For a century this made the works the biggest vinegar works in the world, capable of producing 9,000,000 litres (2,000,000 imp gal; 2,400,000 US gal) of malt vinegar every year. [1]
As the firm expanded, it was decided that a connection to the national railway network was required via the nearby joint Worcester Shrub Hill railway station of both the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and the Midland Railway. [3]
The resultant Worcester Railways Act 1870 allowed Hill, Evans and Co to extend the existing branchline that had served the Worcester Engine Works, from where it crossed the Virgin's Tavern Road (now Tolladine Road) by a further 632 yards (578 m) to terminate in St Martin's Street opposite the northern boundary of the vinegar works. This route required a level crossing at Shrub Hill Road, a bridge over the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, and a second level crossing at Pheasant Street. [3] The Act also permitted a second siding to be constructed that was wholly within the parish of St.Martin, which enabled the branchline to connect to both the local flour mill, and the Vulcan Works of engineers McKenzie & Holland. [3]
Completed in 1872, the new private branchline became known as the Vinegar Works branch or the Lowesmoor Tramway. [3] As an engineering company, McKenzie & Holland supplied the required shunting locomotive. From 1903, engineering company Heenan & Froude also built a works in Worcester, which was served by an additional extension. [3] After the closure of the flour mill in 1915, post-World War I that part of the branchline was lifted, and the flour mill and original part of the Vulcan Works redeveloped in the mid-1920s as a bus depot. In 1936, Heenan & Froude took over McKenzie & Holland, and hence responsibility for the supply of the private shunting locomotive. [3]
Post World War II, the Great Western Railway and then British Railways took over supply of the shunting locomotive to the branchline. Supplies to the vinegar works switched to road transport in 1958. [1] The last train on the branchline ran on 5 June 1964, hauled by GWR Pannier Tank engine No.1639. [3] The branchline was taken up from the late 1970s. [1]
The vinegar works closed in 1965. The Great Filling Hall was made a Grade II listed building in 1974. Today it is the local Territorial Army headquarters and training centre. [1] The rest of the buildings on the site were cleared, and the land redeveloped as an Asda supermarket. [1]
The British Rail Class 04 is a 0-6-0 diesel-mechanical shunting locomotive class, built between 1952 and 1962 and was the basis for the later Class 03 built in the British Railways workshops.
The Summit Tunnel fire occurred on 20 December 1984, when a dangerous goods train caught fire while passing through the Summit Tunnel on the railway line between Littleborough and Todmorden on the Greater Manchester/West Yorkshire border, England.
Vulcan Iron Works was the name of several iron foundries in both England and the United States during the Industrial Revolution and, in one case, lasting until the mid-20th century. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and smithery, was a popular namesake for these foundries.
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR), colloquially called the "Toy Train" by locals is a 1,000 mmmetre gauge railway in Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908. The railway is operated by the Southern Railway and is the only rack railway in India.
Fishponds is a large suburb in the north-east of the English city of Bristol, about 3 miles (5 km) from the city centre. It has two large Victorian-era parks: Eastville Park and Vassall's Park. The River Frome runs through both with the Frome Valley Walkway alongside it. A restored mill found at Snuff Mills near the Vassall's Park end of the river has kept its original waterwheel, which can still be seen and heard turning. Eastville Park has a large boating lake with central wildlife reserves. Fishponds is mainly residential. Two main bus routes pass through. Housing is typically terraced Victorian. The high street shops include an international supermarket, Asian food store, charity shops, takeaways and Lidl, Aldi and Morrisons supermarkets. It has a small student population from the presence of the Glenside campus of the University of the West of England. The name Fishponds derives from when it was a quarry district, like nearby Soundwell. The empty quarries became large fishponds, which have since been filled in. One remained until the mid-1970s, when it was officially closed: a popular swimming area named "The Lido" by locals. It now belongs to an angling club.
The Midland Railway 1377 Class was a class of 185 0-6-0T tank locomotives. They were introduced in 1878 by Samuel W. Johnson, and were almost identical to the 1102 class of 1874; the latter having fully enclosed cabs, while the 1377 class were built without a rear to the cab and only a short cab roof, hence their nickname "half-cabs". They were given the power classification 1F.
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) E2 class was a class of 0-6-0T steam locomotives designed by Lawson Billinton, intended for shunting and short distance goods trains. Ten examples were built between 1913 and 1916. Some of these tank engines were trialled on push-pull passenger trains in which they were proven to be unworthy due to their roughness at speed and inadequate coal bunker capacity. All were withdrawn from service and scrapped between 1961 and 1963.
W. G. Bagnall was a locomotive manufacturer from Stafford, England which was founded in 1875 and operated until it was taken over in 1962 by English Electric.
A fireless locomotive is a type of locomotive which uses reciprocating engines powered from a reservoir of compressed air or steam, which is filled at intervals from an external source. They offer advantages over conventional steam locomotives of lower cost per unit, cleanliness, and decreased risk from fire or boiler explosion; these are counterbalanced by the need for a source to refill the locomotive, and by the limited range afforded by the reservoir.
The Drewry Car Co. was a railway locomotive and railcar manufacturer and sales organisation from 1906 to 1984. At the start and the end of its life it built its own products, for the rest of the time it sold vehicles manufactured by sub-contractors.
The New Zealand TR class locomotive is a type of diesel shunting locomotives built by many different manufacturers. Defined as "shunting tractors" or "rail tractors" by KiwiRail and its predecessors, they are classified "TR" for tractor as a result. Many of these locomotives have been withdrawn, but some are still in service. The first locomotive of this class was built by NZR in 1924. The most powerful were Japanese-built Hitachi TRs, with 138 kW Cummins engines.
The GER Class 209 was a class of 0-4-0 saddle tank steam locomotives of the Great Eastern Railway. These locomotives were similar to the NBR G Class but had flat-topped, instead of round-topped, tanks. A total of eight were built – four by Neilson and Company in 1874 and four more by the GER's Stratford Works between 1897 and 1903.
A trench railway was a type of railway that represented military adaptation of early 20th-century railway technology to the problem of keeping soldiers supplied during the static trench warfare phase of World War I. The large concentrations of soldiers and artillery at the front lines required delivery of enormous quantities of food, ammunition and fortification construction materials where transport facilities had been destroyed. Reconstruction of conventional roads and railways was too slow, and fixed facilities were attractive targets for enemy artillery. Trench railways linked the front with standard gauge railway facilities beyond the range of enemy artillery. Empty cars often carried litters returning wounded from the front.
The Z18 class was a class consisting of six 0-6-0T steam tank locomotives built by Vulcan Foundry for the New South Wales Government Railways of Australia.
The NZR DS class locomotive is a type of 16 diesel shunting locomotives built by the Vulcan Foundry and supplied by the Drewry Car Co from 1949–1955, for New Zealand Railways (NZR).
The Worcester, Bromyard and Leominster Railway was a 24.5-mile (39.4 km) single track branch railway line, that ran between a junction near Bransford Road on the West Midland Railway line south of Worcester to the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway line south of Leominster.
TheNorth British distillery is a grain whisky distillery located in the Gorgie area of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Heenan & Froude was a United Kingdom-based engineering company, founded in Newton Heath, Manchester, England in 1881 in a partnership formed by engineers Richard Froude and Richard Hammersley Heenan. Expanded on the back of William Froude's patent for inventing the water brake dynamometer, their most famous creation was the 518 feet (158 m) high Blackpool Tower.
The South African Railways Class 14C 4-8-2 of 1919 was a steam locomotive.
The South African type MY tender was a steam locomotive tender.