IRM Fert Wagon

[TimO]

Fertiliser trains were also unloaded in Portlaoise goods yard. I don’t know if these were block liners or part of a mixed liner train with Guinness kegs also being off loaded by the forklifts.

[Mayner]

On 8/7/2022 at 1:26 AM, murphaph said:

What originated in Thurles Bob? Fertiliser or briquettes?

Briquettes from the Littleton plant were transferred from road to rail at Thurles

[Vlak]

Richardson’s Fertiliser (based in Belfast) were also brought by road from the factory and loaded in Adelaide freight yard for transport across the Irish Railway Network. 

I seem to recall that occasionally several ferts would run from Belfast - North Wall - Mallow for the Co-Op in Farranfore which had it’s own siding off the station loop. This traffic ceased around 2001/2 if I’m not mistaken. 

[Niles]

There's a pic in the excellent All Our Yesterdays - Irish Bashing group on Facebook showing some ferts in the sidings at Kildare (early 1990s), hardly still unloaded in Kildare then? Unless they were rogue wagons taken off a liner with hotboxes or something but seems unlikely as there's at least two...

As an aside, I remember waiting in Dundalk with my Dad when I was 12 and seeing a 201 arrive with an absolute monster of a train comprising ferts, bubbles and kegs, there was a bit of a shunt to take the latter off there. I've some ferts on order to join my bubbles but I don't think I'll quite have the room for this size of train, to my young eyes it seemed to stretch for miles.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Niles

[murphaph]

Possibly taken off a liner to Cork for example and just parked there to be attached to a liner heading to the west maybe? They did this sort of shunting at LJ so maybe also at Kildare the odd time? I saw the pic. It's a curious one alright.

[Sleeper]

I remember seeing ferts being loaded in the fertiliser depot in Portlaoise(now telfords) on the old Abbeyleix line and Avonmore animal feeds on the other side in the late 80s, early 90s.

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by Sleeper

[murphaph]

Where might one find details of the weekly circulars advising of fert movements? IRRS archives or did this all remain company confidential?

[ttc0169]

25 minutes ago, murphaph said:

Where might one find details of the weekly circulars advising of fert movements? IRRS archives or did this all remain company confidential?

Unfortunately you won’t find any specific details of fertiliser operations in the circulars,as I said before a”running notice” was issued to the relevant staff,e.g Signalmen and depot staff a few days in advance of the fert operating to the location. 

4 hours ago, murphaph said:

Possibly taken off a liner to Cork for example and just parked there to be attached to a liner heading to the west maybe?

That operation never took place in Kildare. 
Northwall was always the location where freight trains were remarshalled for outlying locations 

[Sleeper]

The old briquette factory in Littleton now used by Bord na Mona (AES) for recycling silage wrap

[murphaph]

Cheers Noel. Would that information essentially be lost to history now? I think you could get away with laden ferts going from at least Shelton, Adelaide, New Ross, Cork and Foynes to almost any point on the network. Add in briquettes and possibly animal feed and Thurles and Portlaoise seem to off additional origins. I've seen one YouTube clip of a fert passing through Thomastown (presumably from New Ross?) with Longford marked as the destination.

As for that Kildare pic, any ideas what could have caused at least two ferts to end up stabled there? Possibly the tail of a liner just letting other traffic pass due to the middle road being blocked?

[Niles]

Old IRRS journals and possibly some ITG ones might have recorded some workings... I can have a browse through what I have and see what's there, is there specific line you're looking for @murphaph?

[murphaph]

Traffic through Kildare and Athy would be of great interest to me. I'd very much appreciate you taking a look around for anything there.

[Irishswissernie]

Jim Edgars book, Irish Railways Line by Line Vol 2. Photo 36 Block Fertiliser train at Cahir 29 )ct 1987.

2 photos Nos 46  , 16 October 1986 showing a mixed Limerick to Waterford goods at Carrick on Suir with one fertiliser in the consist. The same train is shown in photo 42 at Clonmel with the fertiliser wagon actually being unloaded by fork lift.

Photo 18 shows an 8 wagon fertiliser set in the Farranfore ,Kerry Coop siding behind 020 13 April 1988.

[DartStation]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:04 PM, patrick said:

Was fertilizer traffic seasonal?

For beet growers it was, fertilizer would be delivered to local stations for farmers to collect and spread on beet ground in the spring, at home we collected our fertilizer from the station in Tullamore. This then changed in later years 70's and 80's to being delivered directly to the farm by truck and unloaded bag by bag off the truck I might add! 

Edited July 25, 2022 by DartStation

[Westcorkrailway]

1 hour ago, DartStation said:

For beet growers it was, fertilizer would be delivered to local stations for farmers to collect and spread on beet ground in the spring, at home we collected our fertilizer from the station in Tullamore. This then changed in later years 70's and 80's to being delivered directly to the farm by truck and unloaded bag by bag off the truck I might add! 

Nowedays, they have a forklift that can detach from the rear of the truck for unloading and even then, most farmers have a machine that is capable of lifting each pallet off one at a time 

[DartStation]

15 hours ago, Westcorkrailway said:

Nowedays, they have a forklift that can detach from the rear of the truck for unloading and even then, most farmers have a machine that is capable of lifting each pallet off one at a time 

this was back in the day when mechanization was not top of the agenda, there was plenty of labourer's on farms back then and Health and Safety were not as stringent as it is today so lots of this type of work was done by hand. 

[Sleeper]

Nowadays most of the work is done by big contractors, Silage cutting, harvesting and spreading fertiliser etc.

[Mayner]

1 hour ago, Sleeper said:

Nowadays most of the work is done by big contractors, Silage cutting, harvesting and spreading fertiliser etc.

A bit like construction farmers use specialist contractors to carry out ploughing, planting, harvesting, fertiliser spreading and spraying. Avoids tying up working capital in plant and difficulty recruiting/retaining skilled operators.

Being a rail fan and living in the Waikato one of the big surprises in moving to New Zealand was that fertiliser was traditionally supplied in bulk rather than in bags often spread by 4w drive on-off road trucks or by air.

Although most of the major depots were set up to receive fertiliser by rail traffic had virtually ceased by the early 2000s because of the high inventory cost of receiving and storing fertiliser in train load lots and high rolling stock maintenance costs. Bulk fertiliser was transported bogie hopper wagons similar to those used to transport coal

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/end-of-the-line-for-ravensdown-rail-option/CTEAXRFEMRDXOP4Z6T7VRYNIEY/

[murphaph]

On 18/5/2019 at 12:42 PM, h gricer said:

 

It looks like some of these wagons carried warning flashes for OHLE but this was rare, right? Was it just the 48 tonner ones or did the non-upgraded ones get them as well the odd time? Anyone got any more pics of the ends? 

[StevieB]

On 27/7/2022 at 1:56 AM, Mayner said:

A bit like construction farmers use specialist contractors to carry out ploughing, planting, harvesting, fertiliser spreading and spraying. Avoids tying up working capital in plant and difficulty recruiting/retaining skilled operators.

Being a rail fan and living in the Waikato one of the big surprises in moving to New Zealand was that fertiliser was traditionally supplied in bulk rather than in bags often spread by 4w drive on-off road trucks or by air.

Although most of the major depots were set up to receive fertiliser by rail traffic had virtually ceased by the early 2000s because of the high inventory cost of receiving and storing fertiliser in train load lots and high rolling stock maintenance costs. Bulk fertiliser was transported bogie hopper wagons similar to those used to transport coal

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/end-of-the-line-for-ravensdown-rail-option/CTEAXRFEMRDXOP4Z6T7VRYNIEY/

Speaking as a layman, the economics of rail operation are always very different to those of road operation. Privatisation in the UK did not appear to improve matters, although there have been increases in both passenger and freight traffic.

Stephen

[Westcorkrailway]

Oooh look what arived today 

 

 

 

 

 

as smooth as a whistle. Infact smoothest running peice of rolling stock I have 

 

@DJ Dangerous I’ll have to start disassembling them

[murphaph]

Looks like these are selling out fast. The keg liners too.

[Rush and Lusk]

My order of Fertiliser Wagons arrived this morning - fantastic model again. I was surprised by the reassuring weight of the wagon plus load - incredibly smooth running. Excellent job & well done IRM.

[Bob229]

The Ferts arrived , missed them the first time, fine wagons nice weight and detail, running well and I like the green pallets, well done IRM

[Rob]

They look great on the layout

[mmie353]

Awesome my order arrived today, so did they ever run with the blue 46% urea bags? They would have I assume heavy used early spring when farmers were spreading for silage. Also they were a larger bag than the standard ones. I think there was a yellow bag also, I could be wrong on that one. 

[murphaph]

What you see on the wagon is not the actual bag though, it's the outer loose sheath or pallet wrap. Try to find pics of the product you're interested in on a pallet rather than loose.

[Mike 84C]

Here in the UK the small bags were 50kg normally 30 on a pallet. The "Big bags" were 500kg and 1000kg with loops on the top for forklift handling.

  As an aside the plastic covers had another purpose besides protection, the palletising machines used a silicone lubricant on the bags to keep them moving smoothly, guess what happens when the pallets are on a bouncy HGV? so some inventive person devised a system that put a stripe of glue on every bag which sort of worked BUT step three involved hot shrink wrapping the the whole pallet. That was good but hot plastic sticks to hot plastic, you can imagine the mess that could be made on the farm!

[mmie353]

I wish I had pics from the time period in question. Funny when one would have lifted tons of them blasted things and disposing of them, who knew then that pics from the time would have been nice today. Oh well. 

[murphaph]

Your yellow bags maybe?

 

Pic credit: Ernie.

[popeye]

Now that will need another rerun. 

[Sleeper]

19 hours ago, popeye said:

Now that will need another rerun. 

This became a familiar site all over the country, your county colours made up from fertiliser sacks and coal sacks. These ones were put up in Walsh Island, Offaly in 1998 for the now controversial hurling all ireland final between Clare and Offaly...and still there today. The yellow was cut sward, white was usually high nitrogen and green was super yield.

[DartStation]

On 5/11/2022 at 4:21 AM, mmie353 said:

Awesome my order arrived today, so did they ever run with the blue 46% urea bags? They would have I assume heavy used early spring when farmers were spreading for silage. Also they were a larger bag than the standard ones. I think there was a yellow bag also, I could be wrong on that one. 

Yes they did but the pallets were always shrunk wrapped with white plastic sheet with the Orange and blue NET logo.

[murphaph]

2 hours ago, DartStation said:

Yes they did but the pallets were always shrunk wrapped with white plastic sheet with the Orange and blue NET logo.

A bit like these...

 

 

[DartStation]

59 minutes ago, murphaph said:

A bit like these...

 

 

exactly and before being rebranded to 'IFI' they carried the 'NET' lettering - same colour scheme.