Observe railway alongside what was or almost the western boundary of the power station and out of the picture on the Rutherglen side of the water is a big marshalling yard, this line turned east and connected to Lanarkshire at Rutherglen junction.
"as the coal storage yard and conveyors feeding into the station are way over to the left." - Convenient to the rail line ........
Just had a look at the 1934 & 38 ones fox mentioned and the railway sidings ran in behind the building and terminated at Dalmarnock Road, in fact in the google image you can still see a general impression by way of a path through the scrub of where they were.
Thinking on a bit about the river, as we established the Glasgow weir at 1901 (after the gate/weir it replaced was lost) then we can assume with reasonable safety that nothing was arriving from overseas with 'cheap' coal and sailing it up the river to the station.
Dalmarnock was typical of the time c1915 and started of at less than 100 kW and ended up around 200 kW when development ceased - note the big pic from the Captain is pre-development, and minus the big chimney of the later years - so would have had a large, but not huge when compared to today's coal giants that literally needed to be built next to coal mines.
We know that the Uddingston/Blantyre area was riddles with coal mines back then, and some were right on the river, even though all evidence of them has now been erased by the eco-freaks, historical records do have use!
It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that to ensure continuity of supply there would have been both rail and river routes for coal to the station, though it's probably safe also to assume that rail was the primary.
What I do wonder about now, having seen much of the river between Dalmarnock and the mines, is what it was like in those days, and what sort of craft would have been used for transport. Lots of small craft seems to be the most likely, for reasons of draught and maneuverability on some of the bends. The river is far from deep, and today there are small weirs and obstructions that would preclude such a route being used, though these may not have been present in the past.
I don't have any knowledge other than what can be seen today, so really am just speculating, and thinking out loud to see if anything makes sense.
I'm pretty sure that power stations - in those days anyway - used what was known as 'steaming' coal [different coals were used by different markets] and many of the local collieries would mined this type of coal [different seams were mined at different levels within in a coal pit, sometimes dozens of fathoms apart] the nearest to Dalmarnock being the Farme Colliery just down the road and Cambuslang, Carmyle, Kenmuir, Daldowie etc. etc. dozens of pits within 6 miles. It was a rail supplied facility, dual supply options were not on the agenda then, cost was everything from keeping the miners wages low to cost per ton cartage. I presume the two structures on the riverbank in the photo are water intake sluices or similar?
Interesting turn of phrase Captain. The word cartage rang a bell in my mind. I have been reading a book on the Clyde Lighthouses based on research into the minutes of the Cumbrae Lighthouse Trust. When the first coal lit lighthouse was built coal was brought from Cambuslang and payed for by the cartload rather than by weight. Presumably hence 'cartage'.
Interesting turn of phrase, Captain. I have been reading a book on the Clyde Lighthouses based on research into the minutes of the Cumbrae Lighthouse Trust. The first lighthouse was lit by a coal fire and the coal came from Cambuslang by the cart load. It was payed for in cartloads which must have been the standard practice presumably where the word 'cartage' comes from.
What on earth makes you say dual supplies were not on the agenda then? Remember I'm talking about fuel routes here, not fuel types.
This is my area, and there's no doubt that the designers would have made provision for alternate supplies if available, be that road, rail, or river. Now, how practical that may have been is another question, and they may have been plonkers and not realised that it maybe couldn't be done.
It's worth bearing in mind mind that power stations like Dalmarnock are tiny by today's standards.
Using today's numbers, where an average 500 MW station can consume 250 tons of coal per hour on load (Drax is 4 GW and consumes 36,000 tons per day), by the same rate, little Dalmarnock at 0.2 MW would consume 0.1 tons of coal per per hour. say the old design and small size was not as efficient, and multiply that by 10, and that's 1 ton per hour, or 24 tons per day.
In any event, this means that a couple of 10 ton truck or boat loads per day would keep the place going at full output every day, so it's worth bearing in mind that this (and all the other 'city' power stations of the time) didn't have the great snakes of rail trucks arriving at them on a non-stop basis, as we are used to seeing when the media shows us a modern power station of 500 MW, which is a whopping 2,500 bigger and greedier than Dalmarnock. So, shuffling that small amount from the pier to the yard - not difficult.
Now, in practical terms, I'm minded to quite like the Captain's reminder of reality, and the fact that we don't see anything that looks like cooling around the grounds of the Dalmarnock station, and the thought of the structures on the riverbank being related to cooling water inflow and outflow is something I find quite appealing, and it certainly would tie in with the two apertures in the wall I referred to above, still visible today, and visible along the top edge of the river bank structures in the big pic above too.
It would be nice if there were more detail visible, as there would have to be some sort of trap on the intake, as the Clyde is famous for things like bits of tree and other assorted rubbish that would have been carried downstream, and we can only imagine what sort of stuff other industry up river would have been throwing in there in the 'pre-environmental' days.
I suspect our 'free-thoughts' and ramblings are perhaps beginning to home in on the truth, and someone is going to have to done the 'Underpants of Power', and send RCAHMS a wee note about a possible error in their info
As a non-engineer type I bow [as always - and I'm not being sarcastic here readers as I know Apollo personally] to your technical knowledge but as ye know I'm someone who fancies themselves as a bit of a local historian, its my full time hobby and in my judgement coal could only have been delivered by rail, coal was king in the early part of the last century and so were the railways who moved it about, only a railway company could deliver coal at a competative price and, the lines running along the western side were already there before it was built [possibly a major factor - along with its river frontage for water supplies] and by your own claim of figures that you calculate whereby Dalmarnock would have only consumed 24 tons of coal per 24 hrs. begs the question of why bulk supplies would be required from river transport - and its attendant capital costs in building barges and ongoing substantial costs dredging and maintaning channels. With respect too the capacity of the power station rail sidings as shown on the 1938 map actually challenges your coal consumptions.
Built: 1915: first section of 100,000 kW capacity. 1921: second section of 40,000 kW capacity. c.1935: total capacity 200,000 kW.
The above are the correct figures from RCAHMS for the output of Dalmarnock Power Station, the ones I should have been using from the start - unfortunately the ones I picked up first had a slight problem with the decimal point, but came from one of the non-tech 'memory sites, Yes, I should have known better, but accepted what I got on the first one. I've checked others, and these numbers look right.
The bottom line is that if we take account of my X10 for the old small plant, and factor it out as the plant is in fact a decent size using the correct figures, the the actual coal consumption will be in the order of 100 times the estimate I made above. Simplify it by halving the 250 tons per hour of a modern 500 MW station, given that Dalmarnock was 200 MW.
That means it needed over 100 tons per hour when running at full output.
I've no idea how much a railway coal truck hold/held at the time, so someone else will have to have a stab at the number of trucks that meant per day/week to Dalmarnock.
Takes a while, but the brain does start working after a while, especially when spurred on by a self-confesses non-engineer smelling a rat too
(Sorry, if you saw the earlier post that prededed this one, then you didn't imagine it, it was easier to scrap it rather than edit it.)
Good points on the rail, and don't forget I'm acting (if it hasn't become obvious over the last few posts now) as Devil's Advocate for the museum's postulation of coal delivery from up river - it's looking weaker all the time.
If we go back to the big pic above, and start to zoom in as best we can, then it becomes harder to see how the riverside structures seen could be used to offload barges or boats. Apart from an indistinct opening to the left of the image, the structures are largely featureless, and have no practical opening at the level of the river.
Why they might need to be so tall, and what their purpose may be is not yet clear or obvious, but the inflow/outflow option for cooling water seems the most likely for now.
Although I haven't come across anything with the height, the intake would need filters or screens to prevent blockages and the passage of contaminants along with the cooling water taken from the river, and the height could be accounted for by a degree of automation in their operation, to keep them clear and remove collected material for disposal.
----
Irritatingly, I found a sentence from a site that want a fee for more info, but it was interesting as it appears to note another 'First'...
and in 1915 was responsible for the design of Dalmarnock Power Station, Glasgow-first in the United Kingdom to be builtwholly of reinforced concrete
The station got a new boiler in 1955, which might be the reason for the switch from a chimney farm to single biggie in its later life. One commentator noted the the chimney did not co-operate when the place was being demolished, and it took days to get it down.
The capacity of the station increased to somewhere aeound 235,000 kW, so would have been gobbling up even more coal towards the end of its life.
Still trying to hunt down the structures on the bank, I came across video of a nearby demolition in 2007...
Your figures look more likely now and would be the reason there was so much wagon capacity in the sidings. I think the structures on the riverbank may have taken river water veertically, just a guess. It must have been a brute of a demolition it all being reinforced concrete.
Believe, me, it was only when I stopped thinking about the riverbank for a while that the 'Little Grey Cells" kicked into action, and I related the output to what it could do - 'Ah near fell oaf mah excercisur' when I ran the number in 'ma hied', instead of 'properly' on paper!
Lifting vertically, assuming that any pipes followed the line of the structures would be unlikely, I think there would be a number of problems associated with doing that which make it undesirable. I've never come across such an arrangement anywhere I've worked. The collection and discharge points are generally underwater and underground, avoiding any purely vertical sections. These mean a dead lift of the content, which gets tough and causes problems with gas or air inclusions.
Thinking on from your other info, you've often referred to the silt content of the river, and I wonder if we're looking at something involved in preventing silt from drawn if cooling water was being drawn from the river.
I spent a number of weeks working on the pump control system for the Ravenscraig steel plant, and this had a pumping station located on the banks of the Clyde, below the town. You can imagine the size of the pumps and motors involved in shunting water from the river up to the plant, and there were occasions where we asked the plant to turn them on (everything was remotely controlled from the plant control room) and hid behind a couple of brick walls as they faults made them sound as if they were going to explode. Normally, you can hit an emergency stop to kill everything, but we had to shout down the phone for the control room staff to 'Pull The Plug'!
I don't remember precisely what sort of filters they had there, but certainly nothing like what we're looking at beside Dalmarnock, and at that point in the river at least, was only concerned with big stuff like trees and branches, plus maybe dead animals, refuse, grass and the like. There didn't seem to by anything that would have dealt with finer material like silt.
As I recall, the river there seems to be much bigger, deeper, and faster than further along at the likes of Daldowie, Dalbeth, Belvidere, and Dalmarnock. Perhaps there's a reason, but I'm not that knowledgeable, or just plain wrong as to what the Ravenscraig station was like, due to fear of being blown up by an exploding pump control system!
Oh! Regarding the reinforced concrete, I think they built everything at Dalmarnock out of the stuff, including the walls along the riverbank, which is probably why they are still there today - they couldn't be bothered demolishing them too.
It's actually a bit worrying to walk along there for the first time, the wall has a definite bulge towards the river, and is of course, around 100 years old and original. However, once you have a look at it, you can see that at some point, parts of the surface have been surveyed, and the concrete has been excavated from the surface to reveal the steel reinforcing rods embedded within it, so it's not likely to be going anywhere in a hurry - unless it all falls into the Clyde at once one day
I'll take a chance and include this RCAHMS pic, and hope that acknowledging them helps avoiding a problem, since it really is needed for comparison with the Captain's much earlier version, his still has cranes visible for the early works.
My guess is that this one is after the station had its new boilers installed around 1955, as you will see only one chimney and a lot of new gear 'upstairs'.
Significantly, the riverside features appear to be unchanged.
And how it looked last week - the three modern piers built on the same spot.
Note the two 'doorways' in the wall, which would have lined up roughly with the midpoint of the riverside structures.
Nearly new and significant holes smashed through the decks.
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