Volume Ten - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - 1906 - A Visit to Penarth Dock. (Taff Vale Railway) . . .

◊ 1906 - " Llandough " Storage Sidings, Penarth. Over 10,000 tons of Coal in one nest of Reception Sidings, awaiting shipment.

Since the high quick-loading coal tips in the Basin were described in the Railway Magazine, of July, 1904, two others have been constructed on the north side of the dock itself, and some of the tips on the south side have been re-constructed for the purpose of enabling large steamers of modern build to bunker while light, and thereby avoid the delay inseparable from the great rise of the tide in the Bristol Channel, and the inability of the older type of tip at high water to reach the required height.

The two new tips, known as Nos. 19 and 20, are illustrated on page 289 (see left). These tips, which are constructed of steel, are capable of tipping (at any point from 2 ft. up to 45 ft. above the coping, and about 55 to 60 ft. above the water level, where there is 33 ft. of water on the dock cill), loaded wagons of a gross weight of 25 tons, exclusive of the weight of the cradle, rams, and all other attachments thereto.

They are equipped with hydraulic rams actuating rope drums, the ropes of which directly act on the cradle, enabling the latter to lift the full load indicated above, at a speed of 180 ft. per minute !

The tips are carried on two lines of rails, each tip having a travel of 200 ft. along the quay side in either direction, being moved at the rate of about 10 ft. per minute by a set of direct hydraulic rams fixed at either end of the road on which the tips travel.