Immingham Dock
Immingham Dock is a port facility near Immingham, with linking railways, opened 6 miles (9.7 km) upstream from Grimsby, England, by the Great Central Railway (GCR) in 1912. It was first conceived in 1874, during the company's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway days, after test borings north-west of Grimsby had been made by marine engineer Charles Liddell. Nothing ensued but the idea was revived in 1900 when the leading marine engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry confirmed Liddell's earlier recommendations. After some opposition the Humber Commercial Railway & Dock Act was passed on 22 July 1904.
Design, construction and opening
The dock was designed Sir John Wolfe Barry & Partners. It was built by contractors Price, Wills & Reeve of Edinburgh, and equipped by Rowlandson & Ball.
Construction started with a sod-cutting ceremony on 12 July 1906. The wider scheme included three new lengths of railway:
- the Grimsby District Light Railway / Grimsby and Immingham Electric Railway, a tramway from Immingham to Grimsby, used for contractors traffic and later for carrying passengers (mainly dock workers),
- the Humber Commercial Railway, from near Ulceby to Immingham, for coal traffic,
- the Barton and Immingham Light Railway.
The formal opening of Immingham Dock was by King George V on 22 July 1912. During the ceremony Sam Fay the General Manager of the GCR was knighted.[1]
On completion the total wet dock area was 45 acres (0.18 km2) with 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of dock estate, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) in length, over 1 mile (1.6 km) inland, with a river frontage of nearly 1.5 miles (2.4 km). It had an entrance lock with three pairs of huge hydraulic gates. On the seaward side of the lock an eastern and western jetty curved outwards until they paralleled the shore; the eastern jetty was a passenger landing stage with its own double railway tracks; the western jetty, which was partially opened in 1910, was used for coal also with its own double track accessing the mainland via two girder bridges.
References
- ↑ Stratton, Michael; Trinder, Barrie Stuart. Twentieth century industrial archaeology. Taylor & Francis. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-419-24680-0. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
- Dow, George (1965). Great Central, Vol. 3: Fay sets the pace 1900-1922. London: Locomotive Publishing Co