The Carrington Branch. Lost Railways Partington gas works, Carrington chemical plant & Power station

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The Carrington Branch. Lost Railways Partington gas works, Carrington chemical plant & Power station

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An interesting explore following the branch line from Partington Jct to Carrington. As well as a detailed explore of Partingtons old gas works.
History. At Carrington moss a network of tramways and roads was constructed using clinker and other materials brought from Manchester, in order to move refuge from the ever increasing city.
Refuse was loaded from a number of locations and was first transported along the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, until that waterway was closed on 11 November 1888. For several years until the completion of its replacement, the Manchester Ship Canal, the corporation was reliant on Manchester's local railway network. Refuse was loaded at the corporation's Water Street Depot on to Cornbrook sidings and in waggons to Carrington on a junction from the Cheshire Lines. The canal company installed a temporary dock on the new canal, although this was considered impractical and was rarely used. A more permanent arrangement was made several years later. New railway sidings were also built; once complete, refuse was loaded from near Oldham Road railway station and the corporation's Water Street Depot. It was then transported along the Ship Canal to a newly built wharf, and thereafter, by tramway across the moss.
A common pheasant at Carrington Moss
Carrington Wharf had fallen out of use by 1934 and with the advent of the Second World War, five miles (8 km) of railway were lifted and all the waggons scrapped. At the Ministry of Supply's request, much of the infrastructure supporting both Carrington Moss and Chat Moss was sold. The sidings at Carrington continued to be used by the CLC for waggon storage, but Carrington Wharf was subsumed in 1946 by the construction of Carrington Power Station.
Industrialisation of carrington moss took place from 1947-1952 when Petro-Carbon ltd began to build what would later become known as the Shell Site. The estate was leased on 1 October 1968 to Shell Chemicals, who in 1957 had purchased a propylene oxide plant along the moss’s northern edge. Shell had built an ethylene oxide plant in 1958 and began to produce polyether polyols the following year. Council housing was built nearby, at Carrington and Partington, for workers and their families. By 1985 the Shell plant had a turnover of about £200M and employed 1,150 people. By 1994, four distinct plants operated on the 3,500-acre (14 km2) site, producing a range of chemicals, and materials including polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene. In 2005 it was reported that Shell would close their polyols and ethoxylates units, a decision which came into effect in 2007.
Carrington Power Station was on the south bank of the Manchester Ship Canal. Building work commenced in 1947, although land for the site was acquired in 1916. It opened in 1956, was decommissioned in the late 1980s, and demolished using explosives in 1991, having stood empty for several years. All that remains today is a large 400 kV switching station. The station had its own railway spur from the Glazebrook to Stockport Tiviot Dale.
Manchester Corporation’s Gas Department acquired a 175-acre green-field site in Partington in the late 1920s and the first town gas manufacturing plant was officially opened on 8th May 1929. It supplied gas through a 10 miles-long main to central Manchester. The site was straddled by Cheshire Lines Committee’s railway - vitally necessary to transport the original plant’s requirement of 500 tons of coal each day. This was the start of several gas making technologies which continued on the site until natural gas was discovered and exploited from 1966 onwards. In the late 1960s, the Gas Council took the decision to construct an LNG facility on 55 acres of the site, to the south of the railway.