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Control Streamlines Steel
Works Traffic
A RichardThomas and Baldwins Scheme at the Spencer Works at Lianwern.
by P. A. C. Brockington, A.M.I.Mech.E.
IN August last year Richard Thomas and Baldwins, Ltd., established a load traffic-control centre on the site of the company's Spencer works at Llanwern, near Newport. The success of the project has fully demonstrated the value of organizing traffic, in a project of this magnitude, with the aid of radio-controlled patrol vehicles. Acting in close co-operation with the police, the traffic control staff re-routed many thousands of shale-carrying lorries that until recently visited the site daily, control being applied to many of the feeder roads in the county in addition to site access roads. This greatly reduced the accident rate as well as delays caused by congestion and breakdowns.
In the current stage of development the most important traffic comprises indivisible loads of heavy structural members up to 120 ft. long, whilst the intake of large items of equipment is progressively increasing. Patrolmen assist the police by acting as guides on the public roads (notably on the Abergavenny-Llanwern route), and accurate pre-planning by the control room staff ensures that the exact destination of the vehicle is known, and that the site route has been plotted, before arrival.
The site is 34 miles long and 1.1miles wide, and there are over 25 miles of main roadways that will eventually become " permanent," but which are subject to sectional demolition during the building period for pipe laying and so on. Larger contractors number over 250, and any one of these may be engaged in a variety of projects in widely dispersed parts of the site. Without exact advice from the control staff of the route to be taken, and in a typical case without guidance by a patrolman, the vehicle driver would be unable to locate the destination point, and his indecision would disrupt traffic flow on the site. Examples are numerous of vehicles arriving at the site with heavy loads consigned. to Richard Thomas and Baldwins, Ltd., Llanwern. instead of a particular contractor. Before central traffic control was instituted, it was not unknown for a driver to return to his works to obtain the identify of the consignee.
Charts and files in the traffic-control room now enable the superintendent to direct vehicles to site locations with the minimum delay, the estimated time of arrival of the majority, of vehicles being established some hours beforehand. This normally involves analysing information provided by contractors (which is often confirmed by a phone call to the supplier), and dispatching a patrolman to Caerleon or other outlying centres to pilot the vehicle to the site, following notice of its movements by the county police. The site route is surveyed by a patrolman immediately before the arrival of the vehicle if there is any doubt as to whether the normal route is open.
Three Land-Rovers, equipped with Pyc radio-telephone sets, are used by five patrolmen throughout the working day, and apart from route surveying and vehicle guidance work, they provide an emergency service in the event of an accident. When an accident occurs, one vehicle is driven to the scene of the accident and a second vehicle to the main works surgery, so that advice can immediately be given by the R.T.B. doctor to the first-aid men on the spot. A number of contractors' ambulances are dispersed throughout the area.
The patrol vehicles are additional to a fleet of over 30 Land-Rovers and Austin Gypsies employed for carrying equipment and for the conveyance of security officers, surveyors, consultants, group engineers and other members of the staff. A site bus service is operated for site personnel and company's employees. In the traffic control 'room a "Road-State " chart is kept up-to-date by the staff with the help of the patrolmen to indicate ratite changes on an hour-to-hour ,basis, and a second chart known as the "Contractors' Plot" is in the form of a pegboard showing the location of every project on the site.. Both charts are divided into squares on the grid System, each division representing a 220-yd. square. Identifying the destination of a vehicle is further aided by the use of a transparent panel, divided into nine lettered sections, which is superimposed on the appropriate square. The letters and numbers of the square and the letters of the sections correspond to the data marked on signposts in the area.
A location is given in the form of a letter, a number and a second letter in parentheses (for example 14(N)) and this indicates the position of the contractor's site to within 70 yd., at which. distance the contractor's name-board is visible.
When the works is in full production the system of radiocontrol will have been extended to cover every aspect of traffic organization on the steelworks site, including the dispersal and marshalling of road and rail vehicles, the movements of mobile plant and the operation of security and emergency services.
Although traffic control by radio was introduced as an urgent measure to cope with existing problems, the system is now regarded as a nucleus of an expanding network, or as a pilot scheme, an important object of which is to facilitate the training of patrolmen, and the drivers of ambulances, -fire engines, locomotives, mobile bucket loaders and, numerous other types of vehicles, in radiotelephone procedure.
The task facing the traffic control superintendent when the steelworks has started production is indicated by estimates of incoming raw material and outgoing steel ingots, a substantial proportion of which will be carried in road vehicles. Intake of iron ore (mainly from Newport docks) will average about 3.9 m. tons a year, whilst mines and quarries in the area will supply over a million tons of coal. 622,000 tons of limestone, more than 292,000 tons of dolomite and around 170,000 tons of coke. Initial yearly output of ingots will be approximately 1.4 m. tons.