Although for an eight-inch baseboard, I'd be allowed one six feet long, and I have some ideas on how to use it, it turns out that I can get the whole shale oil process into 36” by about 8”. The secret is to ignore the stamp mill and fold the process flow back on itself and to use height in a couple of places.
I have to make three “cheats” compared with reality: firstly the shale-oil extraction was never done at the wharf, the stuff was shipped all around Purbeck, but that's just poetic license. In process terms the product and waste runs are the wrong way round, but we'll just assume that that's the way the place was built. I'm left with one building (the entrance/exit) whose purpose I don't know, but I assume it's just a covered shed to prevent rocks falling on the track.
The reasoning runs as follows. I've got 72ft of wharf - the length of a UK inland narrow boat. My “loads” are modelled on coal tubs 3ft in diameter, so a flat to carry them will be 4ft long. My proposed locomotive (I have a cunning plan) is 8ft6in long. So if we allow 10ft of dead space at one end and 10ft for loading at the other that leaves 52ft. Loads of room. Divide it as follows:
- 10ft for loading the finished product onto a barge;
- 10ft for tipping waste product into a tub;
- 10ft for tipping coke into the furnace;
- 10ft for loading shale into the retort;
- and 10ft for loading product onto a flat and tipping waste into the tailings.
At the time, I htought there'd be a margin of error because the areas overlapped slightly. No plan survives contact with reality, though.
The product flow is as follows:
Coke and shale are loaded offstage into tubs and placed on the flats. These are taken to the retort-house and loaded into the appropriate part. Waste is discharged from the retort house into empty tubs to be taken to the tailings whilst product, in small barrels, is loaded onto flats to be take to be loaded onto the barge.