National fuel pipeline

If memory serves me correctly when you see what looks like a stunted telegraph pole with a dayglo orange roof on the top that marks where the pipeline travels.

Correct a white painted pole about 5 feet high with dayglow orange “roof”.
Usually within a few feet of it there is a “headstone” with a plaque indicating either it’s purpose …coded like the letters on the back of tanker trucks, or like the one near where I live the company name and a warning not to excavate 50 metres either side of the the marker, due to a high pressure pipeline.
I live near the Ineos owned main pipeline that runs south from Grangemouth.

My father was the project engineer for the M4. During construction they apprently kept find this pipeline that know one knew anything about

I am sure that comedian Mark Thomas did one of his “exposes” on the pipeline about ten years ago, I think the programme was about features that don’t appear on OS maps – the pumping stations being one of the examples used.

If memory serves me correctly when you see what looks like a stunted telegraph pole with a dayglo orange roof on the top that marks where the pipeline travels.

The best site I’ve found for PLUTO is at

http://www.combinedops.com/pluto.htm

The text is detailed (but succinct) and there’s a good map. All we need is for somebody to find a similar paper for the UK pipelines!!!
HTH
Resmoroh

Pluto pipelines were layed from giant Drums called “Conundrums”simply towed across the channel laying as they went!

Brize Norton still has it pumped in…….. think they would have to run a tanker in every 20 mins 24 hours a day to keep the place fed when I was there, and that was just for the VC10…….. Indeed it also pumps it directly to the aprons from the fuel farm, a filter unit is then connected to the ground and plane…..

No, it was John Cleese – well, I got the John right. Originally in the ‘At last, the 1948 show’ (c. 1967) and later rehashed by Monty Python.

………….whilst I was researching, brighter brains were posting!

…………and John Junkin? Just a guess. The old grey matter is not what it once was!

t’was John Cleese….sorry this thread is getting a bit silly..my fault!

There is a really big and well researched thread on the national air ministry fuel lines and storage facilities on the Airfield Information Exchange.
Wouldn’t like to say if the current fuel lines follow the war ones.

A book shop sketch with the late Marty Feldman comes to mind!

…………and John Junkin? Just a guess. The old grey matter is not what it once was!

Oh and Chumpy, what books don’t you have in your collection? I think that this might be the shorter list![/QUOTE]

I’m sure there must be one or two.

A book shop sketch with the late Marty Feldman comes to mind!

www.linewatch.co.uk/network.htm.
Or checkout http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret3.htm

Your associations are spot-on, avion ancien

You don’t know the relief that this gives to me!

Oh and Chumpy, what books don’t you have in your collection? I think that this might be the shorter list!

PLUTO and the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway

Your associations are spot-on, avion ancien….one of the pipelines ran from the Greatstone beach near the railway with pumping houses disguised as little flat-roof Art-Deco holiday bungalows
http://www.greatstone.net/history/pluto.htm

Couple of scans from a book entitled Times Forelock, the story of Shell during WW2, issued by Shell in 1949. About a page or so devoted to the national pipeline.

Read a book a few years back that covered the subject in greater detail along with setting the sea on fire in case of invasion, FIDO PLUTO etc..think the title was Petrol or Petroleum at War, cannot remember the author, published around the same time as the above.

Resmoroh is correct about PLUTO on the Isle of Wight, one of the pumping stations still exists at Sandown, bits of the actual pipline at Shanklin Chine just to the south.

avion ancien, Hi,
You and I should confer on “ramblings” and “failing memories”!!!!!
If my memory serves me right there were three main PLUTO “send” sites in UK, all connected to the main pipe-line system. There were two (one on the Isle of Wight, I think, and another a bit east of there) which terminated in Normandy and were directly in support of D-Day (and shortly thereafter). There was (again, my failing memory, I’m afraid) a third somewhere along the Sussex/Kent coast which terminated somewhere in the Pas de Calais and was (presumably) the main supply line once Normandy had been liberated.
I regret I have no knowledge of the diameter(s) of these pipes, and/or the pressures used to deliver the fuels (both PLUTO, and on mainland UK) from which one can get some ideas of the tonnages shifted – but they were quite considerable (and somebody will know!!). Onward transport of the fuel from the arrival (in France) to the user was (again, presumably) by the famous “Red Ball Express” road convoys. Pipe-lines may have been laid – I have no knowledge.
The technique has not been forgotten. There are no port facilities on Ascension. The vast amounts of aviation fuel required for Op CORPORATE arrived in a tanker which moored off-shore. A pipe-line was constructed (in no time flat!!) from a moored bouy to the beach, and from thence up to the Wideawake airfield. Same system as on D-Day!!!
HTH
Resmoroh

Would it have had any connection with PLUTO – “pipe line under the ocean”, if my memory, going back, forty plus years, does not let me down too badly. Also my brain associates this, for some reason, with the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. If it’s all nonsense, please forgive my ramblings!

hunterxf382, Hi,
That map shows only(?) those bits of the pipe-line(s) that are mainly used by Civil Aviation. There are a lot more on the Military side. And bear in mind that the links on that small map between one depot and another are shown schematically – not where they actually run (probably for the security reasons referred to above).
HTH
Resmoroh

http://www.total.gb.com/set/docs/SET%20exhibition%20boards.pdf Page 3 contains a rather small map showing what I assume is the current national refinery pipeline network?

austernj673, Hi,
The guys who know all about this sort of thing are over on the AiX Forum. When I was asking about my nearest bulk fuel store someone on that Forum sent me a map with all the main pipe-lines on it, but I can’t find it now!!
Fly a kite on AiX! But the subject may be more sensitive today than it was in WW2!!
HTH
Resmoroh