Edward Holdsworth
PUFFIN’ BILLY
Drawing by Edward Holdsworth of Puffing Billy
During the heyday of Liverpool Docks, and when the overhead railway was
at it’s busiest, one of the many interesting sights was the small steam
engines that worked between the huge variety of ships and the
warehouses, via the ‘Dockers Umbrella’ as it became known, carrying all
sorts of goods. The rail tracks were like those which carry trams, set
level with the cobble stones, they criss crossed all over the dock
landscape, and running the length of each dock, enabled the huge
‘nodding’ cranes (mounted on the flat roofs of the dockside ‘sheds’) to
load and unload very quickly and efficiently. These ‘Puffin’ Billies’
made a loud noise which was accompanied by a continuous ‘clang clang’ of
a brass bell which often startled the many carthorses as they also
carried and delivered huge cotton wool bales to the warehouses. These
were outside the docks and were twenty floors or more high, no windows
and served by a thick rope hoist. The dock walls, some twenty foot high
and made of granite stones, were built by Italian POWs during the First
World War. The railway was alas demolished in 1956 as the docks slowly
lost the customers and business.
By Edward Holdsworth
There are plans to redevelop the North Docks site by Peel Holdings – the
current owners of the Port of Liverpool – and the website for
information on the ‘Liverpool Waters’ project can be found at http://www.liverpoolwaters.co.uk/main.html.
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A good website for historical information on Liverpool’s docks is ‘Port
Cities: Liverpool’ the address of which is
http://www.mersey-gateway.org.
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National Museums Liverpool also has dedicated dock pages at
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/nof/docks/index2.html.
The new museum of Liverpool which is due to open in 2010/11 will also
have a display based on the Liverpool Overhead Railway which will
include one of the original railway carriages -
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/collections/transport/overheadrailway.asp
- as well as a recreation of part of the ‘docker’s umbrella’ (the space beneath the railway). A link to information on the forthcoming museum is http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/.