tyneside:
Chris Webb:
A E Evans of Barking and Sheffield ran five AEC MK3 Mammoth Majors out of Dorman Long(BSC) Chemicals at Port Clarence int 60s and early 70s. I did a week of holiday relief up there from Sheffield in 1969,loading crude benzene out of Redcar,South Bank,Cleveland,Hartlepool,Consett and Evenwood,which I think was known as Randolph. The traffic manager was called Ivor and at dinnertime he would give you an Evenwood to load and then tip next day,getting the opportunity to park up at Scotch Corner early and have a dodgy.Rankins were running in and out of Port Clarence as well,on the tar side.
The place was falling down when I was there and I believe it was closed mid 70s.The coke plant at Evenwood was better known as Randolph but I haven’t got a clue why. We would get the odd load of coke from there for our domestic business. Somewhere in the Paul Gee thread there is a photo of an artic tipper belonging to John Stirk of Staindrop who did a lot of the tipper work from the plant. There was also Randolph Coachworks a commercial body builder based there. They built a lot of tipper bodies and always had a stand at Tipcon at Harrogate.
Tyneside
I think the pit at Evenwood was known as “The Randolph” colliery, named after the owners.