Northwich ICI traffic

“The light railway had been built to relieve pressure on the overworked Oakleigh Sidings”

THE Cheshire town of Northwich was a major centre of chemical manufacture for much of the twentieth century, a development that dated back to the 1870s when John Brunner and Ludwig Mond opened a works at nearby Winnington to produce soda ash (sodium carbonate) by the Solvay ammonia-soda process.

By 1926, the year that Brunner Mond became part of the giant chemical conglomerate Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), it had also acquired a second soda ash works at Lostock, to the east of the town, while in 1927 a third works was opened at Wallerscote.

Subsequent expansion –driven by burgeoning demand from the glass, detergent and chemical industries – meant that by 1970 over a million tons of soda ash a year was produced in Northwich. This involved