A rare view of a train in Portfield oil sidings, Chichester. 33059 has a train of TTA 45 ton tank wagons.
35mm negative dated 8/7/88.
Photographer John Vaughan.

From the Derelict Miscellany
The RAF fuel depot at Portfield, Chichester was built by Esso in 1938-9 as part of an Air Ministry contract for the supply and distribution of fuel to the nearby Tangmere, Westhampnett and Merston Airfields. Unlike later depots, the site didn't have a connection to the national Government Pipeline and Storage System, instead being supplied by rail. The fuel was stored in four 500-ton and two 350-ton Whessoe Foundry steel tanks covered with earth. It was then loaded into bowser lorries and taken by road to the airfields. Power to the site was provided by a six-cylinder National marine diesel engine.

Despite being camouflaged, by 1940, the depot appeared on Luftwaffe target maps and was even mentioned in a broadcast by the infamous ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, William Joyce, with the chilling words ‘‘We know about the petrol dump in Chichester’’. Air raids were carried out by German bombers on two separate occasions, but luckily for the people of Chichester the bombs fell wide of their mark.