"PLUTO and Woolworths" Topic

A discussion this morning led me to read a little more about PLUTO, in relation to where I live.

Allegedly we had storage tanks at the local railway station, which pumped fuel to the isle of wight, where it then went through the undersea pipe to France. The cutting is still there, and we do have storage tanks, but no sign of the pipe these days. The MOD "has been unable to confirm or deny that PLUTO actually ran alongside the railway track"…

What i did discover though was that our little village railway station had a vast warehouse and was known as 'Woolworths'. Apparently you could get anything there and having it shipped across the channel.

"Micheldever Station soon became known as 'the Woolworths depot' thanks to its ability to provide virtually anything that could possibly be required by the military. A shed, over 2,000 ft long was built to house the depot. Orders for stores received by late afternoon were packaged and left the depot by train that night and often reached Normandy the next day."

I did stumble acorss this wonderful story though:

link

"On one of my trips to Normandy transporting goods on a canal boat just outside Bayeaux. Two little French boys came up to us. It amazed me in that they spoke perfectly good English. Have you got any cigarettes for my Mum? I said no, to which he replied my mum said you can sleep with her if you wish for cigarettes. I said where is your Dad and he said he was a prisoner of war in Germany. My goodness what had things come to. Hasten to add I found him some cigarettes but declined his offer; I was tied to the boat."

Micheldever was still a major oil depot until relatively recently – we used to send oil trains to Micheldever around twice a week. A throwback to PLUTO, perhaps?

Certainly a functioning oil terminal. Could be.

Perhaps BP might have some Pluto info in their archives, I know they were heavily involved in Pluto.

The pipeline left Britain at Shanklin Chine. It is possibly the least hyped piece of D Day infrastructure – just the cut end of the pipe a few inches across with a sign saying what it is

I recently did a training course on coil-tubing technology in the oil field – the material said that the origin of today's coil tubing was directly linked to the PLUTO project.

Pretty sure I was told(45 years ago ish) that some concrete blocks on the beach at Calshot was the link for PLUTO over to the IOW.

There is a webpage devoted to odd wartime anomalies.
I,ll see if i can find it.