tarboat's photos

Down's Garage in Mary Tavy. At one time this would have been a petrol filling station and car repair shop but now provides a base for a coach hire business.

5619 is prepared in the yard at Cheddleton ready for a 30742 Charters event. The snow on that day was a surprise and made for some excellent photography.

Stone Dam Mill was a steam powered worsted spinning mill built for William Huntriss. It is now warehouse shop. The mill was built c1836 for worsted spinning and extended c1855. In 1889 Hugh Campbell moved to Halifax to start his own business manufacturing gas engines. He set up a workshop in Stone Dam Works, Well Lane, Halifax, financed by local people who admired his workmanship. As the business developed he had new premises built and moved out of the Stone Dam site. The building is Grade II listed.

A small section of the steelworks at Port Talbot.

The Long Company Mummers are a long-established team of players who delight audiences with their traditional play on only four nights in early January every year, ending on Twelfth Night (6 January). The play itself is an amalgam of traditional texts which have been selected by each player to be the best representation of their character. The characters are King Christmas, St George, The Prince of Paradine, Common Jack, The Doctor and Beelzebub. Supported by a band of musicians, the players arrive from the dark, deliver their seasonal play by lantern light, and disappear back into the night.

Water tower at the Yijing coal washery in Beipiao. The locals told me that this was built in the 1930s by the Japanese during their occupation of Manchuria. The colliery railway also had a Japanese steam locomotive built in 1936.

Casting with aluminium at Leander Architectural in Dove Holes.

Nice terracotta detailing on this terrace row on Middle Walk in Knutsford, Cheshire. A close look reveals there is also decoration on the chimneystack.

The morning empty log bogies and a coach for workers heading for their logging camp heads towards Valea Pestilor on the line out of Viseu de Sus.

This spinning mill at the east end of Dean Clough Mills in Halifax was built 1849-51 for James Akroyd and Sons who were engaged in worsted manufacture. It was erected to replace the original mill that was destroyed by fire in 1847. The double beam engine that powered the mill appears to have been supplied by the engineering firm of Wren and Bennett of Manchester, who may also have influenced the engineering of the building. This engine was replaced in 1894 by a Musgrave inverted vertical, with replacement of the boilers at the same time. It is listed Grade II.

Gasholder at Cliff Vale on the site of the Etruria gasworks. Now demolished.

A section of a long bank of limekilns in Beipiao. These are still in regular use but were stopped due to it being winter. A close look reveals coal and limestone piles on top and burned lime at the bottom alongside the limeburners' huts.

Filmpalast Neue Zeit in the German town of Nordhausen.

19B 1412 climbing hard between Drew and Jubilee on the former New Cape Central Railway.

Stopping over in London on the way to Germany we took a stroll down to the Tate Modern with a detour to the Millennium Footbridge which was clearly very popular. It no longer wobbles! :-)

SY 0441 leads the loaded slag ladles onto the tipping banks at the Anshan steelworks. The excavator in the foreground was used to load lorries with slag once it has cooled and solidified.

SY 1091 shunts coal wagons in the washery at Guangshan Mine, Beipiao. All now gone as the coal industry here has collapsed.

Terracotta at its very best on the exterior of the Grade One listed Pierhead Building in Cardiff, built in 1897 for the Bute Docks Company to the design of the English architect William Frame. The terracotta was supplied by Ruabon based brickmakers JC Edwards & Co. It is now a visitor and education centre for the National Assembly.