tarboat's photos

A Mallet leads its train on a brisk start out of Nefasit on the Eritrea Railway. The prickly pear is even trying to establish in the village.

Typical Local Authority pride demonstrated on the 1914 school buildings at Queensferry. FCC = Flintshire County Council. You wouldn't get such frivolity on a new council building. I presume that this is the work of J C Edwards of Ruabon. This photo earned me a visit from the police. I took two quick shots of the building but that was enough for several local people to report my car registration as belonging to a dodgy character. They were bemused as to why anyone would want to photograph such things and went away convinced, I am sure, that I am a very strange person.

An eclectic mix of brick with terracotta embellishments on this house in Chester Road, Sandycroft. The lintels over the windows are of glazed brick in buff and white. I believe that the terracotta is probably from the nearby Aston Hall Coal & Brick Co which certainly supplied the glazed wall capping for the walls to all the houses along the road in this area.

The sun us about to rise above the hill as the morning passenger service to the copper mine at Shenbutong climbs into the hills on the Baiyin Mining Railway. As usual the locomotive is being worked hard on the steep gradient.

Metal processing is the major industry in this part of Baiyin using the lead, copper and silver wrested from the ground nearby. I have no idea just what was going on inside these brutalist structures but the plume says a lot about Chinese industry in the remoter areas.. I note from the recent satellite photos that this works has now closed and is largely demolished.

A Mallet leads a train over the short viaduct at Arbaroba on the climb towards Asmara on the Eritrea Railway.

It was going dark and it was very cold as we drove back to town from the Lishu system of the Jixi Coal Railway. By this time there wasn't much steam on the Hengshan bank and associated collieries so we hadn't bothered much about it. "Why not pop in to the Lijing mine" we said, "you never know there might be something happening there". Good call because SY 0804 was busy shunting the washery and this atmospheric location gave us some nice shots before we retreated, shivering, to the van. Oh it was so dark - 1/15 at ISO 1600.

Kerr Stuart 3063 of 1918 at Brownhills West, Chasewater Railway. Part of the fun at the Industrial Railway Society AGM.

This combined cycle gas power station was commissioned in 1994 and has a generating capacity of 485MW. Since 2014 the Seraing plant has been part of Belgium's strategic power reserve and is called on to generate electricity only at times of shortage. The station is currently managed by EDF Luminus but at the time I took the photo it was under the Belgian company SPE.

This small draw kiln is in good condition and is listed Grade II.

Not long left now for Cottam power station. One day kids will not know what a cooling tower was. This reminder comes from my visit earlier this year.

Whilst out and about seeking limekilns I happened upon these pillars for the brake drum of a self-acting incline. After a bit of research it appears that this was for a line serving the Bryngwyn limestone quarry to the south of Gwernymynydd. Map evidence suggests that it was built after 1914 and abandoned by 1940. Stone was taken down to a loading bank close to the main road in the village.

Hunslet 3738 of 1953 running as Holly Bank No.3 enters the sidings at Chasewater Heaths with a rake of mineral wagons whilst the driver of the NCB Hunslet diesel watches.

The Shap Beck Quarry received a new plant in 1999 and since 2009 supplies around 650,000 tonnes of crushed kiln feed limestone from Shap Beck to Shap Fell processing plant nearby (Tata steel) and used in the large scale production of lime for steelmaking. The quarry also supplies around 300,000 to local and regional markets and has an on-site plant for making asphalt for road surfacing. There are 21 people employed directly and the quarry supports a further 30 jobs for drivers and contractors. The site extends to 118 hectares and is operated by the Hanson Aggregates division of the Heidelberg group.

Chemical works always have an interesting range of buildings and shaped. Synthite Ltd was founded in West Bromwich in 1920 to produce resins but soon became a successful manufacturer of formaldehyde. This is their Alyn Works at Mold where amino resins are also manufactured.

Shunting some of the yellow acid tanks in the yard at Baiyin Gongsi.

A bit of fun with a wide angle lens at the Vandyke curve on the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway. The WD Baldwin heads a long train towards Stonehenge.

Cefn Mawr Quarry supplies limestone to Padeswood Cement Works. They also dump cement kiln ash in the old workings.