tarboat's photos

The remote South Australian outback opal mining town of Andamooka is supplied with electricity by this 1650Kw diesel power station. Owned by Jeril Enterprises Pty Ltd the power station supplies a local mini grid. The first 240 volt electricity supply here was established in 1974 by John Lyons.

Porter built 0-8-0s Nos 9 and 13 working at the Klenovic opencast coal mine in Serbia. To get this shot involved scrambling up an enormous waste tip of red shale. It was loose and large lumps kept cascading down. By the time I reached the summit my boots were full of the rotten stuff.

Lane between the terraces in Halifax.

The afternoon passenger service headed by JS 8062 threads its way through the houses at Dazhuankuang on the western fringe of the Pingdingshan coal railway.

The Halifax Flour Society was formed on 1st May 1847 to provide a co-operative corn mill following discontent against the Corn Laws, corn dealers' prices, and because much flour was adulterated. The Society sold to the public through agents. Initially 2,800 people bought £1 shares, and the Society bought a mill at Bailey Hall from where the first batch of cheap flour was sold in 1848. When the Bailey Hall mill became too small, a new 6-storey Bailey Hall was built in 1862. This was one of the most modern grain mills at the time and was opened with a party for 1,400 people on April 7, 1863. Later the Society bought more land at Bailey Hall and a new mill was opened in 1880. This is the building seen here. The Society was sold to the Co-operative Wholesale Society in 1915 and the Bailey Hall mill was sold to Paton & Baldwin. This mill eventually closed for flour production in the 1930s. It is now occupied by Nestlé.

The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is a triangular 22-storey steel-framed building located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, and is considered to be a groundbreaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city at 20 floors high, and one of only two skyscrapers north of 14th Street - the other being the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, one block east. The building was designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling. The fascia is limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terracotta from the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in Tottenville, Staten Island as the floors rise.

A glimpse of the furnace line and chimneys of the sinter plant at the Baotou Steelworks.

At West Burton there are two power stations on the River Trent near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. One is a coal-fired power station, which was commissioned in 1968, and the second is a combined cycle gas turbine power station, commissioned in 2011. Both stations are owned and operated by EDF Energy. This is the coal fired station which generates 2,000 MW and was the first station of this capacity in Britain.

Late afternoon at Xifeng on the Lishu system at Jixi as SY 0951 is prepared for its next duty. The wooden hoppers on the left were shortly to be taken up to Qikeng Colliery for loading.

New occupant in the caban at Dinorwic slate quarry.

Inside of a storage hut on the technical area at Wickenby Airfield in Lincolnshire. This was a RAF WWII bomber base. Just like a big Nissen hut.

The Drypool bridge over the River Hull is a Scherzer lifting bridge and was designed by W. Morris, the Hull City Engineer. It was fabricated in Hull, being completed in March 1961. The flour mill in the background has since been demolished.

This cotton spinning mill at Hathershaw, Oldham, was originally built in 1860 and then rebuilt 1891 to the design of architect PS Stott. Production ceased in 1933 and the mill was used as an army barracks and then a demobilisation centre before becoming a mail order warehouse in 1953. It is now converted to business units.

The Didao system at Jixi was still 100% steam operated in 2009 although the action could be sporadic. In this case the train is shunting across the washery tracks before pushing back for the coal to be deposited onto a large stockpile just off to the right side of the photograph.

At Bank Top, above Rosedale Abbey an inclined tramway from Hollins Mines transported iron ore up around 400ft to these large kilns just below the North Eastern Railway branch terminus. The ore was tipped into the kilns from above to be calcined to drive off water and carbonic acid gas. This process dramatically reduces the weight of the ironstone which in turn reduces transport costs and royalties. Initially using locally mined poor coal, later the empty wagons returning from the ironworks in County Durham brought coal for the calcination process. Much of the masonry of the kilns survives but all the shutters and ironwork have long gone. The calcination process produces a lot of dust which is rich in iron oxide; this was recovered from 1920 onwards.

No.1 winder for the Marmion Shaft at the Bawdwin mine in north-east Myanmar. This was manufactured at the Siemens Works of English Electric at Stafford in the UK in 1925 and has been continuously in use since. The motor drive is rated at 295hp using 550 volts and drawing up to 436 amps. The No.2 winder is situated above and behind in the same building. Both units wind from a single shaft that is 1700ft deep and serves 14 levels. Currently the workings are flooded up to the sixth (adit) level at c700ft due to the pumps being switched off. The mine produces high grade ore containing silver, lead, zinc, and a little copper and gold. An image grabbed in great haste. This is in a military area and normally closed to outsiders. The industrial premises here are not officially open to view.

Bank Top footrail, Silverdale, March 1982.

The highlight of a trip in search of old limekilns was the Hawks Wood quarry adjacent to the Chesterfield Canal at Thorpe Salvin. Of the four eighteenth century flare kilns have survived on the site this one is unusual in having two draw tunnels serving a single bowl. These are an excellent survival of the type of intermittent kiln technology used in parts of South Yorkshire until at least the 1930s