tarboat's photos

The leaves are turning gold as a Trans Pennine Express service to Liverpool arrives at Irlam Station. As well as an excellent cafe the site has a fine local railway museum.

The colliery was sunk in 1857-58 in the works yard of the Sheepbridge Iron and Coal Company (established 1862 and incorporated in 1864) to the Deep Hard seam. The Sitwell Coal was reached at 54 feet and the Deep Hard at 218 feet. This is the pumping enginehouse which appears to have contained a horizontal pumping engine working a shaft in the area just to the right of the building. The 1914 OS map shows the main colliery buildings demolished but the pumping engine house and boiler house remained and may ahve continued in use for a while after winding coal ended. The building is now used for storing builders' materials.

A happy afternoon some years ago exploring an old abandoned stone quarry which yielded lots of old machinery quietly rusting and rotting away. Here two crushers sit side-by-side, both made by Robert Broadbent & Son Ltd., Phoenix Ironworks, Stalybridge. On the left is a jaw crusher of the Blake's patent type for primary crushing of larger pieces of rock. To the right is a roll crusher designed to break smaller pieces of rock down to cubes for roads and paths etc. I think that the remains below the crushers might have included some form of rotary screen but the decay of the various parts made it difficult to be sure.

Verdi is a 1999 built oil & chemical tanker with a DWT of 3,045 tonnes. Seen here outbound on the Humber it was at that time registered in Antigua & Barbuda.The current registration is Cyprus.

Victoria Square is the first municipal housing built in Manchester. This tenement block was built in 1889 by Henry Spalding and A.W.Cross, for Manchester Corporation, comprising of 522 rooms, to accommodate 825 people. It is listed Grade II.

A well known steeplejack appears on this layout built by Bolton Model Railway Society. It can be seen the their unit at Bolton Market Place.

All vehicles to report to this office before unloading. Goods in reception at the closed Thomas Bolton copper foundry at Froghall. This has now been cleared away apart from the chimney.

Small England class locomotives Palmerston and Prince amidst the majestic scenery of the Welsh Highland Railway on the long straight after Rhyd Ddu station. These locomotives were built by George England and Co in 1864 and 1863 respectively in the first batch of four steam locomotives to operate on the Festiniog Railway.

A great day's walking on the moors between Wildboarclough and the Dane Valley. This remote area of Cheshire was once the location of a number of collieries including the extensive Dane Bower workings. The shafts on the moor such as this one were worked in the 18th century before the deeper coal was accessed using adits from close to the Dane, the last of which continued at work into the early 20th century. In the background is Shutlingsloe and further back the communications tower on Croker Hill.

The Sterkrade colliery was sunk in 1903 and operated independently until 1933 when it was absorbed into the Osterfeld complex. Shaft 1 at Sterkrade was eventually used to wind men and materials whilst the coal was raised at Osterfeld. Closure came in 1992 and the site has been cleared apart from the headframe and associated pithead building.

Side bridge on the Stockport Branch Canal at Gorton. Maintenance of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway Company's boats was undertaken at Gorton dock which was located on the Stockport Branch of the Ashton Canal a short distance from the junction with the main line. This is the bridge that carried the towpath across the entrance to the dock. It is dated 1864.

Campion Chambers, 23-25 St Nicholas Place, Leicester features cream terracotta and a nice art deco font. I guess it dates from the 1920s. The replacement windows don't help and I have cut off the garish subway frontage on the ground floor level.

The pits at Swan Lane and Long Lane, Hindley Green, were sunk c1864.They were purchased by the Swan Lane Brick & Coal Co.c1886 and then Swan Lane Collieries Ltd from 1910. This latter company reopened the Swan Lane colliery after it had closed in 1893. Final closure came in November 1927, a few months after this bill was paid. At the end there were 384 men underground and 107 surface workers.

The Ffestiniog Railway's 'Prince' climbing hard at Coed-y-Bleiddiau with a train of vintage stock during a 30742 Charters event.

Grinlow above Buxton saw an extensive limeburning industry develop in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By the second half of the latter century the kilns were leased by the Duke of Devonshire to the Brock family who continued to operate them until 1789. From then on into the first quarter of the nineteenth century the Duke appears to have managed the limeworks directly as part of his estates. The hill is covered in the remains of the industry and one of these 18th century earthen kilns is prominent in the foreground of this view looking up to Solomon's Temple. On average these kilns would have been operated for seven months each year.

The machine with the four-in-one bucket. This defunct speciman was at Countess Cliff, Harpur Hill. I don't think it has worked in years.

Electrical input at Hope cement works. One of the rotary kilns in the background.

The Wigan Coal and Iron Company was formed when collieries on the Lancashire Coalfield owned by John Lancaster were acquired by Lord Lindsay, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, owner of the Haigh Colliery in 1865. The company owned collieries in Haigh, Aspull, Standish, Westhoughton, Blackrod, Westleigh and St Helens and large furnaces and iron-works near Wigan and the Manton Colliery in Nottinghamshire. Collieries belonging to the Wigan Coal and Iron Company in 1896 were the Alexandra, Bawkhouse, Bridge, Lindsay and Meadow Pits in Haigh. The largest, the Alexandra Pit employed more than 650 workers and the Lindsay Pits more than 350. The Crawford, Kirkless, Moor and Woodshaw Pits in Aspull employed over 1,000 workers. Eatock Pits in Westhoughton employed 484 underground and 89 surface workers whilst the Hewlett Pits in Hart Common employed 981 underground and 182 on the surface. Ladies Lane Colliery in Hindley employed 282 underground and 40 surface workers. The Westleigh Pits were Priestners which employed 387 underground and 70 on the surface, Snapes, and Sovereign which had 180 underground workers and 68 on the surface. The King Coal Pit at Blackrod was a pumping pit, retained to drain the colliery workings. In Standish the company owned the Broomfield, Giants Hall, Gidlow, John, Langtree, Robin Hill, Swire and Taylor Pits. The largest of these was the Langtree Pit with more than 540 employees. Wigan Coal and Iron Company was the biggest colliery owner on the Lancashire Coalfield and in the 1920s employed 9,000 workers. The shafts of Parsonage Colliery in Leigh, sunk by the company between 1913 and 1920, were at the time the deepest in Britain. In 1930, the Wigan Coal & Iron Co. Ltd and the Pearson & Knowles Coal & Iron Co. Ltd combined their coal mining operations to establish the Wigan Coal Corporation.