tarboat's photos

SY 0819 was rearranging a train at Liugongli on the Baiyin Mining Railway after delivering bagged material to the yard on the siding in the background.

Flickr's very own Renown wrestles with the throaty ex Bournemouth Corporation Daimler Roadliner at the "Hanley Finale" running day. I was treated to a spirited run up to Bentilee and back in this bus. Thanks Martyn. :-) The 1960s charms of Hanley Bus Station have somewhat faded, as have the surrounding buildings, the boarded-up remains of some of which are seen in the background. The new bus station is due to open some time soon, but then it was also supposed to be open towards the end of last year.

Opened in 1927 and modernised several times the Hansa cokeworks eventually had 314 ovens producing up to 5,400 tonnes of coke daily for use at local steelworks. After closure in 1992 some of the plant has been retained as a museum. This view shows the interior of the compressor building which is outside the museum area.

This colliery was sunk by the Clarke's of Noblethorpe Hall in 1861-66 and was probably undertaken by James Farrar, brother of Sarah Ann Clarke. The later history of the pit is not well recorded and it was disused by 1906 although it may have been used as a pumping shaft by the National Coal Board at a later date. The site has a good range of remains including this fine stone heapstead which is in remarkably good condition.

Maltby Colliery commenced sinking in 1907 with production starting in 1911. The mine had a difficult time in the past few years and in February 2007 was sold to Hargreaves Services by UK Coal plc. With a workforce of around 500 it was producing c800,000 tonnes of coal a year of which more than 60% went to Drax power station. The colliery also supplied coking coal to the Monckton coking plant. Finally defeated by geological difficulties the pit has now closed and is being stripped.

A pair of QJs are almost at the summit of the Jinpeng section of the Jitong Railway with a westbound freight. The exhaust may not have been as spectacular as that in the icy winter months, but it was a pleasant experience to relax in the hills with a bottle of beer whilst watching the traffic on the last steam operated main line.

Arrow Mill, Castleton, Rochdale was was designed by Sydney Stott for R & T Howarth. It was built very quickly. The contract to build was signed in late 1906, the first brick was laid in January 1907, the engine first ran under steam in February 1908 and the first cotton was spun in this large mill fifteen months after the first brick was laid. It was acquired by Courtaulds Ltd in 1934 and sold by them to Arrow Mill Fabrics Ltd in 1979. This was the last cotton mill to operate in the Rochdale area and did not cease production until the late 1990s. It is now listed Grade II and is in multiple occupation.

S.A. Cokeries et Houillères d'Anderlues first erected coke ovens in 1904 which were replaced by new ones in 1931. The works produced foundry coke and was one of the smallest and oldest coke by-product plants still operating in Belgium at the time of closure in November 2002. In the foreground is the remains of a cooling tower whilst in the background the building shows signs of the failed conversion scheme that was begun here some time ago. It was apparently stopped due to the contaminated state of the site.

Originally built in the late 19th century as a mission hall, this building was subject to a complete refurbishment in 2006. It is owned by the National Trust and is leased to the local community as a village hall.

This builder's yard at Corwen is rather more photogenic than the derelict corrugated iron pavilion.

There aren't many two storey corrugated iron houses to be found in the UK and this one is quite a mixture. Alongside the main road at Bronaber nr Trawsfynydd. I suspect that the road frontage is the original building and the rest, like Topsy, just growed! :-)

The first of two corrugated iron dwellings spotted whilst travelling past Bronaber near Trawsfynydd. This one seems to have been extended more than once.

Three of the four headframes at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery are lit up briefly by the winter sun. Sadly the future of the site is far less bright as this scheduled monument is left to decay.

Lead/zinc ore being tipped for grading and moving to the loading bunkers at Wallah Gorge in north-east Myanmar. The ore from the deep mine at Bawdwin is brought out along the adit level to Tiger Camp and then through another tunnel to the bunkers here where it can be transferred to the Burma Mines Railway for transporting to the smelter at Namtu. The timber and corrugated iron architecture is typical of the Burma mines.

Red Hill Bank brickworks was established in the 1890s alongside another brickworks, the Rocester Works adjacent to Rocester Station. By the 1922 the two establishments appear to have amalgamated into one works which was still in business in the mid 1950s. The site is now occupied by the JCB factory.

From Wikipedia. Bradford Colliery Brickworks operated on the site of the Bradford Colliery in Bradford, Manchester, between the early 1870s and 1903. To exploit the seams of fireclay found between the coal seams, colliery manager Edward Williams built a large kiln to a design patented in 1870 by Friedrich Hoffmann, which permitted the continuous production of bricks. One of the largest brick-making facilities in the area, the kiln was more than 30 metres (98 ft) long and 17 metres (56 ft) wide, and probably contained 12-14 separate firing chambers. The kiln fell into disuse after the colliery's fireclay workings were abandoned in 1903, and it was eventually demolished in the late 1940s.

Glazed brick from the Burnley area. It has been suggested that this may have been produced at Towneley Colliery.

The Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company was established in 1874. The business flourished and 'Hathernware' and glazed 'faience' was exported worldwide during the first three decades of the twentieth century and many cinemas were faced and decorated with the products of this works. Although the company survived into the 1970's when restoration projects began to provide much needed business, takeover by Ibstock finally led to closure of the works in summer 2004. At one time the company also produced blue bricks from the Cliff Brickworks at Kingsbury near Tamworth in Warwickshire. Cliff brickworks opened in 1870 and closed in 1969. This example of a brick paver survives outside the offices of the Hathern brickworks.