tarboat's photos

The track gang watch a passenger service from Diaobingshan to the various collieries on the approaches to the junction station at Sanjiazi on the Tiefa Coal Railway.

The stepped terraced houses with weaver's garrets is Paradise Street. The whole terrace was modernised in the 1970s and saved from impending demolition by our caring and conservation minded council. The nearer mill is Bridge Street Mills whilst in the background is Brown Street Mill which is very slowly being converted into apartments after years of dereliction. In the right foreground are the houses with roof gardens on the corner of Bridge Street and Henderson Street.

The new conveyor and crushing systems at Pentre Halkyn Quarry will allow extraction of stone from under the former processing area. The annual output here is about 1 million tonnes of stone.

The use of the railway as a pedestrian thoroughfare is normal practice across China. Certainly nobody seems the slightest bit concerned that SY 1299 is on its way from the station at Huangjia with the afternoon passenger service on the Nanpiao Coal Railway.

Westbound train a short distance before arriving in Lindong on the Jitong Railway. This particular trip proved short of sun at critical moments and short of trains at others. Still, it was worth waiting on the hill taking in the view whilst waiting for the train to arrive.

The headgear is just visible above the typical brick and concrete outline of the washery building at Breza Colliery.

The Dublin based flour dynasty erected the stone portions of their mills in the nineteenth century, overlooking the Grand Canal's Ringsend Basin. These structures gained fame due to being occupied by Nationalist forces during the 1916 Easter uprising. The concrete silos were added in the 1940s. Taken over by food giant IAWS in 1948, production finally ended in 2001. The site has stood derelict since then awaiting redevelopment.

Not many double track narrow gauge industrial lines around, and certainly not like the Dahuichang Limestone Railway just outside Beijing. There is little room left for doubt as to the number of the locomotive in charge of this rake of empties heading for the loading chutes. Sadly the line only lasted for a few more months before being replaced by lorries. Locomotive No.4 from this line is now undergoing restoration at Boston Lodge on the Ffestiniog Railway in the UK.

Deltic 55 002 at Carlisle with the Deltic Scotsman railtour.This ran from York to Inverkeithing via Leeds, Carlisle and Newcastle and then back via the East Coast line. On departure for Newcastle the train soon ran into trouble when damp rail and fallen leaves created problems for the Deltic near Wetheral with severe slipping occurring after being checked by a preceding DMU.

In 1861 the London and North Western Railway Company (LNWR) which had been operating a steam packet service across the Irish Sea, moved its Irish terminus from Kingstown (Dun Laoghaoire) to North Wall Quay in Dublin. In 1883 the company bought the Prince of Wales Hotel, and soon afterwards replaced it with the London and North Western Hotel. This is LNWR picked out in the terracotta on this former railway hotel at North Wall, Dublin. It is very rare to find a British railway company on buildings in Ireland. I believe that this is one of only three examples.

DART 29113 departs Broombridge Station for Dublin

Another day on the Jitong Railway. Early morning sun on an eastbound train at Biligou, set against a background of rocky mountainside.

Although coal winding ceased at the combined Sälzer-Amalie colliery in 1966, some shafts, including that at Amalie have been retained for pumping and drainage purposes relating to other mines in the Ruhr. On the morning I took this photograph the wheels were spinning as winding operations were underway. An unusual feature is that the headframe steelwork is at an angle relative to the shaft tower.

The Quinn Cement plant at Ballyconnell has a production capacity of 3,800 tons per day.

The Staffordshire Potteries Water Works Company began work on constructing a pumping station at Wall Grange in 1847. A steam pumping engine was ordered from Sandys Vivian of Hayle, Cornwall. Unfortunately in November 1848 the ship carrying the engine was involved in a collision and lost. A new engine was built at Hayle and commenced work in September 1849. This is the beam of the 1849 engine which was named "Stafford". It worked, along with a second engine "Davenport" supplied by the same firm in 1854, until pumping was transferred to three electric surface pumps in 1933. Both engines were scrapped in 1933. The photograph comes from an album purchased in a sale and shows the beam of "Stafford" c1930. Note the lack of a cap on the bearing for the beam..

Defence of the entrance to the Tees and the Redcar furnaces included a series of pillboxes on the coast. Erosion of the dunes under this example at The Gare has seen it toppled. The background is formed by the steelworks and associated coking plant.

Decaying remains at Beeding cement works.

Darlaston Brick Co, brickworks was situated to the north-west of Darlaston & James Bridge Station shortly after 1900. There were six rectangular kilns shown on the 1917 OS map. By 1924 it had become the Darlaston Brick Co. Ltd, but by 1938 the site had been cleared and other industry developed.