tarboat's photos

Bunkers and coal piles at the back of the Beichang Washery on the Chengzihe system at Jixi. The concrete covered conveyor carries the incoming coal which is unloaded in the shed on the far left.

In 1840 Robert Williamson opened the Tower Hill Colliery in Staffordshire, to the east of Mow Cop. To take coal to the markets available along the Macclesfield Canal he constructed a railway of 4ft 8ins gauge connecting Tower Hill and his nearby Trubshaw colliery to a wharf on the canal at Kent Green. Construction was under way quickly and the major work, a tunnel through the hill at Mow Cop, was being driven by February 1842. The line opened on Boxing Day 1842. On the west side of the tunnel the line descended via two self-acting inclines to Kent Green. This view is from the remains of the embankment of the lower incline, looking down to where the line passed under the North Staffordshire Railway just before the wharf which is behind the long brick building that incorporates a canal warehouse. The white gable end is a building associated with the coal wharf. There is no trace of the underbridge by which the line passed under the main line railway, but it was situated just to the right of the road bridge. The line closed with the pit in 1887.

In the countryside around Nanpiao can be found a rich mixture of industry. Here at Hongshila there are derelict brick kilns with the staging and simple screen of a drift mine behind. The local cement works fills the background.

When I first visited Hegang in 2005 this works had only been open for a short while and security wasn't that hot. I walked in past the gatehouse waving my camera and the guys inside just waved back. I dashed around grabbing some shots before they changed their mind, but nobody seemed bothered that I was there. The next time I was there things were very different with barriers and heavy security and access was impossible, so I am glad that I seized the day and went for it the first time. This is a tiny little plant compared with most modern banks of ovens. Even the coke car was to the same scale.

We went lurcher racing the other day. Jefferson had his usual afternoon thinking he was in heaven and took part in three races. He is seen here, on the left of the leading pair, coming a good second in the quarter mile dash. This is definitely his best distance. Niamh had her first race ever and came last in the 250m sprint. Now Niamh doesn't do last and had a good think about this before her second race in which she set off immediately across the infield to meet the lure and the rest of the pack as they came around the top bend. The result was that the race was stopped and she had to be given the 'walk of shame' and removed from the field! Oh well, some dogs are too clever for their own good. :-))

The central power plant of the City of Stoke-on-Trent Electricity Department at Hanley was started up on 10th April 1913. This allowed a three-phase supply in bulk to the undertakings of Burslem, Hanley, Longton and Stoke. Demand was such that the plant was extended in 1919 and 1922. The Electricity Department operated a fleet of electric vehicles as seen in this view from c1920 outside the power house at Hanley. I have no information about the vehicles and would welcome further details.

First train of the last steam day at the Caldon Low gala was headed by the Black 5; seen here storming up Bradnop Bank in fine style.

Spoil trains in the upper levels of the Jalainur opencast mine. The nearest train was just finishing loading whilst the other two in the centre were heading to lower workings. At least three other trains are visible in this view.

I suppose this is one way to get a better view when running tender first. JS 5741, shunting pilot for the day, is heading down a branch serving one of the industrial areas of Hailar from where it will remove wagons for despatch towards Harbin. The shunter appears to be sitting on the front buffer beam.

This impressive building was originally built c 1891 / 92 for brewers William Henry Hutchinson & Son and in 1916 became part of Home Brewery. In 1921 it was sold to Murphy & Son who are still in business there to this day manufacturing and supplying aids to the brewing industry. The building was designed by architect William Bradford of Carlton Chambers, Regent Street, London and built by Dennett & Ingle of Nottingham.

On a recent wander I was able to have a peek into this coal shaft that was probably last used around 1850. Looks as if it is stone lined throughout rather than just down to the rock head. It's a long way down to the water!

There were so many trains that Sunday afternoon at Huan He Junction outside Shenyang, that I became a bit blasé and started looking at different angles rather than playing safe. I don't normally shoot this tight outside but the sun in the background probably forced me into working this way as QJ 1876 heads towards the city with a freight from the direction of Anshan. I wish I could go back there with a DSLR and have the same trains to shoot.

The Trentham Gravel Co. Ltd. once operated a quarry at Trentham and in 1948 when this was worked out they purchased land at Willoughbridge and Lordsley in Shropshire. Here they developed a modern and efficient gravel works with a production of 2,000 tons of materials per day. I found this gem of an advert in the 1960 Stoke-On-Trent Official Handbook.

The flagman/shunter has to suffer temperatures of below -20C as a trainload of spoil is pushed up past the cabin for Nanzhan yard on the Chengzihe system at Jixi. A year later heated vans with electric light signalling had been provided on these trains and the shunter looked happier.

A detail from below the first floor windows at the Greaves Arms, Yorkshire Street, Oldham. This is a pieced designed to fit in the outer angles of a bay window. Probably a product of Accrington or Rochdale.

The original Greaves Arms on Yorkshire Street in Oldham was built about 1804 and was given the name The Greaves Arms in 1826. It was demolished in 1922 and the present Greaves Arms was built in 1925 and placed further back on the site. The exterior features a wealth of terracotta detail.

The Nanpiao Coal Railway may have been largely steam operated out on the line at this time, but in the Control office at Xiamiaozi things were much more up-to-date. The controller had a video wall to view operations throughout the system and could monitor the whole system very easily.

Another of those interesting bumps in the ground that need to be researched and explained. This lies in a narrow isthmus of the Parish of Pott Shrigley which bumps up against the three adjacent parishes of Lyme Handley, Poynton and Adlington and makes for some interesting coal mining development on the different estates. In the late 1840s the land here was in the ownership of the executors of the late William Turner, textile manufacturer from Blackburn who had purchased a lot of Pott Shrigley from the Downes family in the early nineteenth century and then moved into their ancestral home at Shrigley Hall. The 1848 tithe map shows a trackway from a wharf on the canal to the site of this pit and I suspect that coal was being trammed up to the boats at this time by the lessees Samuel Hunt & Co. By the early 1880s the pit was being operated by the Needham family who had originated in nearby Worth but had for many years operated collieries in Hurdsfield, Macclesfield. George Needham is listed as owner and manager in an 1884 list of collieries, but he had died in 1880 and I suspect that by then the colliery was being run by his son Joseph who was living with his family at Red Acre at the time of the 1881 census. He stated his occupation as Engine Man as he had been since the 1850s at Hurdsfield. By 1888 operations appear to have ceased and the tramway is noted as disused. Joseph went off to Chorlton to become a coal merchant. The tramroad embankment is seen running in from the right side of the photograph and the spoil tip of the pit is left centre. The extract from the 1882 Ordnance Survey map has the tramroad alignment running up from the bottom and the position from which the photograph was taken marked with a red X. The shaft here was 255ft deep to the Arley seam which is locally known as the Redacre Mine and is about 2ft thick. It is a good quality coal and burned well when I tried the pieces collected from the spoil tip.