tarboat's photos

A collection of corrugated iron structures at Mutehill just outside Kirkcudbright.

The trouble with the passenger trains on the Pingdingshan Coal Railway is that the windows do not open and are covered by a protective mesh on the outside. This does not make for easy photography which is a great pity as there is much to see on the line running westwards to Baofeng and on to the mines at Hanzhuangzhan. Everywhere you look on this journey you can see collieries, or limekilns, or coke ovens, or brickworks, or the whole lot at once. Small mines abound and in this view through the grime smeared pane there are four headgears to be seen.

Pingdingshan was a city of level crossings when I first visited. This example at the western end of the marshalling yard at Shenxi was replaced by an underpass by May 2006. OK for donkey carts but no good for minibuses. The coal railway is so busy here that the crossings caused significant delays to the ever increasing road traffic.

Originally closed in 1966 the Barnsley Main pit was reopened to transfer workers from the Barrow pit, which closed in 1985 owing to geological problems. It finally closed in 1991 and the headgear and engine house are now preserved in the 'care' of the local council.

The Audley Brick & Pipe Co., Newcastle-under-Lyme, is recorded in operation from 1900-1908 at Boyles Hall Brickworks, Audley.

In 1852 by Mr Geo. Cleunel opened a brick and tile work in Sanquhar, soon building a large and prosperous trade in drainage tiles but by the 1880s was suffering from a lack of capital and modernisation. In 1889 by another tenant, Mr James Brodie, took over and soon improved and extended the works, which by 1891 comprised five Newcastle Kilns and a Staffordshire Oven. The improved plant included a machine for the production of pressed bricks for outside building. Messrs Isherwood Brothers ran the works at a later stage, and then a Mr Scott eventually they were taken over by the Sanquhar and Kirkconnel Collieries Company.

Apedale brickworks was part of the operations of the Midland Coal, Coke & Iron Co Ltd. The plant was capable of making 40,000 bricks a day from clay raised from the company's collieries nearby.

J & M Craig was formed by two brothers, James and Matthew, in 1847, with fireclay and brick works at Dean and also at Hillhead in Kilmarnock and at Perceton, near Irvine. They also made high class sanitaryware. The company was incorporated as J.& M. Craig Ltd in 1896 but went into liquidation in 1923. At both sites the company worked coal and fireclay mines.

J&R Howie Ltd., Hurlford Fireclay Works, Kilmarnock. The works was just to the east of Kilmarnock and supplied by a number of mines in the area. It operated from 1858 until 1971 producing pottery, bricks, chimneys, garden ornaments and enamelled sanitary ware. The buildings were demolished by 1979.

Gilbertfield colliery and brickworks, Cambuslang, Lanarks. Owned by the Cambuslang Coal Company.

Seasons greetings to all my Flickr friends. I took the dogs for a walk along the Bollin this morning after a night when the temperature went down to -11. Much of the river was frozen over and with a mist rising from the surface in places it looked very picturesque. Jefferson found a place where there was some open water and went for a swim! He had icicles in his whiskers but soon dried off by running around very fast!

Glimpsed in a gap between hills, a pair of QJs hurry a train of tank wagons westwards towards Lindong on the Jitong Railway. The line here threads its way through a series of deep cuttings carved out of the bare hills.

Carlisle was not a place where you normally saw Deltics and there was plenty of interest when 55 002 arrived from Leeds at the head of the Deltic Scotsman tour. Why the crowd all had to gather right against the locomotive to take their photos is beyond me. The subsequent run to Newcastle was less than spectacular as the locomotive suffered badly with greasy rails and nearly slipped to a halt several times.

Platin Cement Works two miles south-west of Drogheda was developed on a site where cement had been manufactured since 1938. In 1972 a single kiln with an annual capacity of 400,000 tonnes was completed and this was increased to 1.4 million tonnes when a second much larger kiln which was completed in 1977. The works supplies cement across the northern and eastern parts of Ireland.

Two telescopic gasholders and a circular one. Glimpsed from the railway at Tiefa.

The destination of the different three phase lines is marked on the wall of the generating hall at the Ardnacrusha hydro-electric power station.

Memories of a lost business. Macclesfield's Woolworths on Mill Street in the run up to Christmas in 2007. Just over a year later it would be closed as the business went into administration. The shop is now an Iceland outlet.

The demand for electricity is expanding rapidly in China and this is being partially met by the construction of coal fired plant in many of the coal producing areas. This one was snapped through the bus window whilst passing near Jixi in Heilongjiang. There is already one power station on line a few kilometres from here.