tarboat's photos

Donkey traffic on the crossing at the Donghaikuang Colliery, Jixi Coal Administration.

Wiliam Bowers was making bricks at his Berry Hill Collieries in the early 1870's and on his death the business passed to Henry Warrington and Son. By the 1920's ownership was with Berry Hill Collieries Ltd and the works were very extensive. After nationalisation of the coal industry Berry Hill Brickworks Ltd was founded and in the 1960's was operating from four different locations.

Wiliam Bowers was making bricks at his Berry Hill Collieries in the early 1870's and on his death the business passed to Henry Warrington and Son. By the 1920's ownership was with Berry Hill Collieries Ltd and the works were very extensive. After nationalisation of the coal industry Berry Hill Brickworks Ltd was founded and in the 1960's was operating from four different locations.

Another colliery subsidiary operation. Astley and Tyldesley Collieries worked Gin Pit, Nook Pit and St George's Colliery and the brickworks was situated at Nook Colliery.

Armitage Brickworks, Woodkirk, Queensbury, West Yorkshire. A photograph of the brickworks in 1960 can be found here .

The Annesley Colliery was sunk in 1865 and bricks were made close to the site , in later years by the National Coal Board

A further mould design from the Accrington NORI brickworks

Accrington NORI works.

There isn't much wasted when it comes to the Chinese coal industry. Here at the Beichang washery the slurry from the separators is run into lagoons to dry out and is then dug out into tubs on the narrow gauge railway seen here or, in this case, into a horse drawn cart. It is used to make briquettes which are often burned in small specially made stoves.

The extension of the Daba-Guyaozi Coal Railway to the new coal mine at Yangchangwan was only completed in 2005. Until the diesels took over at the end of 2006, QJ class locomotives hauled long trains through the desert to and from Guyaozi. There wasn't much sun around on this visit and the temperature was below freezing.

At the nationalisation of the British Coal Industry in 1947 the National Coal Board inherited some of the brickworks associated with the collieries. The Board continued to run many of these works as a means of using unsaleable small coal and spoil materials. This example is from Hic-Bibi, near Coppull in Lancashire.

East of the small town of Lingwu the railway passes through a desert and semi-desert landscape all the way to the mines at Guyaozi. After a long wait on a bleak hillside the afternoon empties arrived behind a QJ class locomotive which was thrashing uphill in great style.

As the afternoon light fades and more snow threatens, workers leave the train at Fuli mine on the Hegang Coal Railway.

The country railway at its best. An afternoon passenger service seen across the rice paddies as it sets off from the stop at the little village of Caiziba on the Jiayang coal railway. As usual the carriages look to be well filled with local people.

Detail of one of the kilns at the Acme Marls site in Burslem.

A crossing at the main depot of Baotou steelworks.

Black Five 45231 heads an afternoon train out of Ramsbottom on the East Lancs Railway. It was only 2.30 but already the sun was dropping behind the hill.

Ashworth Products at Church near Accrington is part of the PDM Group. This is one of the UK’s leading collectors and processors of used cooking oils. The Accrington plant is now the largest recovered vegetable oil processing plant in the UK. Vegetable oils are collected from a wide variety of catering establishments and food factories before being processed and refined into a range of recovered vegetable oils. Uses include animal feed fat blending, biodiesel, bio-fuel for renewable energy production at PDM’s Widnes plant, bio-fuel for co-firing in coal-fired power stations in place of fossil fuels.