Some industrial narrow gauge photos

[sir douglas]

and a mortar mixing board built onto the track

[Ohmisterporter]

The detail in most of these photographs is excellent.

[Artless Bodger]

I'm coming to the end of the ones with railway interest.

 

No 80. No 2 m/c being erected. The standard gauge temporary track is visible across the far end of the machine house. The NG snaking along over the pipe tunnel* under the floor (you can just see the arch of it in the extreme foreground) with the workmen unloading concrete for laying the machine house floor. To the right is No 1 m/c dryer pit, soleplates and the drain gulley down the front side of the machine (paper machines have a front (or tending) side and a back (or drive) side. A load of dryer frame components on the floor - probably for no 1, and a drying cylinder on the floor at the far end ready to be lifted and installed.

 

*It was tidied up and cleaned when no 1 was taken out and no 2 rebuilt in around 1975/6, but was still a squalid hole in the early 80s, but not as bad as no 3 next door which had been rebuilt many years earlier. I never saw the rats reputed to live down there but the cockroaches, living on leaked starch, were legion and crunched under foot. The far end under the driers was known as Piccadilly Circus on account of the multitude of pipes traversing the space.

 

No 82. Water Tower. Looking towards the river where the big steam crane is at work excavating the river bank. The track in the foreground is either the siding connection from the mainline, or parallel to it. Referring back to the 'modern' photo taken from Hornblower's cab above, looking back towards the mill, the later water tower (6 legs, tall) was built just to the right of the original 8 legged one in photo 82, so gives some idea of the relationship between the tracks.

 

No 85. Fitting the drying cylinders. The SG temporary siding is seen, complete with the trolley seen in other photos (might have been more than 1). The 'shed' on it looks very much like the hoist cabin for the pulp conveyor (see photos 106, 107) what it is doing here is unclear since it cannot fit through the doorway out into the boilerhouse and wharf area (where it might have been moved along and lifted up onto the conveyor rails). It may well be here having been lifted off a railway wagon by the machine house crane, prior to being hauled back round to the conveyor. 

 

Nos 106, 107. Views of the conveyor area, showing the cabin in place and sundry NG track and wagons.

 

That's about it, hope you enjoyed them. 

 

 

[Artless Bodger]

1 hour ago, Ohmisterporter said:

The detail in most of these photographs is excellent.

Judging from the blurred motion in some, they were taken on quite slow film and probably full plate. What is a shame is that there were none from later phases of the construction, 3 & 4 machines which were built subsequently, almost a repeat of 1 & 2 (3 was the same width as 2, 4 wider again), then the 'upstairs' machines 5, 6, 7 and 8 right up to the railway boundary. When the mill was demolished there were very strict controls demanded by Network Rail due to the proximity. Somewhere on the old hard drive are some photos of the prep for that demolition, also a couple taken when the roof of 6 m/c house started to collapse, and it had to be rebuilt mainly by cranes reaching across the mainline tracks, but only at night after services had stopped. Cost a fortune in crane hire. I'll post if anyone's interested. 

[Artless Bodger]

Looking for the demolition photos and found this! Best shot of one of the locos so far. Is that a re-railing beam along the solebar?

 

 

[cctransuk]

5 minutes ago, Artless Bodger said:

Looking for the demolition photos and found this! Best shot of one of the locos so far. Is that a re-railing beam along the solebar?

 

 

 

Possibly a shunting pole - for pushing wagons on an adjacent line.

 

John Isherwood.

[Nearholmer]

Could be for either or both, couldn’t it?

 

I’m not knowledgeable enough to differentiate an original Simplex from a KC reconditioned, or a KC ‘Chinese copy’, but I think that the exhaust silencer on that one is fitted transverse to the frame, whereas the original position was longitudinal - might simply have been moved to reduce fumes blowing all over the driver though.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Nearholmer

[SED Freightman]

On 11/05/2020 at 21:33, Artless Bodger said:

When the mill was demolished there were very strict controls demanded by Network Rail due to the proximity. Somewhere on the old hard drive are some photos of the prep for that demolition, also a couple taken when the roof of 6 m/c house started to collapse, and it had to be rebuilt mainly by cranes reaching across the mainline tracks, but only at night after services had stopped. Cost a fortune in crane hire. I'll post if anyone's interested. 

Please do post the demolition photos when you have a chance.  Many thanks for posting the construction photos and providing the detailed explanations, it has been interesting to see how important the use of narrow gauge railways were in a major construction project before the advent of rubber tyred plant.

[Artless Bodger]

First a couple of views of the cranes working on replacing no 6 m/c house roof. The other one shows how the south gable had been pushed out of vertical. The first thing  the staff knew of this was finding holes in the paper on 6m/c from sheared rivets dropping from the ceiling and roof of the machine house. After propping the gable substantially, the whole roof was stripped of slates and woodwork, the steel work repaired and a new roof and ceiling installed. One theory was that the roof had been weakened by wartime bomb damage. The day view shows the cranes ranged along Mill Hall road to work on the roof by reaching over BR tracks, the proximity of the buildings to the railway boundary is clear. In the night shot taken from the end of the foot and pipe bridge over the Medway, you can see the cranes at work.

[Artless Bodger]

Some views of the railway aspect of East Mill.

 

Nos 01, 02, 03 taken from West Mill side on Mill Hall road, where the cranes stood for the roof replacement. The lefthand bricked up window in 01 is where I hung out over the then extant steam pipe to take the pictures of the oil train leaving on the APM Railway Traffic thread. 

 

No 04 is taken from New Hythe station footbridge, the cream building on the left is the loading dock, originally one siding entered from under no 6 electrical annexe (later called the services corridor) and a parallel one along the roadway outside between New Hythe station embankment and the loading dock, visible in 05. The concreted over part at the bottom left was where New Hythe Sump was dug to intercept the drains here (they originally flowed direct to the river. The New Hythe Sump pump pit was tucked virtually under the down platform of New Hythe station. Visible in the distance beyond the end of the siding is the road bridge installed to avoid New Hythe Lane level crossing, when Blackhorse site was developed for warehousing. The crossing then closed, and when the line was resignalled with colour lights, New Hythe signal box closed.

[Artless Bodger]

Photos below.  Note the Strood to Maidstone West line has now been converted to colour light signals. Entry to the west mill siding, known as Brookgate Siding, on the right beyond the platform, there was a sharp drop in gradient into the mill here. Used by oil trains in the 70s and 80s, then coal trains when the new boiler house was commisioned (c.1985), and some experiments with export paper traffic from Aylesford Newsprint via a dutch barn type building at the far end near Aylesford station.

 

First, taken from New Hythe station up platform showing the scaffolding under construction, it eventually reached the entire length of the building and up to the roof level, cantilevered out from under the machine floor level.

 

Second, the machine services corridor with the scaffolding foundations, the railway is the other side of the fence on the right. You can just see the remains of the old siding in the concrete floor.

 

Third, looking up the machine services corridor from the other direction, the sidings ran under hereone in the dirt where the cameraman is standing, the other beyond the line of columns - this was the track which entered the loading dock near the railway station, the left hand track ran along the roadway outside as in as previous picture. If you had passed the mill on a train in the 70s and early 80s it is under here that you would have caught a glimpse of the mill diesel shunter - Bounty (Ruston 88DS) and later also Hornblower (Ruston 165DE).

 

Fourth, inside the remains of the machine house, the outside wall to the annexe which is the wall you see in the first view above and the previous boundary photos. Steel braces have been fixed to stabilise the wall during demolition. This is the machine floor at 32' OD.

 

Fifth, a view from the basement level at 16'OD showing the braced outer wall and digger on the m/c floor level.

[Artless Bodger]

Though a bit OT, a few bonus shots from the archive.

 

The end of no 2 m/c. Rebuilt to make corrugating medium and limitation kraft liner in the mid-ish 70s it finally succumbed to being too narrow in the 90s, at only 4m deckle, when the corrugators moved to greater than 1800 mm webs regularly it was not economical to repulp the siderun paper, which is why no 6 at 6m deckle had been resurrected.

 

No 24. The machine running in its latter days, some of its rebuilt plant occupying the space vacated when no 1 was removed.

 

No 25. Last few cylinders of the original machine seen earlier being erected by Walmsley's staff. The white 'shed' beyond is the hood over the after dryers put in when the machine was rebuilt.

 

A10. Reed's had its own fire brigade, based in a fire station at the end of New Hythe Lane, seen here in an early photo (only 1 and 2 conveyors present out of an eventual 5). Kent Fire Brigade used some derelict parts of east mill in the early 80s to practise rescue procedures, both in a general sense in constricted environs and also to maintain knowledge of the mill layout, since in the case of a fire alarm on site the fire stations over a wide area were alerted.