Artless Bodger

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.

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.

Something I tried years ago, read it in a magazine, was to stick some clear sticky tape to a piece of glass (lightly so you can peel it easily later), paint it the required colour, then cut it into strips with a scalpel and steel ruler. Carefully peel the strips of tape off and apply them to the model. I used it to replicate lined out panelling on an old Farish OO coach, trying for LBSCR umber and white. It was fiddly and you had to be careful not to stretch the tape or the paint film cracked. That would have been with the old cellulose based tape, modern polypropylene tapes might not take the paint so well. Only works for straight lines though so wouldn't help much for splashers.

No 111. The river bank has been cut back, the concrete surface of the wharf is under construction complete with the inset rails for the eventual dockside cranes. A large steam crane has appeared, this may be the one later used at the coal tip in the south part of the site, but isn't the Smith, Rodley crane we had still in the 70s. Two standard gauge wagons present - I'm inclined to guess the steam cranes were used to shunt them into position. Narrow gauge poking out from under the end of the Lancashire boiler house and along the front of the coal bunkers. The big brackets along the top front of the bunkers support the trolley wires for the dockside cranes. No 112. Not much of railway interest, but included for the dodgy work practice of two ladders roped together. Looking towards the river, the stack in the background looks like pulp bales, but not stacked in the pulp yard under the conveyor, so a bit of a mystery. No 75. The wharf road and coal bunkers at an earlier stage, bloke leaning on a skip in the distance. Wonderful bit of tracklaying.

There is a British Pathe News film of electricians fitting lighting to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It is the bit where the bloke slides through the little gap in the tower cap and down the suspension chain that churns my stomach. I find it hard just to walk across the bridge! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6lp0KAEHOM There were enough blokes in the mill when I worked there in the 70s - 80s who had finger joints missing etc from ingoing nip accidents. We often measured drying cylinder temperatures by poking a long handle mounting a thermocouple in between the rotating dryer cylinders - no 2 had 68 cylinders by then, at 2-3 mins per cylinder it was an afternoon's work. There was not much clear gap bewteen the cylinders at up to 130 deg C, moving paper at 300 m/min, carrier ropes etc. On one occasion the carrier rope came off and snagged a bearing cover lifting it up and through the dryer hood - it was quite a big bit of cast metal and made quite a thump when it landed! since around 2000 you couldn't even get near the cylinders - 1.6m high guard fences all round. Crews were dead scared of anything 'acid' but handled caustic soda prill with insouciance - when I challenged the lack of eye protection one said 'but it's only like washing soda.' A tip from one H&S professional - if you want to test or demonstrate the hazards of a nip - use baby carrots, they're just about the same size as a finger.

Another photo with a loco visible - No 88. The loco appears to be shunting a couple of empty skips to receive material excavated from the river bank. This photo also shows how far the river bank was cut back to make berths for unloading lighters carrying pulp bales. The river piers of the conveyor cranes were (I'm fairly sure) constructed in pits on 'dry' land. In other pictures the width of the wharf from the coal bunkers to the river seems much wider than it was in my time, showing the excavation of the bank was carried further north to accommodate coal barges. No 89. A bit further to the left, the loco and steam crane visible and loaded skips being pushed by 2 men each further down the wharf. Bearing in mind Nearholmer's observations about the strength of the skips, perhaps the loco was only used to move rakes of empties?

Evidence of any motive power is scanty in these photos, however: Nos 98 and 99, taken from the water tower show a small petrol loco - possibly a Simplex 20HP. No 108. A similar view, note the standard gauge temporary track in 98/99 has been moved to the further door into the turbine house in the interim period. No 109. The water tower, with the standard gauge siding off the main line on the left and the temporary connections curving off to the turbine house and the far end of the machine house visible. On the main line embankment to the left a white post may be the signal protecting New Hythe Lane level crossing, and also just visible what looks like a gantry arrangement seen in photo no 97. My interpretation of this is that machinery could be transferred from main line wagons to the 4 wheel trolleys for internal use, and moved on the temporary track to their location, thus obviating the need for a standard gauge shunting loco. The trolleys might be moved with winches - several are visible in the series of photos. The sparse sleepering of the temporary track into the turbine house wouldn't have supported much weight.

No 49. Looking roughly south east, the mainline is behind the cameraman, the sidings visible are standard gauge, with the ramp up to the side of the machine house, where the machine parts were brought in. No 50. Looking roughly south east, mainline behind the photographer but further south than 49 (the tent like edifice in both photos), std gauge in the foreground on the alignment of the later (1930s) permanent siding that ran under the kraft beaterfloor, no 6 electrical annexe and into no 6 loading dock. The further SG track is the one which swings round to enter the dry end of no 1 & 2 m/c house, seen in 49. No 51. Down by the riverside again looking north, some wonderful track laying, especially where the NG crosses the SG. No 52. Back inside 1 & 2 m/c house. The lower NG track on the left is in what becomes the pipe tunnel running the length of the machine house, no 2's dryer basement beyond it, no 1's dryer basement on the right hand side. No 55. Standing in the Salle area, north of the machine houses looking roughly west towards the main line and New Hythe Lane. The main line is on the dark embankment beyond the post and wire fence, the home signal protecting New Hythe Lane crossing is visible. New Hythe Halt does not seem the have been built yet - it was originally just a wooden platform, on the site of the later New Hythe station, adjacent to the level crossing. Some of those wooden huts, WW1 army surplus, were still in use as management offices in the 1980s and lasted almost until the end of the mill in the early 2000s. A note on terminology: Papermachines have a wet end - at the beginning where the pulp slurry is fed onto the wire mesh belt forming wire (or just 'wire'), the paper web is pressed then dried on steam heater cylinders (the dry end) and is then reeled up. Pulps and papers are often referred to by the pulp type, depending on pulping process; kraft (from the German for strong) is chemically pulped wood by the 'kraft' or suplhate process, used for wrapping, bag and sack papers, unbleached it is brown, but can be bleached to cream or white. Beaters (and refiners) are machines which defibre pulp sheets or rags and fibrillate the fibres to improve the fibre bonding characteristics, and so the strength of the paper. Beaters are a batch process, refiners continuous process. Salle (German for hall) is traditionally the room where the paper is further processed to the form required by the customer (slit into narrower reels, cut into sheets, inspected, sorted, packed etc).

Some for today. No 22. Inside the machine house - excavating the basements, the tops of the concrete foundations are the future machine floor level 16' OD, the basements were at 8' OD. NG points and a turnplate in the foreground, one of the skips looks as though it has also been turned off the spur on a turnplate. The 3 hole link evident on this one. No 23. Having turned 180 degrees, now looking south, mobile derrick erecting the beater house and power house steelwork. No 26. A view down on the area of no 23, from the top of the chimney. I've tried the clarity editor on this to sharpen it up a bit. A nice array of NG and SG track. I'm tempted to interpret the NG track coming in top centre and swinging round to parallel the SG as coming from the site of the ballast pit, bringing ballast for the concrete plants, it might then be that the odd shed near the river bank in some shots, with a tall chimney, was a washing and grading plant, using water pumped from either the river, or excavations to wash the gravel before use.

Excellent, thank you Krusty. The bars appear on wagons in a few other photos, but not all. I'll have to look more closely at some of those Youtube videos.

Jumping about a bit - the photos are in chronological order as numbered, but I jumped to some that I thought might be more interesting or informative, so going back a bit to some I jumped over. No 10. South end of machine house looking roughly north. Shows the mobile derrick mounted on 3 NG wagon chassis - rails rather precariously laid on top of the vertical stanchion foundations. Also a nice little pump in the foreground draining the excavation of the power house basement. No 16. Boiler house - some NG in evidence. No 17. Beater house under construction, looking west to the SECR mainline and Reed's Siding. MR wagon and another (GN?). NG track and point lever. Skip by concrete mixer. Mobile derrick on NG chassis visible again. No 18. Coal bunkers under construction, river out of shot to the right. Standard gauge track and some bits of NG. Regarding that trolley - it would be a bit of a coincidence but there was a very similar wooden trolley, with towing ring on the frame stretcher on the east mill sidings in the early 1980s - just visible near the water tower on the 'modern' photos.

Why not red - same as your loco valences perhaps? SR brake vans had venetian red ends. Hmm - maybe that would clash! I think yellow replaced red as the warning colour because too many males are red / green colourblind - similar to the changes in wiring colours.

No reason why WKR couldn't have a thumper, or a derivative. The thought of the SRKT thumping up the Loose valley gives me goosepimples. A couple of those Farish coaches would form the base, perhaps use 3 if you want proper 64' length. In OO you are better off in obtaining a motor bogie or DMU chassis than in N gauge. I used the chassis out of my old Roco ET90, not ideal but it's what I had. Actually you'd only need a motor coach and use the p&p driving trailer to represent the modernisation of the rolling stock in the late 60s. NIR used thumper based dmus (classes 70, 80 and 450) and also had the MPV - a double ended motor coach which could run with coaches, driving trailers, multiple with other motors, and at night in multiple work goods trains too - just the sort of thing that would appeal to Colonel Stephens.

Thank you Sir Douglas, that is a very clear photo and shows the catch well.

Back to the railway. No 45. Standing with our backs to the river, looking roughly west. A nice portrait of a V skip, on metal sleepered track. Does anyone know what the 3 hole link bar is for? I thought to restrain the skip from tipping but that is usually done with a small lever catch. The skip frame does not look quite like a WDLR one. No 46. A bit further north than 45, again with our backs to the river, the line in the foreground is the standard gauge siding along the wharf. The narrow gauge (skip off the rails behind the workman (supervisor? he seems to be wearing leather gaiters) and the frame only visible above and beyond it. It looks as though concrete was run in wagons along behind the bunkers, then out to the river with a turnplate at the end and a stub track to the right of the workman where the concrete could be tipped into wheelbarrows. The pipe in the foreground would be used to discharge water to the river, pumped from the wet pit excavation below, the entire site was underlain by river terrace gravel (source of ballast for the concrete) and subject to varying water table height with the tides. No 48. Looking roughly north, the standard gauge curve connecting the siding off the main line (to the left) to the wharf, also narrow gauge tracks. No 24. Looking down on the riverward extension of the standard gauge track in no 48. Though it looks like some double exposure has occurred, this shows how fluid some of the track laying must have been with parts of points in situ but incomplete. I think the building with the chimney must be another concrete mixing plant.

Some for today. No 35. Looking east towards the river at the south end of construction, the beater floor is the further part of the new steelwork, the power house is where the travelling crane is installed - 5 steam turbines, 2 coupled and driving a main lineshaft powering the beaters and refiners, 3 driving generators - power was DC. Part of a site plan from later added to show some of these items. Well laid track in the foreground! Skip wagon just visible in front of concrete mixer. Nos 120, 121. A bit off topic but to enlarge on the above. 121 one of the turbines, looks like part of the gearbox coupling the two mainshaft turbines on the left. 120 the mainshaft. Though the mill was much altered when I worked there and line shaft drive to the beaterfloor a thing of the past, some of those piers were still in existence with the bearing hold-down bolts, about 3" diameter. Now, I must not let my enthusiasm for the papermaking and mill history get in the way of the railway content. No 42. Coal bunkers under construction. The NG track is carried on wooden sleepers here, I presume because this appears to be on waybeams over the wet pits, and the planks in the 2' to make a safe walkway for workers - the wet pits went down to 8' below OD so were about 24' deep here. Elsewhere the NG track is laid on steel sleepers (Decauville track?) except where carried over excavations. No 43. Two boilers installed, these look in pristine condition and freshly delivered complete, so raises questions about the apparent boiler components seen earlier. The open pit below the track is evident here.

The purple and cream livery jogged a vague memory of something similar, it came back to me this morning - Rheingold! Now that is class. And the baggage cars were all over purple - with birdcage lookouts, - https://www.maerklin.de/en/products/details/article/26928/

Will the CCT be all over purple, or purple and cream? With the coach roof - for my (ahem) representation of a 2H made from old Farish N suburbans, I ended up glueing a strip of polystyrene sheet as a continuation of the coach roof then trimmed it back to give a slight overhang, but the Bulleid EPB roofs ended flush with the end profile, so maybe a bit of filler would do the trick. You might cut the roof over the guard's compartment and put the infill there and disguise it with the periscopes? Sorry if I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs - I think on the evidence above your skills are somewhat in advance of mine.

Thanks for the link to the photos - looks as though some of those ironclads could be bodged from Farish suburbans by removing the upright between the compartment windows. The bogies might be a job though.

Maidstone United's ground was up the London Road at one time, near the Girl's Grammar School, I thought they moved up Parkwood somewhere for a while before I moved away (sorry, never much enamoured of football). I remember coming home a bit late from work one night and getting on the train at New Hythe jam packed with people and police! Put the wind up me at first. When I got off at Barracks (to go to East Station and a train to Bearsted where we lived at the time), the platform was lined with police and they were also up Buckland Hill directing everyone up that way, luckily I wasn't stopped from going right and over the high level bridge. Turned out Charlton were down to do a replay at the 'Stone's ground and trouble was expected - Charlton had a bit of a reputation. What memories. I look forward to seeing the outcome of your push pull set, I bodged a representation of a Maunsell set from Farish carriages, a bit amateur but with old age you can't see the detail (or lack of it) in N anyway. That purple and cream looks very classy, you certainly get a move on with your model making.

Regarding the barn like buildings and wharf, here is the photo that showed me my error, and a few more roughly contiguous, which might show a narrow gauge connection to that area from the mill construction site. If anyone can make out NG on the wharf site I'd be interested to know. No 31. Taken from the top of the chimney, looking north, the newly completed wharf wall on the right as seen in no 1 with what I presume to be a Thames sailing barge alongside, and northwards extension still under construction. The 'barns' are visible along with the associated wharf and small steam crane - though any railway tracks are hard to see. The Ferry Inn centre left with the landing stage opposite and footpath leading away towards Eccles. The creek entering here is the old course of the river, the mill was sited on the navigation improvement known as Middle Cut. The works beyond was originally a brickworks, then made cement until about 1905 (https://www.cementkilns.co.uk/cement_kiln_aylesford.html), so is presumably disused at the time of the photo - it certainly looks it, despite the sailing barge at its wharf. (Apologies, I'm doing my research as I add these photographs). In the bottom left almost parallel to the bottom of the photo are the foundations for the salle (where the paper would be inspected and packed), which appear in contiguous photos as follow. No 33. Looking somewhat more vertically down from no 31, the salle foundations are visible. There are several NG tracks visible, two entering the machine house north end, one of which leads off towards a possible connection with the short length in the top LH corner. Some quite crazy sleepering visible and dicey supports across excavations on a mix of planks and logs. Also intriguing is the NG laid down the centre of the standard gauge crane track - were the NG locos used to shunt SG wagons to and from parts of the site? None of the photos show a standard gauge loco on site. Other interesting items: there seem to be parts of a lancashire boiler laying on the ground - the end plate with fireholes and the two flue tubes. I'd have thought the boilers would be delivered complete, though perhaps they'd be out of gauge on the railway, but might have come by water. That is the boiler house bottom middle. Your thoughts on the matter wold be appreciated. No 32. Rotating anticlockwise from no 33, the machine house roof and in the top right the end of the salle foundations, the tracks out of the machine house faintly visible and the left hand track appears to be that in the top left of no 33. I wonder whether that track continues to the site of the 'barns' beyond New Hythe Lane and the Ferry Inn? It would make sense in that initially there was no wharf at the mill site and materials could have been landed at the small wharf and moved by NG railway to the construction site. I've wondered about the 'telegraph poles' across parts of the site, but now think they might be electricity supply, not telephone wires. Cheers for now.

A correction to the captions above. Studying later photos in the series prior to uploading, I noticed that the barn like buildings visible in no1 and no7 on the RHS are in fact on the same side of the river (west) as the mill, and appear to be associated with a small wharf with a steam crane and possibly originally a wood yard. They are on the site of the much later export shed and dock on what was known as Blackhorse site. Whether the yard and wharf had been taken over for use during the mill construction is not clear, certainly there was not a standard gauge connection past the Ferry Inn between the Blackhorse sidings and East Mill sidings in any map or site plan I've seen, and no evidence of embedded rails in the road (a short part of it public at the end of New Hythe Lane) when I looked in the late 70s. I'll put up the relevant photo later with more information.

Sorry for the delay, busy yesterday cleaning loco wheels and fixing pickups. Here's a few more (though there are 125 photos altogether most have no railway content at all - mainly of the building construction, and several appear to be almost identical). No 1. The crane is standard gauge based on other photos. The river Medway on the right and the buildings on the far side are the remains of a brickworks I think - long gone by the time I worked at APM. The Ferry Inn behind the crane was our personnel dept office in the 70s and 80s, and at the end of New Hythe lane. There is a petrol loco on the narrow gauge just visible behind the man by the skip. The wharf was built in a trench in the river bank and the excess bank excavated after to provide berths for lighters. No 3. An interesting bit of plant, Winget developed concrete batching plants, they had a works at Strood. The only railway element here is that I think the telegraph poles in the background are those of the SECR Strood - Paddock Wood line. Ballast for the concrete was largely excavated on site to the south, the resultant pit became the mill's process water reservoir - we always referred to it as the ballast pit. Cement for concrete may have come by water as the Medway gap teemed with cement works, most with water access. No 4. This is looking south (1 and 3 looking roughly north), those telegraph poles in the background again. No 6. Looking a bit east of south, the steam crane on the wharf wall construction has moved quite a bit south along the river bank from photo 1. Narrow gauge and skips on the wharf wall level on the left and ramping down to the basement levels on in front. I'm not sure how far down the chimney foundations went, but machine house basement floor level was 8' OD, machine floor level 16' OD, original ground level was somewhat lower as photos of a flood tide at just over 14' inundated part of the site. Clearly quite a lot of excavation was required. No 7. View north. 3 NG tracks in the excavated m/c house basement area, the right hand 2 appear to be an extempore travelling carriage for the pole derrick which lifted the roof trusses into place, the wagons (?) on them seem to be heavily ballasted. Ferry Inn framed in no 1 m/c annexe steelwork, the barn like buildings on the right are on the other side of the river. More to come, in time.

Thinking about Sophia's earlier red and white livery trial, I'd considered the local bus liveries too, East Kent - always meant 'seaside' to me as we'd use them in Thanet when on holiday, and the 10 went from Maidstone to Folkestone. The M&D livery was nice especially the scroll signwriting on the sides, what a shame when National changed it to the lighter green. Maidstone Corporation was very good too - ginger / tan and cream, the light blue and cream they later used wasn't a patch on it. But when I see the abominations used now, a bit like some of the train company colour schemes! However I don't think the ginger and cream would translate so well to railway carriages. Now, I must find my trolley bus (a Newcastle 6 wheeler bought when my wife worked there) and pluck up the courage to shorten and repaint it to resemble an MBC one. No plagiarism intended, but the working name for the through station on my layout is Lower Tovil - the papermills are represented in low relief behind. Grandad worked at Lower Tovil Mill.

Where would your junction be for the Lenham branch? I'd assume around Boughton quarries or Brishing Lane? Nice area to model.