Tag: Steam engine

The Great Orme

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The mountain by the sea

A pier stretches out into the water, a grand hotel sits behind it on the shore. Drive round the coast and rise up to the summit by road, or use the tram service, which takes you past a bronze age copper mine. Or up the cable cars to the summit cafe. There is a small nature reserve at the top where indigenous plants are encouraged to grow. The mountain stands above Llandudno in North Wales. The town itself has grand terraces of three and four storey houses, hotels and apartments. Many of them from when the town was a Victorian resort and tourists arrived on steam engines. A good place for a day out.

Colour room

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We visited Etruria Industrial museum today. This was in the colour room in the flint mill. The room had been set up for a bit of play with clay. I tried to make a pinch pot but it wasn’t very good. The cat in the window is a paper cut out, the lady doing the workshop had a witches hat.

The industrial museum is run by volunteers and doesn’t get a lot of funding. It would be good to know it will be secure in the future, but who knows what will happen in then?

It’s all click bait!

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Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

What uninteresting story can I write about? I still like reading newspapers so that means I can find something uninteresting if I look hard enough. But then my sense if humour kicks in amd I will see the silly side of the story.

Most online stuff seems to be click bait. Stuff that you click on and the article has nothing to do with the headline and you are dragged off to some advert about bitcoin.

So finding something was hard, but a clue to something came from my hubby. I asked him if he had seen anything interesting. He then proceeded to tell me about an article in his monthly magazine from Apedale light railway. He told me about a well tank. (a steam engine with a tank of water between the frame of it instead of outside like a saddle tank).

He said the engine was called Stanhope and it was found sunk in a swamp in Africa where it had slid off its rails. It was rescued and restored and brought back to the UK.

So the story is entirely uninteresting to me. I like steam trains, but the story does not enthrall me. But it interests hubby, so I guess the point is the old saying, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

Etruria Industrial museum.

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Etruria Inustrial museum today, the museum is open on Fridays now and their first big event is in June. We visited today to drop off some paintings at the cafe there and to have a look round the Princess beam engine that was designed by James Watt I think. It’s a combination of steam and vacuum that was used to power a belt that is attached to flint grinding pans. This was where flint and bone was ground to a wet slurry that was dried to powder to be added to clay to make fine bone China. The mill is next to a canal to draw water in for the steam engine, which was also discharged back into the canal and to transport it’s ground flint and bone along to potteries in Stoke on Trent and beyond.

The original mill was called Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill and the painted name of it still partly remains on the building.

Photos are of the engine and boiler house including the governor on the beam engine which is used to regulate the amount of steam produced and the speed the Princess engine rotates.

I love steam

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Small painting from 2018 that was on display at Etruria Industrial Museum. I used an image off the Internet to work on. I think it was from a photo of a pumping station in Derbyshire? I loved trying to get the metallic reflections. I looked at the price and I wad only selling it for £25! The amount of work I put in means I constantly undersell myself, but people just don’t seem to have money for art these days. As to what it is I think it’s a regulator? Ith weights hold the arms down if it starts to spin too fast?

Balsa Wood models

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I went up to Burslem School of Art today and after looking around downstairs we went and had a look at the first floor. There was a lot of work by a local school. There were also these train engine models that had been made of balsa wood.

I don’t know their history but one has a named City of Stoke-on-Trent. If my hubby has been there he would have known what type of engine it was and who originally made it. He’s very good at recognising them.

Art for sale

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I have four new paintings up for sale at Etruria Industrial Museum cafe. This is Etruria, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire. This Saturday and Sunday there is a steaming weekend at the Flint mill when the Steam engine that was used to provide power to grind bone and flint to be added to clay to make fine bone china. Come along and see the working steam engine and maybe stop for a cup of tea in the café if you happen to be near Stoke on Trent.

Train memory

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When I was young trains were still pulled by steam engines. That’s right, I’m that old!

Our town station had a circular wooden booking hall and you walked down steps to the platforms. It was eventually demolished and a concrete station was built to replace it. If we wanted to go anywhere we had to go via Birmingham New Street. Apparently our town was almost chosen for the main station in the Midlands but Birmingham got it.

Our trips included travelling to Blackpool and to the Isle of Wight. We didn’t have a car then so any distances would have to be on a train or on a coach (coaches were better in some ways because they came back later than trains). I remember the Blackpool trip because we went up Blackpool Tower (looking a lot like the Eiffel Tower, but on top of a building). When we got to the viewing platform on the top the waves on the sea looked almost stationary. It looked weird. My mom told me she had once taken a plane ride around the tower in a tiny plane! I remember Blackpool pleasure Beach. Its the funfair on the ‘front’, including a ghost train and a big dipper roller coaster at that time I think, it has probably changed a lot now.

Then home on the steam train and a trolley bus (powered by overhead electric cables) home. I don’t remember arriving at home, I must have fallen asleep.

Etruria Flint Mill

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I added my easle yesterday. Today I’m showing you my easle two years ago, I did a painting of Etruria Flint Mill. It’s also called Jessie Shirley’s Bone and Flint mill I think? It’s the only working Steam driven Flint mill in the country and the flints and bone  were crushed and ground using the power of the steam driven beam engine there.

The buildings are part of Etruria Industrial Museum, a complex of cafe, the museum displays, and the Flint mill on the Trent and Mersey and Cauldon Canals at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I’m not sure of its opening times. But once a month it used to be fired up and you could watch the fly wheel rotating round and the pans where the flints were ground rumbling as the engine turns them. Its amazing to see the industrial archeology of the potteries in action.