Blog at the Ballast

In the spirit of the many Christmas dinners and roast potatoes that will be being had right now, I though I'd share this picture of the Roman unloading potatoes. It was built in 1904 by J & J Hay, boatbuilders based in Kirkintilloch.  As well as building boats the company also operated a lighterage business, that is the the conveyance or loading and unloading of...

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Flickr has had a new feature for while called galleries which allow you to "curate" a gallery of your own from other people's collection. As today is the last posting day for the UK and its beginning to feel very christmassy, I've put together a gallery called 'Christmas Post'.  These are images from other archive and library collections on Flickr.  This is my favourite image from...

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I've posted about the earlier Pibroch here and here before but this a picture of the diesel motored Pibroch built in 1957.  Both Pibrochs were one of Dan's most photographed subjects and this picture with the little van on the middle of the boat just makes me smile. It was built as the earlier one had been by Scotts of Bowling and was...

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Earlier this year, I wrote an article about the Ballast Trust for an Italian online journal called Culture e Impresa.  This is a journal that publishes articles related to culture and business and is linked to the Centre for Corporate Culture in Milan.  At the moment the article is only up in Italian but a full english translation of the journal will be...

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This weeks photo is the first Railway related image.  It is from the "miscellaneous" collection of photographs and postcards that Bill accumulated and that we now have in several filing cabinets. It is of a crane locomotive built by Dubs & Co. locomotive manufacturers in Glasgow from 1863 to 1903 when it amalgamated with Neilson, Reid & Co. and Sharp, Stewart & Co. to...

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Exciting news for me today as one of our images on Flickr has been favourited! It's the picture of the brigadier, which I have also posted about here on the blog and I'm delighted that someone has found it and liked it.  It's also very good timing as I was thinking today about my goals for our account on Flickr and what images I...

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A mystery photo this Friday as all I know about this picture is that it has Elizabeth written on the back.  I think that probably refers to one of the larger boats in the background rather than the small one that the two boys are playing on. ...

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My boxes for box listing arrived this week.  They were a barginous £1.05 per box and are still a fairly decent size 40 x 33.5 x 25cm. This means that I can now begin box listing the accessions in the outstore.  "A box list is a finding aid that describes the size and the contents of each box in a very generalized way."*  It...

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