Blog at the Ballast

Today's photo is the last of the A's that I'm going to put up, the rest can be seen on our Flickr pages. It's a picture of the Arawa escorted by the Flying Eagle tug.  This is one of my favourites from the batch that I scanned in as its such a busy scene and gives a feel for how active the Clyde...

Continue Reading

Locomotive 3007 Originally uploaded by wil_freeborn Great illustration of a locomotive at Glasgow's Museum of Transport by Wil Freeborn. Its being renovated in preparation for going on display in the new Riverside Museum. ...

Continue Reading

Today's photos are of a fishing vessel called Stormdrift.  The two images are from a selection of photographs that were scanned in for an enquirer who works in the fishing industry and is interested in the images that Dan McDonald took of fishing vessels along the Ayrshire and Argyllshire coasts in the 1930s.  This enquirer has been able to identify by name several...

Continue Reading

A project to renovate the 1962 replica of the Comet will get under way this weekend.  The project is being run by Inverclyde Council, Ferguson's Shipbuilders (whose archived plans we process before they go to the University of Glasgow Archives) and The Trust.  More details are available here. I was alerted to this story via the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society blog this afternoon after our afternoon...

Continue Reading

This afternoon's photo is of the Archibald Russell, a 4-masted barque built in 1905 by Scotts of Greenock. Full details from the Clydebuilt site are available here. There are lots of other pictures of her on a great site called Picture Australia, this site allows you to search online images from several different organisations like the National Archives of Australia, State Library of...

Continue Reading

Continuing the 'A's this week is the Agapenor, built in 1947 by Scotts of Greenock.  She was a cargo ship for the Blue Funnel line who became trapped in the Suez Canal during the six day war between Egypt & Isreal in 1967.  She remained in the Great Bitter Lake along with 13 other trapped ships until the canal reopened in 1975.  After...

Continue Reading