Blog at the Ballast

I will be back from my holiday in New York today and to link up with that have decided to include this image of the City of Rome built by the New York Shipbuilding Company in 1911. She was built for the Merchants & Miners Transport Company as the Suwannee and sold to the Savannah Line in 1917. ...

Continue Reading

Today's photo is the St Mungo, a fire boat built by H McLean, Renfrew in 1959.     The boat provided firefighting cover for Glasgow Harbour and was owned by Glasgow Fire Service Marine Division until 1975. Specification details available from clydebuilt database. ...

Continue Reading

This afternoon the steam locomotive the Tornado will be making a visit to Glasgow Central. It will arrive from Crewe at 14:23 and will stay on the platform for about 30mins before going to Mossend Yard to be serviced.   It will be back in Glasgow Central for 17:40 before leaving for Crewe at 18:23. The Tornado is a steam locomotive completed in...

Continue Reading

Today's image is of the puffer Stormlight which I got confused with this one built by Ferguson Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow in 1937. I was wrong and thanks to the magic of Flickr, I now know that it was built by Yarwood's of Northwich in Cheshire in 1957. She was built for Ross & Marshall and more details about the vessel and its career...

Continue Reading

Slightly delayed by all the doors open day preparations, I've spent this afternoon scanning and uploading the next batch of Dan McDonald photographs - the 'Ss'. There are 22 new photos, including this one which was the oldest ship uploaded - an 1866 paddle tug called SAMSON   Enjoy! ...

Continue Reading

We had a wonderful 53 people battle through the miserable weather in Johnstone yesterday to visit us.  Thank you to everyone who came to see our display. We had over 60 items out on display which have all been put back now so we've got about 50 metres of table space to work on again.  It was a lot quicker putting it away...

Continue Reading

This Sunday is our doors open day.  We've all been working really hard to clear as much space as possible and then display as many examples of what we do as possible. The main workroom shown below has been transformed and we've got items on show from the railway, shipbuilding and engineering collections we have here at the moment. We're open Sunday 11...

Continue Reading

Patricia Cain is giving a talk at the House for an Art Lover on Sunday 25th September.  The Rivited Eye will discuss: her experience of being the unofficial artist-in-residence during the construction of Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum and her work for her highly acclaimed recent exhibition, Drawing on Riverside at Kelvingrove Art Gallery. There is also an opportunity to see some of Trish's...

Continue Reading

Too busy this week getting ready for doors open next Sunday to scan in the next batch of Dan McDonald photos - sorry!  Instead, I'll offer up an extra example from the 'Rs' Today's photo is the puffer Roman built by J & J Hay, boat builders based in Kirkintilloch in 1904. I've featured her before but thought I'd add this one in as...

Continue Reading

Ooops, I meant to blog about Manufacturing Week at the beginning of the week. However, the telegraph had a good article about the history of manufacturing over the weekend which is worth reading and they have been writing about the subject all week as part of their analysis of British manufacturing. ...

Continue Reading