Blog at the Ballast

Image from The Guardian Wonderful new Virtual Archive website for Network Rail's collection of engineering drawings and plans. The archive collection held by Network Rail is massive comprised of more than 5 million records dating back more than 300 years. The site has categorised items by people, stations, companies, bridges & viaducts and tunnels. Explore it here. ...

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A (new) collection of (rather old) letterheads is currently in the process of being digitised and presented online! From the Bill Lind Collection, the images aim to capture the graphic design of an era. Many of these companies, often industrial manufacturers, are no longer in business, so this collection, whilst primarily illustrates the visual impact of letterheads, it also lists forgotten names in...

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A belated Friday photo.  The image is of one of the plans that we got scanned to go in our Ballast Trust history which will be published this year.  It turns out that 2012 is the 25th anniversary of the Ballast Trust, taken from its date of incorporation in December 1987 (although work didn't start until 1988). The image is of a plan...

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Rear Shelves We've been spending today getting small items scanned and deciding which plans we'd like to get scanned for the publication of the Ballast Trust history.  We want a selection of images to correspond to the different types of collections that we have helped to process over the years.   Whilst trying to improve on the images of our shelves that I took,...

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Nigel Willis will be giving a talk to the Lochwinnoch Historical Society in the church hall of the Parish Church in Church Street on Thursday 15th March at 7.30pm. Non-members will need to pay £3. This is a remarkable story of great entrepreneurial spirit involving what was the oldest shipbuilding business in the world covering not only the shipbuilding in Greenock but also...

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While cataloguing the Edinburgh City Engineer’s Plans, I came across this plan of the Broughton feuing. The plan shows the feuing Contract between John Hope, Writer to the Signet and philanthropist, and the Governor of George Herriot’s Hospital, on 19 August 1867. Plan of Broughton Feuing John Hope (1807–1893), devoted much of his time and wealth to philanthropic works. One such project was...

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Part of my job at the Ballast Trust has involved me in the development and implementation of the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland.  To mark our first year of implementation I put together this annual review infographic and thought I'd share it here for today's image.  More information about it is available on the blog and it can be downloaded here....

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Today's image is of an A4 class locomotive called Silver Link built to pull a train called the Silver Jubilee built for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). It was made in the year of King George V's 'Silver Jubilee', and was painted silver throughout and it looks very futuristic. It entered service on September 30, 1935, travelling between London King's Cross and...

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