Blog at the Ballast

Image from here As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Galgael are holding a workshop tomorrow (Thursday 26th April) to show you how to build a St. Kilda mailboat from found material (redeveloped flotsam) pulled from the River Clyde. Go here for details of times and how to find Galgael. ...

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One of the model railways at HMRS On Saturday I gave a talk about the work of the Ballast Trust as part of the Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics workshop organised by the Business Archives Council and the Historical Model Railway Society. It was a very interesting two days, very useful from our point of view to hear how other organisations manage and use technical records and...

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Here at the Ballast Trust we have a processed a collection which belongs to Glasgow City Archives.  It is the papers of R McAlister & Sons, Yachtbuilders based in Dumbarton. It is a lovely collection, a great example of the work of a smaller firm of boat and yachtbuilders founded in 1857 to build small boats, including racing boats, gigs, canoes and other...

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This week I have been pulling together statistics on our Flickr views for our annual report which needs to be ready for the Trustees' meeting in May.  This year views of our Flickr photostream increased by 56% to 20,695 all time views.  This is on top of last year's increase of 65% so it's great to know that there's an audience for the...

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Our large catalogue for the collection of British Corporation records has been transferred from its card index files to a spreadsheet, and can now be viewed online! The catalogue, numbering just shy of 1000 ships, contains details of the ships name, the builder, year built, yard number, and the accompanying plans that we hold here, at the Ballast Trust. The British Corporation Records The collection...

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