IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Lower Dee View Road, HOLYWELL, CH8 7QN

Perhaps a sign of the times. As viewed from the Greenfield Valley Heritage trail.

The pool gives a wonderful outlook to the homes on the lake side. The contrast is rather stark between the finished and inhabited home and its unfinished and empty neighbours. Let's hope the credit crunch hasn't spoiled the chance of finishing these valuable buildings.

This shows the bottle filling and carbonation plant. The caps/corks were fitted in another machine. The machinery is driven by belts from an overhead lineshaft turned by a Robey steam engine. This museum only opens on the last Sunday of the month in the season and has little presence on the internet.

This railway museum includes this steam driven pop bottling plant. The steam engine is in the background and can be seen through a window. It is an inverted vertical single cylinder by Robey and was built in 1931. The bottling plant was relocated from a local works and joined up with the engine by Flintshire County Council. The museum is now run by volunteers.

This inverted vertical single cylinder engine drives a reconstructed pop bottling plant on the first floor of the Railway Museum that is open one Sunday a month in the season. It was built by Robey of Lincoln in 1931 as No. 46005 and used at Wrexham Technical College. As befits a teaching engine it has an adjustable Meyer slide valve. It was running at 108 rpm and taking steam at about 60 psi. It lives in a wooden 'hut' with a glass window in front of the engine. This view is through the door with the help of the friendly volunteers on site. Because it used a mixture of time and flash the engine appears to have two crossheads.

This is in the Railway Museum that is open once a month in season. It is a Robey horizontal cross compound that was used at the Ruby Brick & Tile Co at Rhydymwyn, Flintshire. It was built in 1903 as serial Nos. 22825-6 and has drop steam valves and grid iron sliding exhaust valves. The cylinders are 13.5" and 21.5" x 2'6" stroke. The flywheel is 11' diameter. As re-erected it is missing a few minor parts - eccentrics, lubricators and handrails for example. This is an interesting survival and it deserves to be much better known. I only learnt about it just before Covid-19 struck and it took me a while to get round to it because of that.

This is in the Railway Museum that is open once a month in season. It is a Robey horizontal cross compound the was used at the Ruby Brick & Tile Co at Rhydymwyn, Flintshire. It was built in 1903 as serial Nos. 22825-6 and has drop steam valves and grid iron sliding exhaust valves. The cylinders are 13.5" and 21.5" x 2'6" stroke. The flywheel is 11' diameter. As re-erected it is missing a few minor parts - eccentrics, lubricators and handrails for example. This is an interesting survival and it deserves to be much better known. I only learnt about it just before Covid-19 struck and it took me a while to get round to it because of that.

This railway and industrial museum was open and the steam powered pop bottling equipment was running (but not actually bottling). Next to the vertical boiler was this recently refurbished horizontal duplex non-rotative steam pump that was awaiting plumbing in. It is a Worthington-Simpson, serial No. 5110521 with cylinders 3" x 2" x 3".

This museum in a warehouse by the former lower cotton mill houses a pair of Robey stationary steam engines. The smaller is associated with a pop bottling plant and is steamed from this boiler. The boiler is based on a Coltman vertical boiler but was built in the 1990s by Israel Newton of Idle, Bradford. The safety valve lifts at 80 psi but it usually runs at about 60 psi. There is also a Worthington Simpson duplex boiler feed pump.

These large rectangular ruins are the remains of a 6 storey cotton mill built in 1785 and closed in 1840. it then became a corn mill in 1850s and produced flour until the 1900s. There was obviously a centrally mounted waterwheel but there is also evidence of a steam power system with boiler setting and engine bed. The stone building to the right is a warehouse. There are also scattered items of machinery - none of which appear likely to have been associated with the textile mill.