IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
McBride Path, GLASGOW, G33 6FE

Part of the new development east of Cardowan Road.

Next to the parish church.

Looking north towards St Joseph's Church.

In Stepps.

The former Black & Whyte works of distillers James Buchanan & Co. The tower looks like an office building, but was designed to store up to 20,000 casks of whisky on ten floors. Closed in 1987 and now part of the business park. See also Image

Cardowan was still hard at work then and using two steam winding engines. One is now at Summerlee. This is a typical colliery boiler house with Lancashire boilers. The firing aisle is in the roofed building on the left but the boiler tops are in the open air with brick enclosed lagging over the tops. This was once a common sight but was becoming rare by 1982 and is now largely a memory. I got good photos here in 1982 and 1983. It's all gone now.

Motor driven Belliss & Morcom air compressors. One appears to have been dismantled with the cylinder block seen bottom right. This was an unauthorised early morning 'bunk' of the site. We ran into the Unit Mechanical Engineer on our way out. He was a bit grumpy and I said "it's all right we're leaving" and he replied "too right" or something similar. He didn't realised we'd already been there for a couple of hours and been all round the surface. Very naughty but it's all now a distant memory.

A retired 0-4-0 ST built in 1949 as works No. 2260 by Andrew Barclay Sons & Co Ltd, Caledonia Works, Kilmarnock. This is now cosmetically restored and on display at Dunaskin. This was seen on an official visit to the site. I returned a year or so later and 'bunked' the colliery. We were only rumbled on our way out having had a splendid time around the steam winders and boiler house.

This is almost certainly the standby fan. This is a modern high-speed fan - possibly a scirroco. I think I might have seen the working fan but that would have been a photographic challenge with fast moving humid air.

A pair of Belliss & Morcom of Birmingham motor driven two stage compressors. Collieries made much use of compressed air underground as it was essentially spark-free - although I seem to recall something about the risk of developing a static charge. Somebody once suggested to me that these were diesel driven generators - an easy error!