Black and White – Page 19 – Mechanical Landscapes

#411 – Library of Congress Images – A Princess Coronation in America

The Duchess of Hamilton with the Royal Blue on Thomas Viaduct The 38 Princess Coronation class locomotives built by the LMS at Crewe works between 1937 and 1948 were some of the finest ‘top link’ steam locomotives built in the UK. For a while, no. 6220 held the world speed record at 113 mph although…

#410 – Library of Congress Images – Mackinac Dock

More steamers! This is a join up of two images to create a small panorama. It’s a bit distorted as the photographer perhaps didn’t reposition his camera too well between frames, but that’s always a problem if you’re photographing things close to the camera. I’ve had to crop quite a bit off the top and…

#409 – Library of Congess Images – SS Majestic Outward Bound

The SS Majestic was launched in 1889 and so was maybe 12-15 years old when this photograph was taken. She held the Blue Riband for a brief 2 weeks in 1891 with an average speed of 20.1 knots. She was taken out of service in 1912, replaced by Titanic. She was placed in reserve in Birkenhead,…

#408 – Library of Congress Images – Cramp’s Shipyard

I’ve posted a few pictures of American naval ships and naval yards over the last year or so, so here’s a slightly different perspective on the subject. William Cramps shipbuilding yard in Philadelphia was a long established, privately owned shipbuilders that built ships for three major conflicts fought by American forces (the Civil War, World…

#400 – Library of Congress Images – SS Rotterdam at Holland America Line Terminal, Hoboken

This is a panorama created from three separate 8×10 glass plate negative scans. Needless to say, the resultant file is rather large! I recently upgraded my computer as my 6 year old PC with 4GB of RAM struggled with files like this, but the new one has significantly more processing power and Photoshop CC…

#398 – Library of Congess Images – Main Street Buffalo

I’m guessing that this photograph was taken by some intrepid photographer climbing a tall riverside gilding such as a grain elevator as for the most part, downtown Buffalo looks quite a low lying city with few tall buildings. What strikes me about this scene is the clear summer sky, as so many of the photographs…

#397 – Library of Congress Images – Logging train

Although huge swathes of Britain were once forested, much of this was cleared in mediaeval times and before for use as fuel and construction materials (for buildings and ships). So by the time the steam railway came along, there wasn’t much left and there was no requirement for railway haulage out of the forests. However,…

#392 – Library of Congress Images – River Steamers

Harbor Springs, Mich., Str. North Land at dock Large river steamers were not unique to America, big Paddle Steamers carried day trippers on British rivers too. Steamers such as the PS Waverley were once a common site on the Clyde, Bristol Channel, and around Britain’s coasts. And, like America, by the 1960’s, their days of…

#391 – Library of Congress Images – Switching (shunting) locomotive

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/npc2008011106/ This image was simply titled Bethlehem Steel in the Library of Congress archive, and had no supporting information other than it was published in the period 1910-1920. Interestingly, the engine has written Washington Terminal on the tender, which is confusing given the title of the picture. Wikipedia tells me that the Washington Terminal company…

#390 – Library of Congress Images – Mallett articulated locomotive

Although articulated locomotives were a British innovation, and Beyer Peacock built over a thousand of them, only a few Beyer Garrets and narrow gauge Fairlie’s ever saw service in Britain. However, articulated locomotives were quite widely used in other areas of the world, especially where huge amounts of power were required without the loading gauge…