What a load of old junk

[carregwen]

A trip to the mining museum at Blaenavon, South Wales yesterday. Decided to concentrate on some of the junk they have scattered about the site. Really strong rust colours and interesting shapes. C&C welcome.

If you want to see all the shots (77 ) I have taken at this site over the past three trips please see here...http://www.flickr.com/photos/carregw...69512835/show/

#1 Mr Smilie!


#2 Connections


#3 Tank


#4 Safety pin


#5 KV


#6 Abandoned

[Donald]

What amazing subject material. Pity it's still not being used for the purposes for which it was intended.

ps - Don't know if folks outside the UK would have picked up on the beautiful irony last week when Margaret Thatcher - who of course destroyed the British mining industry - was meant to be celebrating some birthday or other, all the media attention was on the Chilean miners.

Some real crackers in that gallery (which I don't think have been on here - unless I missed them).

[arith]

I thought HA! some nice junk conveniently placed around; but looking at it I reckon you could make something of the piles of junk at the Midland Railway Museum.

Looking out of the window here all this is junk that actually can't be disposed of without first wrapping it in plastic, so I was told so I expect you would be able to make something of it; I try my hardest to avoid it.



I like the dials by the way, I like dials.

[arith]

They are not all about junk in your slideshow, and some are very impressive and I like the shot from above the winding house showing radio beacons in the distance.

That is the sort of thing I look for since I'm absolutely useless with close up or minimal stuff unless it is in a studio environment.

[Wirefox]

Rob

I have really enjoyed browsing through your Flickr gallery. Once again you have produced a high quality record of an aspect of life we can only begin to imagine.

It has great nostalgia and sadness for me having grown up in the middle of a mining area. I was lucky enough to have had the chance to visit the coal face of the Chatterly Whitfield pit just before it closed. What that experience taught me was that we must measure our nostalgia and sadness in very small doses. It is a horrific place to work, just descending in a 5ft high cage at god knows how many feet per second puts the wind up you. Then at least half an hours stooped walk along pit rails to a working face that is 4ft high and stuffed with pneumatic cutting gear hammering your ear drums and churning out clouds of carcinogens.

Although I find George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier a wonderfully amusing and presumptious essay of the Lancashire working classes by a middle class (keep 'em happy keep 'em down) guilt tripper, I strongly recommend that anyone feeling nostalgia on the behalf of the mining community should read his description of the pit working conditions. Those conditions had not fundamentally changed when the pits were closed.

I lived within spitting distance of pits like Parkside, Clock Face, Gin Pit, Bickershaw and Plank Lane. Those miners did the only job they knew and were staunchly conservative in there resistance to change but it was not a good life by any stretch of the imagination. You could respect them and you could feel glad it was them rather than you. But I will never wish that they were still having to do it. MT may have closed collieries for all the wrong reasons but it would gall me more if a section of society still had to break their backs chocking in coal dust whilst we complained about commuting in our Audi's and the state of the office air con.

[Donald]

Steve

I acknowledge the points you make and don't want to turn this into a political discussion. But it is certainly not nostalgia that drives me to write the things I did. It's about creating and maintaining a viable economy and society with respect for fellow human beings as its core principle, not the ego-driven, money-grabbing, self-centred attitudes that prevailed at the time and to which we are now being driven towards again.

[carregwen]

Rob

Although I find George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier a wonderfully amusing and presumptious essay of the Lancashire working classes by a middle class (keep 'em happy keep 'em down) guilt tripper, I strongly recommend that anyone feeling nostalgia on the behalf of the mining community should read his description of the pit working conditions. Those conditions had not fundamentally changed when the pits were closed.

What a great book that is! I must have read it at least six times. I liked the tripe kept behind the sofa in the first chapter! Mind you, his Down and Out in London and Paris has the edge in the 'grim' charts. It almost makes you want to get a job as a plongeur...

[Wirefox]

Sorry Donald, I know exactly where you are coming from. I wasn't directing my observations at you or anyone else that has reason to question the insane policies of that era. I am not a political animal so I cannot comment on the rights or wrongs of the policies I can only proffer my observations from the ground level at that time.

[carregwen]

Steve

I acknowledge the points you make and don't want to turn this into a political discussion. But it is certainly not nostalgia that drives me to write the things I did. It's about creating and maintaining a viable economy and society with respect for fellow human beings as its core principle, not the ego-driven, money-grabbing, self-centred attitudes that prevailed at the time and to which we are now being driven towards again.

It is rather sad visiting this place, with all the detritus of a past industry laid bare. You can't help thinking how people must have used this equipment, and in many case their very lives depended upon it.

here's one of the general site taken from the top of the hill. A 5 shot pano.

[Wirefox]

his Down and Out in London and Paris has the edge in the 'grim' charts. It almost makes you want to get a job as a plongeur...

Yep, I think they are gems of social observation. It is the analysis and conclusion that grinds and smacks of a cooly beating, imperialistic colonial officer from Burma....wait, thats exactly what he was

[wilgk]

Can I lower the tone completely and ask isn't #1 the stamping machine for the Teletubbies template?

[Donald]

Can I lower the tone completely ...?

Good idea, Apologies for the rant, but there are some things (well, politicians) who bring the red mist down over the eyes.

But, so long as you don't mention teletubbies. On my ....! You just have.

[arith]

Mostly all my family were miners, and my dad thought it a good idea to arrange an interview for me with the pit board when I was 15. Luckily they thought as I was a grammar school boy I would not fit in.
The pit is a dark dirty dangerous awful place with only room to crawl at the face, with the full knowledge of thousands of tons of rock over your head. It was also back breaking work but I know that they would rather be miners than a litter picker or cleaner or security guard.
Many of the so called scroungers the Osbourne's of this world have a history of despising were once proud miners, that would rather throw themselves down stairs than be degraded.
Luckily I escaped that, but I didn't escape the snotty Osbourne types who thought they were the superior race, despite £20,000 per annum educations with private tuition leading only to second class degrees in things they can buy results in.
If that is not political I do not know what is.

[carregwen]

Can I lower the tone completely and ask isn't #1 the stamping machine for the Teletubbies template?

I knew it reminded me of something.

A bit of an aside - but don't you think #2 has a 3-D effect? Those connectors seem to reach out to you. Not sure how i did that.

[Wirefox]

Actually now you come to mention it It does. I suspect this is simply because the whole of the image is well exposed and well lit. There is also a lot of local definition in each of the compositional layers.The shadow of the branch also adds an illusional additional layer giving even more depth to the image

At least you didn't have to ask me to go cross eyed to see it.

Steve, I think I agree in the main but the preference for pit work over other occupations will almost certainly only apply to the generation that was involved in the dissolution of the industry.

[wilgk]

A bit of an aside - but don't you think #2 has a 3-D effect? Those connectors seem to reach out to you. Not sure how i did that.

yes - especially the 1 on our left - also # 3 does as well I think - #3 is my favourite as well