SIHS visits in the 1980s included two trips to the Hunslet Barclay Works in Kilmarnock. Besides a well-known focus on railway haulage and carriages, the foundry was making a range of interesting castings, such as a ships propeller, which can be seen to have emerged from its temporary brick support cradle.
Other visits that decade saw James Howden’s last major project at its Scotland Street site in Glasgow: “the Channel Tunnel starts here” said a banner, because here the tunnel boring machine was made. Tennnant’s Whifflet tube works in Coatbridge was visited through the auspices of Summerlee Heritage. Forsyth’s were seen making and reshaping whisky stills in Rothes, Morayshire, on the same SIHS trip that took in Knockando wool mill in 1999.
The Rose Street Foundry and Caird’s Engine Works were both iron-framed buildings that have since been demolished (the ironpainted blue in Greenock). The Linthouse engine shop was however relocated in the late 1980s from Govan to Irvine to serve as the main hall of the Scottish Maritime Museum. Eric’s photos show it soon after re-erection.
Other engineering works included here are exteriors for architectural interest: the first fully reinforced concrete (Hennebique) building, the Sentinel Works pattern store of Alley MacLellan, for which drawings were passed in 1903, a pattern store for Weir’s Foundry, Cathcart, and a 1930s social building, built to American Daylight principles, and the celebrated Cummins diesel engine factory in Shotts.