Category Archives: engineering

Asia, city, engineering, Europe, travel, vehicles

The Promised Post

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If anyone was wondering, here finally is the last of the posts of my week in Turkey. One filled with observations on the kind of things I notice – apart from all the usual things that one sees in a foreign country & around its tourist attractions.

Firstly, on one of my back-street wanders between attractions (in this case the Golden Horn & Galata Tower) through reasonably normal city shops I stumbled across dozens of little shops. Each shop seemingly devoted to an individual aspect of, all things, engineering – covering process, mechanical, manufacturing & more.

Want a fan or blower?  There’s a shop for that:

How about an electric pump? There’s a shop for that too. Actually, I was keen to investigate replacement soap initials pumps for work – but I don’t think they would have fitted in my baggage allowance & I don’t know the Turkish for flowrate, head or impellor.

Pallet trolley?

Petrol-driven pump? Compressor?

Traffic management items?

A very bizarre little shopping area to wander around. Air-tools, welders, power tools, hand tools – there were shops for each of those too & many more.

Once I was in Cappadocia, it was a much more rural area – which meant tractors. I was most pleased to see that ninety percent of the tractors used on the many fields were of one type. Classic Massey Fergusons – for some reason my father has a particular liking of these small tractors. Consequently, I’m quite fond of these little red workhorses as they remind me of Dad & my childhood growing up on the orchard in Papamoa.

Most of the Massey Fergusons I saw were 135s, – such as the one below in the main street of Goreme – which were built between 1964 and 1975. I’d always been under the impression that Massey Ferguson was an English company – probably because ours was built in England; but as it turns out Massey-Harris and Ferguson were two Canadian companies that merged in 1953.

The Massey Ferguson 35 is probably the most recognisable model, it was the largest selling tractor in the world. It was made from 1957 through to 1964 in various countries – this is the model that we had when I was still small enough that driving it was a bit of stretch. There were a few around town – this was the best looking example. I must have looked rather strange – a tourist wandering back through town after dinner out, spending an inordinate amount of time peering at all the details in the dark.

As well as old tractors, there were scores of old Renault 12s.  These were discontinued by Renault thirty-odd years ago, but there were so many still around I was bewildered.  Apparently, they still sell for six thousand lira (just under £2000) – which is astounding as my ten year old car only cost me half that.  It turns out that variations of the 12 were made in Turkey until 2000 – so not quite as strange as first thought.

Asia, city, engineering, Europe, history, travel

A casual Istanbul day

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With the forecast slightly cooler for Wednesday, it was a good time to don trousers early in the morning so I could visit the Blue Mosque – Sultan Ahmed Mosque.

After putting my shoes in the little plastic bag, I was free to wander around the mosque.  As far as the floor goes, it was a little bare inside – this guy had his work cut out for him with such a small vacuum cleaner. Once again, there were hundreds of small lights suspended from dozens of cables. The designs on the ceilings were astoundingly intricate & it was so long I stood staring up that I’m surprised I don’t have a worse crick in my neck.

My airbnb (sort of like couch-surfing, but people rent out their spare rooms/houses) host, Erdi, had recommended that I visit the Basilica Cistern – which is underground near Hagia Sophia. A sucker for engineering & history – it instantly appealed.  There are many cisterns under the city dating from Roman times – this one is the best kept & best to visit. Built in the sixth century to store water brought in on an aqueduct (substantial remains of which are near where I was staying) from almost twenty kilometres away, the 336 marble columns hold the roof nine metres up.  With a substantial floor area, the cistern once held almost a hundred millions litres!

Most recently restored & opened to the public in 1987, the cistern is flooded to a depth of about a foot & there are sufficient walkways to walk the length & breadth of the area.  The lighting & background music is really well done to create quite the relaxing atmosphere.  It was of course pleasantly cool down there & nice to escape the bustle outside – the four metre thick brick walls sure do keep the sound out. One of the highlights of Istanbul for me.

The base of a couple of the columns had inverted carvings of Minerva on them

I had a quick walk through the Grand Bazaar before popping out at Istanbul University – which provides a reasonable photos of big flags. Turks love their flag & it’s easy to find it flying somewhere or other – another country that makes me wish we had a better NZ national flag that we would more readily fly & use to identify us.

A quick trip home to get into some more suitable clothes for the quickly warming day was soon followed by a walk through back streets to get to the Spice Bazaar & the ferry terminal again.  I took another local ferry across to the Asian side of the city to have a little explore.  There’s not a lot over there for the tourist to see, but I always enjoy a good walk around – even better when it’s hot & there’s a ready excuse to buy ice-creams.

Looking back over the Bosphorus to the Old City from Asian side

Maiden’s Tower

around home, engineering, history, UK

Gosport Museums

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After last weekend, a switch was flicked somewhere & it’s been summer ever since. All week with temperatures sitting in the high twenties, it’s been rather uncomfortable wandering around the plant at work. At least being pretty close to the Solent, there is usually a breeze around. With it not getting dark until well after nine now, I’ve been enjoying getting the only outdoors exercise my shoulder allows at the moment (walking) in the Forest, along the beach at Lepe and across numerous fields in the heat.

With a relatively free weekend on the cards, I thought it was a good weekend to visit Portsmouth for the first time in two and a half years. Considering it’s less than an hour’s drive away, a day-trip there was well overdue. Pleasingly, I remembered just in time that I’d stored the fact that Gosport would be worth a visit one day, after reading about it some months ago, somewhere in my mind. So I headed off to park at the wonderfully named museum, Explosion!, on the west side of Portsmouth Harbour just before anything opened. As I wandered around the old buildings, it was obvious that it’s not far across the harbour to Portsmouth and all its things naval – both old & new. While the groundsmen finished off mowing the lawns, I ducked inside right at ten o’clock & bought my multi-pass ticket – Explosion!, the Royal Navy Submarine Musuem & a day-pass on a water-taxi between the two, Portsmouth & HMS Victory.

Explosion! (really the Museum of Naval Firepower) is at Priddy’s Hard & centres around Grand Magazine which is an impressive brick structure built in 1771 to house gunpowder. I got through the first room, which was based around the memories of those that used to work at the Ordnance Depot, before ducking out to get the first water-taxi of the day to the submarine museum. The schedule is well timed so that when you step off the boat, having cruised past hundreds of boats packed in the marinas & numerous waterside apartments, you are soon able to get on a guided tour of the HMS Alliance. (Although not for long as major maintenance work is soon to begin.)

Being early in the day, there were only fifteen on the tour – which is more than plenty on a sub, I wouldn’t have been keen on being a submariner in here with sixty other men – none of whom have showered for six weeks. A diesel sub laid down near the end of WWII, it was fairly antiquated – but that just makes all the various valves, large batteries, pipes & so forth more interesting compared to what I imagine are much less cluttered modern designs.

I usually struggle to get representative photos of the cramped conditions on subs, so here’s a standard torpedo tube shot.

Our guide was excellent, having been a submariner for many, many years & actually having served on the Alliance. It’s so much more interesting with stories of what being on the watch was like, the thrill of chasing & evading the Russians in the Artic, & as it’s about the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War – a first hand account of being on the sub that sunk the Argentine cruiser Belgrano.

HMS Alliance – looking quite shabby outside, showing why it’s down for major work starting soon

Other submarines of interest at the museum include Holland I, the Royal Navy’s first submarine – built in 1901. It had a crew of just eight (it was quite small & used for coastal defence and basically to see what this submarining thing was all about), with a petrol engine and 25 tons of batteries for use under water. Having spent a little too long underwater (almost seventy years) after sinking while being towed to be scraped, she was raised again in 1982 and has been on display around various restoration works since.  In the main inside display area is the midget sub HMS X24 that was used in WWII to sneak in to heavily guarded harbours & deposit its two large bombs under targets (docks, ships & so on).

Holland I tail-fins & propellor

I rushed around the last of the very informative displays so that I could catch the next water-taxi across the harbour to Portsmouth for a spot of lunch (Italian market – yum) & some much needed clothes shopping (something that is always needed as I put it off so often) for an hour.  It was great tootling across the harbour dodging small yachts, superyachts, ferries & large power boats under the sun.

An hour was enough to scoff a couple of calzonnes, buy some clothes, gaze around at the sights – so it was back on the Jenny R for the double-leg back to Explosion! – via the main visitor attraction in town HMS Victory & HMS Warrior.

HMS Warrior

Back at Explosion! there was time to learn/be reminded about fighting sailships & various explosives before a very good multimedia presentation in the Grand Magazine. The Grand Magazine, with its eight foot thick brick walls, took three years to build and then another three years for the mortar to dry out (gunpowder doesn’t like moisture so much). I was pleased to learn I was standing in the very room where explosives for Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar were stored prior to the battle. There was a great mix of military history, social history, physics & chemistry to keep me well interested. The stories of all the precautions that had to be taken over the 150+ years of work here were fascinating. As with many industries in both world wars, many women took over the jobs of the men that had gone to the front. Hearing how the women had to work with cordite (which had replaced gunpowder by that stage) was especially neat as it was in a munitions factory that my great-grandmother (Mum’s mum’s mum) worked and was awarded an OBE for preventing some sort of explosive disaster.

The rest of the museum is given over to various large mines, torpedos, shells, missiles & such forth. All very interesting & technical – but didn’t hold my attention as much as the tales of the people that had to work in such a large & dangerous facility. All in all, a great day out with two fantastic museums & a time lounging in the sun on the back of a little boat pootling around the harbour – not bad for fifteen quid.

I had a bit of time to spare at the end so wandered in to Gosport – fifteen minutes past large old barracks that are now nice looking housing & newer apartment blocks. Gosport’s High Street isn’t so much to wander around, especially as I’d been over the harbour wandering around Gunwharf Quays a few hours previous.

around home, engineering, history, UK

Over the other side of Southampton Water

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I woke yesterday to find out that there was but one day left of National Mills Weekend. That in itself isn’t all that interesting, but it did give me a starting place for a bit of a local history day. Since I’ve moved down here, I haven’t been past Southampton to the eastern or southern edge. The closest mill, Bursledon Windmill, took me past Southampton on the M27. Unfortunately, it’s not operating at the moment as they are in the process of finding & funding a replacement for the large oak windshaft (the shaft at the centre of the sails that transfers the rotation to the main mill shaft). Windmills look a little odd without sails – the sail and the whole top of the structure have to come off. Maybe I’ll still be around to check it out in 2014 – its bicentenary.

Naturally, inside the working mechanism was very similar to that which I saw at the closer-to-home Eling Tide Mill a few months ago. The miller, who was a lot younger than expected, was very happy to give me a personal tour – even if I didn’t understand everything he said as he spoke rather quickly. I’ll not bore you with details of the milling process, as it really was like the Eling Tide Mill.

For some time I’ve been curious what the tower is that I see across Southampton Water when I drive/ride down the road to work. From such distance, I couldn’t tell if it was a church, a monument of something else. Someone told me that it was Netley Abbey, so with a quick check of the map I set off for Netley & then followed the signs to the abbey. When I found the abbey, it definitely wasn’t what I’d been seeing from the Waterside. Nonetheless, there were some great old ruins with plenty of big walls still standing, a nice lawn & a good atmosphere with plenty of families around & kids running through the ruins. Dating from the 13th century, the monastery didn’t survive the dissolution & was instead turned into a large country house, before being partially demolished & then allowed to fall into popular ruins in the 1800s – visited by the poet Thomas Gray, Austen & painted by Constable.

Heading south adjacent to the coastline, I eventually found my quarry in Royal Victoria Park. There were throngs of people around due to a Boat Jumble (whatever that is), so I left my investigations for a while & strolled along the beach south for most of an hour. It was quite breezy – that & the water explains the popular sailing club – but still more than pleasant walking in the sun with short sleeves. With such a busy port at the top of Southampton Water there is always plenty of maritime activity to watch – Isle of Wight slow & fast ferries, cruise liners, container ships, tankers & pleasure-craft. I also got a different view of the Fawley Refinery (which is really close to work & home). At the River Hamble I could walk no further, so turned around rather than taking a swim.

The limitations of the camera on my phone become apparent zooming in on distant scenery – part of Fawley Refinery

That small collection of chimneys over yonder is where I work

Back at the parking lot, the crowds had thinned a bit & I popped into what turned out to be a chapel. I had been trying to work out why this building was standing alone in the middle of a nice big park. The informative displays inside, well worth the pound entry fee (unfortunately I’d run out of cash to join the departing tour up the tower), cleared all that up for me. In the 1850s this site was chosen to build a military hospital & the chapel stood in the centre. The hospital when completed was the longest building in the world at the time (435m/quarter-mile). It was built after the shocking conditions for the wounded in the Crimea became well known. But as these rather damning words from the prime-minister of the time suggest, it wasn’t very well designed. “It seems to me that at Netley all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose sole object has been to make a building which should cut a dash when looked at from Southampton River. Pray stop all work.”

Alas, it was too late & this behemoth that was 138 wards & 1000 beds was opened. It was used more & more with the wounded coming back from the Boer Wars, WWI & WWII. The place was so large that it had its own reservoir, power station, railway station, gas works & pier. But all the corridors were on the sea-facing front and ventilation & conditions weren’t great. Out the back the Red Cross also established a large temporary medical facility. When the Americans took it over near the end of WWII, they were shocked at the state of the Victorian plumbing & other facilities (and also apparently took to driving jeeps up the corridors, they were so large). Such a dated facility didn’t last much longer & most of the hospital was demolished in 1966 after a large fire – there was an awful lot of rubble & I still drive over some of it whenever I go in to town, as it was used for the Totton flyover.

The chapel in the centre

The chapel standing alone today (or yesterday rather)