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Free download codes:
Ricochet - ADHD (Ft. Onepacman & Hels)
"ADHD n BASS!!!!! Dubstepish vibes"
#trap #beats #triphop #guitar #bass #dubstep #hiphoprap #undergroundhiphop #adderall #adhd #experimentalhiphop #lsd #pagan #psychology #southampton #music
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Free download codes:
Ricochet - ADHD (Ft. Onepacman & Hels)
"ADHD n BASS!!!!! Dubstepish vibes"
#trap #beats #triphop #guitar #bass #dubstep #hiphoprap #undergroundhiphop #adderall #adhd #experimentalhiphop #lsd #pagan #psychology #southampton #music
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@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.
And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.
And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.
And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Roknrol I still wonder whether I should have added a full, detailed description of what a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupé looks like in general and what the two '57 Chevys in the picture looked like in particular when I posted this picture. I kind of got lazy with the full description of this image because I wanted to get it done.
And yes, there are two '57 Chevys in the image, technically speaking.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@valkyrie_pilot That's a good question.
The rule (I understand it as one) says that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim, i.e. absolutely identical to the original. However, this already collides with the rules that image descriptions must not contain all caps because they tend to irritate screen readers, and that acronyms must be handled in a way that screen readers can deal with in a sensible way.
I guess, and I can only guess, that misspellings should be corrected when transcribing text, especially in alt-text.
In earlier image descriptions, all of which are long descriptions in the post text, I've transcribed misspellings as well and even added a "(sic!)" after them to point out that it wasn't me who misspelled it. However, doing so amounts to pointing out the misspellings, as would correcting them in the transcript and then explaining which words are misspelled in which way, even though would conform more with the "always transcribe verbatim" rule. Also, I've since declared these descriptions obsolete.
Unfortunately, I can't find any online resources about alt-texts and image descriptions that even only take misspellings in to-be-transcribed text into consideration, much less define how to deal with them. It's just like text that's unreadable in the image, but that can be sourced elsewhere: It's commonly treated like it doesn't exist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@valkyrie_pilot That's a good question.
The rule (I understand it as one) says that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim, i.e. absolutely identical to the original. However, this already collides with the rules that image descriptions must not contain all caps because they tend to irritate screen readers, and that acronyms must be handled in a way that screen readers can deal with in a sensible way.
I guess, and I can only guess, that misspellings should be corrected when transcribing text, especially in alt-text.
In earlier image descriptions, all of which are long descriptions in the post text, I've transcribed misspellings as well and even added a "(sic!)" after them to point out that it wasn't me who misspelled it. However, doing so amounts to pointing out the misspellings, as would correcting them in the transcript and then explaining which words are misspelled in which way, even though would conform more with the "always transcribe verbatim" rule. Also, I've since declared these descriptions obsolete.
Unfortunately, I can't find any online resources about alt-texts and image descriptions that even only take misspellings in to-be-transcribed text into consideration, much less define how to deal with them. It's just like text that's unreadable in the image, but that can be sourced elsewhere: It's commonly treated like it doesn't exist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta -
@Leonardo Giovanni Scur First of all, it isn't about my requirements. Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.
It's about general accessibility. And it's about Mastodon users acting inclusively towards blind or visually-impaired people and, at the same time, ableistically towards people with other physical disabilities. Just because they cling hard to the extra 1,500 characters that alt-text gives them per image to their meagre character count for posts.
Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for. Alt-text is meant to be a 1:1 stand-in for an image, in case the image can't be perceived for whichever reason.
Alt-text is not meant to be an additional source of information beyond what information the image conveys.
Mastodon's use of alt-text for extra information beyond the post character limit is just as much alt-text misuse as cramming alt-text with keywords for SEO on websites. Unfortunately, it is so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that even the Mastodon devs have played along and added that "ALT" button which most Mastodon users think is the default and the standard Fediverse-wide now.
But let me tell you something:
Mastodon and its forks are most likely the only Fediverse server applications with an alt-text button. And they're far from making up the whole Fediverse.
Misskey and its various forks don't have an alt-text button.
AFAIK, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE don't have an alt-text button, and neither has Mangane.
Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, they all don't have an alt-text button.
Lemmy doesn't have an alt-text button. /kbin and Mbin don't have an alt-text button. PieFed doesn't have an alt-text button.
WriteFreely doesn't have an alt-text button. Plume doesn't have an alt-text button. WordPress doesn't have an alt-text button either.
Blogs in general don't have an alt-text button. Forums don't have an alt-text button. Static websites don't have an alt-text button.
Twitter/𝕏 doesn't have an alt-text button. Facebook doesn't have an alt-text button. Instagram doesn't have an alt-text button. Threads doesn't have an alt-text button. Tumblr doesn't have an alt-text button. Flickr doesn't have an alt-text button. Pinterest doesn't have an alt-text button. And so forth.
The W3C doesn't mention alt-text buttons. The WCAG don't mention alt-text buttons.
Why not? Because they're all way behind Mastodon in accessibility?
No, but because their developers know that alt-text is not an additional source of information for sighted people.
Literally the only place anywhere in the Web where alt-text both counts and is actively used as an additional source of information for sighted people is Mastodon. Plus its forks.
How I handle that? I put all needed extra information into the post text. But I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.
Seriously, if missing alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if useless alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if inaccurate alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if too lacking alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, then putting exclusive information into alt-text must be sanctioned as ableist just as well.
To those on Mastodon who oh so desperately need more than 500 characters: Move someplace in the Fediverse that has more than 500 characters. There's Fediverse server software from 3,000 characters to over 24,000,000 characters that, nonetheless, is federated with Mastodon.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
Hi friends! I've added some free 'NO AI' icons to my shop. They show that your artworks are your own work. If you like what I do, feel free to buy me a coffee.
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this week's app icon is for Nexus: "A simple and user-friendly Matrix client" by @QuadRadical
added to the list!
https://planetpeanut.studio/icons#linux #gnome #opensource #app #icon #design #chat #matrix #android
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Tod’s Mill: the thread about the mill that just wouldn’t burn down
This thread was originally written and published in November 2024.
On January 16th 1874 a calamitous fire engulfed the largest and most modern flour mill in Scotland, almost completely destroying it. £168,000 worth of damage was caused, split roughly equally between the loss of the mill itself and its stocks of grain and flour; around £24.3 million in 2023. This mill was Tod’s Mill – or to give it it’s formal name, the Leith Flour Mills – and its proprietors were A. & R. Tod.
1940s business letterhead for A. & R. Tod Ltd, Leith Flour Mills, Leith. Via Mills ArchiveA. & R. Tod were the brothers Alexander (1811-1888) and Robert (1826-1897) Tod, the sons of Marion Gray and James Tod. James was the village baker of Ormiston in East Lothian and his position required him to deal in grain, as at this time most bakers bought their own grain and took it to their local mill for processing into flour. James left bakery behind to pursue business as a grain merchant, in which he prospered.
The family were thus able to ensure each of their eleven children received a good start in life; their sons were all well educated and found good positions as apprentices. Alexander – and later his younger brother Robert – were apprenticed to bakers in Edinburgh, after which they followed their father and went into partnership as grain merchants. The census of 1851 records them as living in a fashionable Edinburgh townhouse at 14 Leopold Place with their parents; Alexander and his father being Master corn merchants and young Robert a Journeyman. Having established themselves in that trade, in the mid 1850s they took the lease on the water-powered Stockbridge Flour Mill on Baker’s Place. The business grew rapidly, the Tod’s earning a reputation for the best quality of baker’s flour and soon outgrew the confined premises at Stockbridge. So it was in 1859 construction began of a large, new, steam-powered mill, by the wet docks on Commercial Street in Leith. This project was completed by the end of that year.
Tod’s Mill, looking west along Commercial Street, in 1895. Photograph by John McKean, © Edinburgh City LibrariesOn account of the unsuitable nature of native wheat, Scottish bakers baked with flour milled from imported foreign grain; traditionally from Europe but increasingly from Australia and Canada. With its expansive new docks and railway connections, Leith – not traditionally a milling town – was an eminently sensible place for a mill and would come to equal Glasgow as a centre for Scottish milling. The Tods’ new works cost £33,000 – about £4.7m in 2023 – and saw 27 pairs of grinding stones in operation. They were expanded only a few years later in 1861 at a cost of £50,000 (£7.6m). Demand could still not be met and so in 1869 a third extension was added at a cost of £12,000 (£1.8m). This final phase of development saw the mill operating a total of over 100 pairs of grinding stones and employing three shifts, each of around 300 men and boys. The operation ran day and night stopping only on Sundays, grinding 7,500 quarters (quarters of a hundredweight, or 28lbs – or 95.2 metric tonnes in total) of wheat a week, filling 8,000 bakers sacks of flour. The mill rose to 7 storeys on Commercial Street and its 180 foot high chimney was double that height, dominating the locality.
1876 Town Plan showing the mill in its locality. To the north (top) of the map is Leith Docks, to the east (right) can be seen the railway yard of the North British Railway. The mill is bounded by Commercial Street to the north, Prince Regent Street to the south and Couper Street to the west. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe story of the Tod brothers is one of restless and relentless modernisation and expansion; they constantly sought out the latest new technology for their mill. In 1869, a new granary building was added on the junction of Prince Regent Street and Couper Street. This six-storey building had a floor area of 14,000 square feet and had six cart entrances, arranged in a “drive through” manner so that carts could load or unload under cover without having to back up or turn back on themselves. This latter building is all that now remains of the mill, converted into a block of houses known as North Leith Mill.
The former 1869 granary building, now North Leith Mill houses. Note the lintels above the former cart entrances.The Tods were well respected around Leith and were generous benefactors to the community. They “never ceased to take a practical, kindly and personal interest in the welfare of [their] servants“. They ran the mill in a benevolent manner having taken all their employees into a form of co-partnership for the purposes of profit sharing. In 1872 they announced a 5% bonus on wages, raising it to 7.5% in 1873 as the result of a prosperous year. The workers respected that their employers were practical men, familiar with their shared trade having worked their way up, and they appreciated their direct manner of dealing with them in the broad Scots of country boys.
It was on the fateful evening of January 16th 1874, around 730PM, that the alarm was raised when a fire was discovered in the mill’s oldest wing. It spread rapidly and had taken complete hold of that part of the works within half an hour. Spreading relentlessly, by 10PM it had entered the third of the mill’s three wings – circumventing a fireproof boundary wall by creeping over the rooftop. By 1AM, despite desperate efforts to contain the spread, the whole of the main mill block was ablaze from end to end. The fire reached its zenith at 2AM and it was not until between 5 and 6AM that it was finally under control. It was said that Leith was so brilliantly illuminated “that at almost any point one could read with ease in the streets, and the reflection could be seen for miles around“. People turned out in their hundreds from the burgh to gawk at the unfolding calamity, reinforced by thousands from Edinburgh drawn from afar to the spectacle. They came to be thrilled and terrified by the noisy pyrotechnic display; flames, sparks and smoke were ejected out of the the hundreds of small windows and each time a floor collapsed, machinery was sent crashing into the depths of the blaze below.
Contemporary engraving of the 1874 fire, the observer’s point of view is on the far side of the wet docks, looking south towards Commercial StreetThe entirety of the Leith Fire Brigade (two steam engines) and much of the Edinburgh Fire Brigade attended. So intense was the heat from the fire that it was not possible to stand on Commercial Street opposite and the sandstone of the walls was seen to split and peel off in large flakes. As the masonry weakened and the internal structure tying the building together burnt out or collapsed, the external walls of the mill began to bow out dangerously. At 10PM the top 2 storeys of western gable on Couper Street gave way and collapsed onto the street below followed around twenty minutes later by the entire wall, all 450 feet in length and 4 remaining storeys of it. When it became clear that all was lost with the mill the hopes shifted to stopping the fire spreading to nearby tenements, bonded warehouses and shipping in the Queen’s Dock. The wind blew sparks and burning detritus towards these vessels and they had to be hauled to the eastern end to keep them from catching fire.
It is not too much to say that the destruction of these mills is in some respects a national disaster: for when it is taken into account that there was not a place from Carlisle to Shetland to which they did not send flour, their stoppage cannot fail to occasion inconvenience to trade and affect the grain market in a greater or less degree.
The Fife Herald, 22nd January 1874When the flames had finally died down there was an awful spectacle to be seen: “those portions of the walls of both mills that have not fallen tower, in mid air, reminding one of the ruins of an old castle, while below there is a burning mass which still requires all the efforts of the firemen to prevent it from breaking out into a fire of considerable magnitude.” Only the fireproof boiler house, engine house and their chimney remained in one piece along with a detached flour store on Prince Regent Street and part of an adjoining tenement used as offices on Couper Street. In the month before the fire, the Tods had imported half a million quarters (6,350 tonnes) of grain into Leith. All that remained were were 500 sacks of grain and flour that workers had bravely salvaged from the stores during the blaze, now piled up in Commercial Street. Such was the extent of the destruction that a definite cause for the fire was never found; but it was thought likely that an Archimedes screw for moving flour in one of the Dressing Rooms had overheated for lack of oil in its bearings.
The Tods were fortuitous that their entire premises and stock were well insured and that their safe had been carried out of the offices before they were destroyed. Nevertheless there was a real worry in Leith that the brothers would take the insurance money and retire. Indeed Alexander, aged 63 and fifteen years his brother’s senior, decided to do just that. So it was with much local cheer that in March of 1874 it was announced by Robert that he had decided to carry on the business and that the mill was to be restored on a new plan. Determined to make it as fire-proof as possible he set off on a tour of Europe to inspect the latest in mill operations and fire-proofing.
After reconstruction the mill settled back down to a prosperous and relatively uneventful existence. In 1882 it was thoroughly modernised by converting it from grinding stones to steel rollers, with the three different wings of the mill each set up to produce a different grade of flour. The industrious new peace was shattered on Monday 5th April 1886 at 1230PM, when a “terrific explosion” erupted from the Exhaust Room, situated above the boiler house and directly below the lofty chimney stack. The explosion blew out the upper storey of the boiler house (where the exhaust room was located), reducing the two-foot thick walls of solid stone to rubble. Tragically the collapse of the walls onto the foot of Prince Regent Street killed a Leith Corporation street sweeper at work and two young brothers playing there, William and James Orchardson. A third brother – John – and another boy were scalded by the release of steam from a cracked pipe. They were pulled injured from the rubble as were three men at work in the boiler house.
“Tod’s Mill After the Explosion, 5th April 1886”. Looking up Prince Regent Street from Commercial Street © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe room in which the explosion originated contained machinery to vent hot air laden with fine flour dust from the mill. Somewhat ironically this was meant to reduce the risk of fire and explosion within the mill itself. Help came first from the garrison of Leith Fort, whose firefighters turned out with their engine, before they were joined by the regulars of Leith Fire Brigade. Further assistance came from the sailors of the gunboat HMS Elk which was tied up in the Queen’s Dock nearby. Despite the upper walls and roof being totally blown off the boiler house the damage to the boilers, the engines and the mill itself was minimal. Initial fears that the chimney stack might collapse proved unfounded.
Leith Fire Brigade, 1890. Firemaster James Brown, centre front with large beard, was in charge in 1886 too and led the emergency response to the explosion at Tod’s Mill. © Edinburgh City LibrariesOnce again the mill was rebuilt. Alexander Tod died in 1888 leaving an estate valued at £97,221 4/5, or about £16.2m in 2023. After retirement he had dedicated himself to the life of a country gentleman at St. Mary’s Mount in Peebles. He spent his days fishing in the Tweed, his evenings in Edinburgh at musical concerts and allowed himself to indulge a little in politics, being a firm public supporter of Gladstone.
Tod’s Mill, Goad 1892 Insurance Map of Edinburgh and Leith, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandRobert continued to run the business for the rest of his life. He was not a man of the public stage but was known universally by the public as a man of philanthropy. He was long a director of the Leith Hospital; was a founder and trustee of the new Magdalene Asylum at Gorgie; of a convalescent home at Balerno; and of the Leith Association for Improving Condition of the Poor. Around the burgh his charitable work was extensive including supporting the Sailor’s Home, the Leith Industrial Schools and the Leith Gymnasium for Working Lads and Girls. His time and energy for these causes was matched by contributions from his deep pockets. In later life he sponsored Sunday evening concerts in Leith to try and attract those who had not attended church and who might otherwise be drawn to less wholesome evening pursuits.
Robert Tod in later life, from newspaper clippingIn 1894, Robert converted his sole partnership of A. & R. Tod into a Limited company with the shares taken up principally by himself, his two eldest sons (Thomas and George), the general manager, the chief clerk and department heads of his mill. He died in 1897 at his mansion house of Clerwood, near Corstorphine in eastern Edinburgh. His passing “was received in Leith… with deep regret by all classes of the people… Tod’s death [was] regarded as a public loss“. He left an estate of £180,424 11/3, around £30m in 2023. This did not include the extensive land and mansion of Clerwood which passed to his son Thomas.
1910 directory advert for A. & R. Tod Ltd.Despite the passing of its founding partners their Mill went on as it always had and the name Tod remained a benchmark across Scotland for quality flour. On December 2nd 1921 the mill was once again rocked by an explosion of flour dust but this time there was no fire and no injuries, damage being limited to windows blown out in the mill and broken in the surrounding streets.
The last calamity to beset the mill took place on September 6th 1943 when a granary, constructed on the corner of North Junction Street and Prince Regent Street, caught fire. It was quickly engulfed and the fire precautions failed to stop the spread across a connecting gantry to the 1869 granary over the road. The efforts of the fire brigade did however stop any spread further into the mill, an adjacent bonded warehouse and neighbouring tenements. There were no injuries but the loss of grain was hard felt during the period of wartime scarcity and mountains of charred and toasted wheat spilled out into the street through the broken windows. Fifty local residents were made temporarily homeless due to water and fire damage to their homes and were evacuated to hostels that had been prepared for air raid victims.
Fighting the mill fire of 1943 from a contemporary newspaper photograph taken looking down Prince Regent Street from North Junction Street, showing the gantry connecting the 1869 granary (left) with another that had been built on North Junction Street (right).The North Junction Street granary was completely gutted, its roof gone, its floors and one of its exterior walls collapsed and it had to be pulled down. The 1869 granary was badly damaged above the 3rd floor level and was reduced to that height as a result. It is for this reason that in the 1944 Ordnance Survey town plan of Leith the 1869 granary is drawn as an unshaded outline, denoting an un-roofed structure, and the building opposite is missing entirely.
1944 OS Town Plan of Leith, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandFlour milling was always a dangerous business; the risks of explosion and fire were an ever present hazard, not just to the Tods but to all millers. In the 100 years from 1850 to 1950, no fewer than 11 other notable fires and explosions afflicted the mills of Leith:
DateMillOutcomeFebruary 1859John Hay, Leith WalkMill largely destroyed, granary and contents savedMay 1862J. & R. Lawson, BonningtonMill entirely guttedJune 1869Gibson & Walker, BonningtonOlder section of mill badly damagedAugust 1874Gibson & Walker, BonningtonFire containedJanuary 1888J. & A. Lawson, Leith WalkRoof destroyedOctober 1894G. Wilson & Co., SwanfieldRoof destroyed, machinery damagedSeptember 1897SCWS, Junction MillsBoiler fire. ContainedFebruary 1903J. & A. Lawson, Leith Walk Roof and top floor machinery destroyedFebruary 1910J. Wilson & Co., Swanfield£9,000 damage (c. £1.4m in 2023) February 1916SCWS, Chancelot MillsTop floor and grain cleaning room destroyedJanuary 1931J. Wilson & Co., SwanfieldFire containedTable of Leith flour mill fires and explosions, 1850-1950Once the largest and most modern mill in Scotland, Tod’s Mill was eclipsed in the second half of the 20th century by two newer and larger mills built nearby; the 1955 Caledonia Mill of Joseph Rank Ltd. and the 1970 (New) Chancelot Mill of the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society. Tod’s Mill soldiered on into the 1960s before closing, being demolished in the mid 1970s and replaced by a rather grim-looking red brick Job Centre office in 1979.
Lindsay Road, looking down Commercial Street to Tod’s Mill, now and a photo taken by John R Hume in 1970, © HES. Reproduced courtesy of J R Hume #April5 #Fires #Industries #Industry #January16 #Leith #Mill #Millers #Mills #September6 -
The thread about the excavation of parts of Edinburgh’s old cable tramway system from beneath Leith Walk, what the various pieces of ironmongery were and how it all worked
This thread was originally written and published in bits and pieces between 2000 and 2022 as bits of tramway came out of the ground. It has substantially re-written here to create a coherent story.
In a previous post I covered how (and why) Edinburgh came to use cable-hauled trams in the 1880s and why Leith didn’t, and also some basics of how that system worked.
The principal of operation of a cable hauled tramway is quite simple. Between the tram tracks is a slot, in which there runs an endless loop of moving cable. The cable is powered by steam engines in a winding house, from where it runs around the system under the streets on an ingenious (and complex) series of pulley wheels. The tram car is fitted with a pair of grippers which slide into the slot; to move forward it grabs the cable with a gripper and to stop it releases the cable and applies its brakes. To move across junctions, between different cables or to pass subterranean obstructions such as pulley wheels, it can perform an elaborate ceremony whereby it grabs and releases different cables with the front or rear grippers – often with a little bit of gravity assistance.
1882 American diagram of a hypothetical cable tramway system. The winding house with its steam engines, gearing and cable drums is towards the top. The cables exit the winding house in a tunnel under the street and then head off around the system in the slot between the tracks, guided by a large system of pulleys.One of the most common finds has been sections of old tramway rail. A tramway rail differs from a railway rail in that the rail has a flat top with a groove in the middle of it for the flange of the wheel to run in; a railway rail has a domed top and the wheel flange hangs over the side. The rails were relaid when the move was made from cable traction (or in Leith’s case, horse) to electric, so none of the dug up rail sections will be from cable days.
Tram rails on Leith Walk, notice the dark line on the top which is the groove for the wheel flange to run in. © selfThe next most common item that was seen during excavations were the U-shaped cast iron “chairs” that formed the supporting base of the conduit structure in which the cable ran beneath the street surface. To better understand what were are looking at (and for, underground), a cross-section of a cable tramway is helpful, I can’t find one for Edinburgh so one from San Francisco will do as the two were fairly similar. The chairs are coloured yellow, and sat on the concrete base of the conduit.
San Francisco Cable tramway cross-section. The rails are coloured green; the horizontal ties in blue; the top of the conduit structure in orange; the supporting chairs in yellow; the small cable support pulleys in pink; and the cable gripper in red.The Edinburgh system did not use the orange cast slot shown below; it used old rails laid on top of the cast iron chairs to form the slot. Additionally it did not have the small pink cable support pulleys; it used larger, 14inch diameter pulley wheels spaced every 50 feet.
Section of an illustration of a hypothetical cable tramway system, which seems very similar to the system in use in Edinburgh. Note the cable running through the conduit and over the support pulleyThe picture below shows a pile of these iron chairs dug out from beneath Leith Walk, plus sections of old rail that had been used to form the horizontal ties. Notice the chairs are caked in old concrete, as they were set into the conduit when it was being poured.
Cable conduit support chairs, September 2021 © selfCable conduit support chairs, December 2020 © selfNone of the cast iron chairs are complete; all are missing their top sections; cut and cracked off. However it was not the excavation works of 2021 that caused this, it were those of 1921! A a book kindly provided to me by Chris Wright has a photo of Hanover Street, c. 1921, on the cover. In this scene, a crowd watches workmen digging up the old cable conduit system during the switch over to electric traction (which was apparently the first use of pneumatic drills in the city). The caption explains that for ease, the workmen only removed the top section of the conduit chairs when removing them; the lower sections were left concreted into their bases. There are a couple of broken sections of chair in the pile of rubble below the boy with the cricket bat.
Edwin Catford’s Edinburgh, coverThe cables themselves were driven from the four winding houses at each of the tramway depots; Henderson Row, Tollcross, Portobello and Shrubhill (off Leith Walk). We see the Shrubhill winding house interior in the images below. The engines, each with two cylinders and producing 500hp, are in the foreground. They are connected to the cable system by the ropes strung between the pairs of enormous drums. The larger drums, in the back ground, were connected to the 10 foot diameter cable-driving pulleys.
Interior of Shrubhill winding house, seen from the side of the enginesInterior of Shrubhill winding house. The two wheels in the foreground are those that would drive the traction cables.The cables were tensioned on weighted pulleys hung from the wall of the winding house, before exiting the building down a long tunnel from the winding house off Dryden Street at the northern end of the site to Leith Walk. The below photo shows the remains of one of these tunnels being demolished in the 1960s during works outside Shrubhill.
Brick arch of the cable tunnel on the right.These tunnels ran to large brick chambers beneath the road surface and ran off up and down Leith Walk. Each cable required two pulleys; one for it on its outbound journey and one for it returning back to the winding house. Shrubhill drove two cables, so required two sets of these pulleys in chambers below Leith Walk. The diagram below shows the State Street Cable Car power station in Chicago. The winding engines are in yellow and drive 4 sets of cables. The red and blue cables head off right and left out of the power station. The two green cables are for different lines; they travel to the start of those lines “blind” (i.e. not pulling trams), which is why they are running in between the two sets of tracks, rather than between the rails like the red and blue cables. Each cable reaches the end of its line where it turns around and comes back to the power station. Shrubhill was very similar to this but drove only two cables; one for St. Andrew Square and Leith Walk, which also served the branch to Abbeyhill, the other for the Bridges to Newington.
The Street Railway Journal, 1889The illustration below shows a cross section of those cables coming to and from the winding house down the tunnels, running around the pulleys in their chambers and then off around the network. The chambers are brick built, with arched steel plate roofs. This is a conceptual railway, but has two driven cables, rather like Shrubhill. Notice the return pulley is inclined so as to be able to sit underneath the outward pulley.
Cables to and from the winding house and running around the large underground pulleysThe below images show the destruction of the brick walls of one of the Shrubhill pulley chambers under Leith Walk. The dark patches are not tunnels, the one on the left is a recess in the chamber walls and the other seems to be a previous collapse that had been filled in with concrete.
Leith Walk at Shrubhill, November 2020 © selfLeith Walk at Shrubhill, November 2020. Notice the cast iron chair section onwards the middle bottom of the photo © selfThe image below, taken of the same overall excavation hole as those above, shows the huge steel roof section of the chamber – the frame is almost identical to drawings of one for the terminal pulley of one of the Henderson Row cables. There is a supporting structure of steel I-beams that would have sat on the brick walls and foundations, and the metal sheet sections forming the roof on which the road surface lay. The large pulleys that directed the cables in and out of the tunnels to the winding house sat directly below this.
Shrubhill cable chamber roof structure, November 2020 © selfThese chambers, and others around the system (particularly where there were junctions) were manned to make sure the cable was running properly. Children were in the habit of tying a can to a piece of string, then dropping the loose end into the slot in the road, where it would catch the cable and be dragged off up the road creating an amusing racket. If there was any snag or derailment of the cable, they would phone back to the powerhouse, who would disengage the cable until it could be reset or re-spliced, or the offending item untangled from it.
The excavations here also uncovered the structure of the railway tunnel under Leith Walk, where the North British Railway passed beneath. This was incredibly close to the surface (as a result of the tunnel being built after the road surface, and the Town Council refusing to allow the road level to be raised where it passed overhead); the outer skin of the tunnel is about only 30cm or a foot below the surface. Indeed, a special system had to be devised here to support the new tramway as there was not enough space to fit the standard concrete track slab. You will notice a large trough in the tunnel structure here. This, I think, is where the cable for North Bridge to Newington ran, as it was not used for traction purposes here and is described as “running blind” as far as Picardy Place, where it came in to use to go up Leith Street.
Leith Walk railway tunnel, May 2021 © selfThe shallowness of this tunnel totally precludes the urban myths of any tunnels under the road running up Leith Walk towards Elm Row from Shrubhill. Those tunnels are actually a single passageway, just large enough for a man to walk up, that ran under the pavement from Mcdonald Road up to Picardy Place, which was to carry the first electricity cables into the city from the McDonald Road Power Station.
When Edinburgh moved to replace its entire horse-drawn tramway with the cable system across the city, for various reasons Leith declined. Up until the last minute, it had been hoped and assumed that a compromise could be reached and that Leith would join; but it declined to do so. The Shrubhill winding house had a third winding drum for a cable round the Leith rails, but it was never used. Instead, the cable ran from the winding house at Shrubhill, turned left down the hill to the municipal boundary at Pilrig Street, and then ran back up the hill towards Edinburgh again. This meant that passengers had to change onto a Leith tram to proceed any further north (and vice versa). This 24 year inconvenience became known as the Pilrig Muddle. In the below photo, an Edinburgh cable car loads its passengers at the terminus of the line at Pilrig Street. In the background, the electric cars of the Leith system wait for the exchange of passengers heading the other way. exactly where this pit is.
The Pilrig Muddle © Edinburgh City LibrariesThere was another one of these awkward interchanges on the network, at Joppa, which I like to call the Joppa Jumble. Here the cable line from Portobello met Musselburgh’s electric system and again a change had to be made for through travel. But this was at least at the network end, not the middle of a principal route, and traffic here was much lighter
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmightycat/5967127413
The terminus of the cable car lines was always on a short, single line siding of track on a slight incline. If the terminus was a downhill incline; the car would disengage from the cable and run by gravity into the siding, where it would pick up the cable running back the other way with its other gripper. The process was reversed for an uphill terminus; it ran into the siding on the cable, and ran out of it by gravity to the return cable. This was required as the cable could not be gripped where the it ran around the huge terminal pulley to change direction. This is shown by the diagram below, where the terminal pulley is in blue, inclined so as to fit below the street surface. The cable (red and white dashed line) is guided to and from it by the orange pulleys.
Terminus of the Edinburgh Northern tramway from Henderson Row.Much excitement erupted at the Pilrig Muddle in August 2021 when unexpectedly (considering this shoul dhave been discovered way back during the first round of tram works), an almost completely intact terminal pulley chamber was uncovered, with not one but two huge pulleys, each totally complete and in remarkable condition. Both were still sitting on their original bearings, just as they had been left almost exactly 100 years before when they were covered up and forgotten about!
Side view of the Pilrig terminal pulley chamber and pulleys © selfOne of the terminal pulleys, approximately 8 feet in diameter. Photo Credit: ACamerunner / @aljaroo1874The Pilrig Muddle pulleys are unusual for two reasons. Firstly, they are mounted vertically, usually they were horizontal. Secondly, they are back to back, which makes little sense for the terminus of the line. I suspect they are vertical as the street is narrower here, so there was less room to fit them in horizontally. And I think there are two back to back in anticipation of the cable being extended down Leith Walk into that burgh (which of course never happened). The red pulley on the right would have returned the Edinburgh red cable back up Leith Walk to Shrubhill. The blue one on the left would have returned the blue Leith Walk cable back down to the Foot of the Walk. If the cable had been extended to Leith, at Pilrig trams coming uphill from Leith would have swapped from the blue to the red cable here as they crossed the civic boundary. Because Leith was never added to the cable system, if I am correct the blue pulley would therefore never have been used.
Side view of the Pilrig terminal pulley chamber and pulleys © selfThe below animation shows how a car would have swapped cables here. A car travels with its front gripper engaging the cable. As it approaches the end of the cable, it is released before the gripper gets dragged into the pulley. To move onto the next cable it can either use its momentum (known as a “fly shunt”), can use gravity if it is running down hill, or it can push itself off the cable onto the next one by using its rear gripper. When the front gripper is over the next cable, it can be re-enaged and the car sets off again. This was a laborious (and potentially hazardous) process, so by design a cable car network keeps junctions and switching between cables to a minimum.
Swapping cables © selfIf you look closely to the left of the archaeologist squatting on the ground peering into the chamber you can see the conduits for electrical wires on the wall along with a box. This is either for electric lighting or the communication telephone.
Electrics in the Pilrig pulley chamber © selfPilrig was not “de-muddled” until 1922 after the amalgamation of the Burgh of Leith and its Tramway into that of the City of Edinburgh. Edinburgh quickly decided to adopt the electric system of Leith and rapidly converted one to the other. The picture below shows the Muddle being converted. A cable car has reached the terminus at Pilrig Street and is about to return back up the hill. You can see the slot between the tracks for the cable. The tracks on the right are being relaid for the electric trams and a new junction to connect down the Leith Corporation tracks on Pilrig Street is being incorporated. The centre poles for the overhead wires are already in place. I suspect the reason that the Pilrig pulley chamber was left in such good condition, with its pulleys still in situ, was the speed with which the switchover was made. There was no time to demolish the chamber, remove its pulleys and infill it. The new tracks were simply built over it and connected together one night to allow for running of the electric trams the next day.
De-muddling the muddle, 1922 at Pilrig Street looking up Leith Walk.When Leith Corporation rebuilt its horse tramway for electric traction in 1904-1905, it constructed a large new depot on Leith Walk. This later became the Leith Depot of Edinburgh Corporation Tramways. Sadly the depot structure was demolished for no good reason about 4 years ago now, but the depot office building remains. During excavations at the rear of this, the brick outlines of inspection pits appeared, where the running gear could have been checked and maintained without having to lift the tram body off of it. The tram rails would have run along the top of these walls, see the lower picture for an example.
Inspection Pits at Leith Depot. These were only ever for electric cars © selfInterior of Leith Depot, pre-1920. © Edinburgh City LibrariesNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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The thread about Leith’s lost “Eagle Buildings” and what connects them to the building of the Forth Bridge
This thread was originally written and published in September 2020.
I saw a photo tweeted by the excellent Scran resource and was struck by the coincidence that I had looked the place up only a few days before when I had come across some other photos of it on Flickr.
https://twitter.com/Scranlife/status/1308652327373606912?s=20&t=RiEzrm-6XhDoBt2_yhUtig
The Eagle Buildings were at 5 Tower Street in Leith, next to the Sailor’s Home (now Malmaison Hotel).
Animated Now-And-Then transition of the Eagle Buildings (a 1970 photo by John R. Hume) overlaid on the current street view.Here they are in 1992, when it was being used as a workshop and store by a shopfitter. The photographer suggests demolition was in 1997.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cagiva1994/14016906377/
Most of that “sandstone” front was mock and was actually a showcase of the Portland cement wares of its occupants, Currie & Co. Ltd, Building-Trade Merchants in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leith and across the Scottish central belt.
The Eagle Buildings at 5 Towers Street on an 1892 Goad Insurance Map, which focuses on the construction of buildings and what occupies them. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandCurrie & Co, Ltd. had been incorporated in April 1898 by the merger of two similar building supply and cement merchant businesses owned by John Patrick Currie:
- Currie & Co. of Glasgow, founded in 1873, headquartered in Wellington Street. Subsidiary companies included the North British Asphalt Company, the North British Coal and Firewood Company and the Eagle Portland Cement Co. This is the eagle connection; it was a brand to sell cement.
- Joseph A. Currie & Co. of Edinburgh and Leith, founded in 1875 and headquartered in Bernard Street in Leith. This business had been bought in 1893 by John Patrick on the death of his brother Joseph Allan at the age of only 42.
This 1911 advert reveals that they had a lineage going back to the late 18th century through A. M. Ross & Sons, slate merchants in Glasgow.
1911 Perthshire Advertiser advert for Currie & Co.The headquarters had moved from Glasgow to 19 Rose Street in Edinburgh around this time, that building too was called the Eagle Buildings and it remains so to this day. If you crane your neck and look up as you pass, you’ll see an eagle watching over you high above in its “eerie”.
19 Rose Street, Eagle BuildingsJoseph Allan Currie was born in Cupar, Fife, in 1851. At the age of only 21 he was appointed manager of the Waltham Abbey Gas Works in London. He returned north and settled in Leith two years later, bringing with him a new trade of Portland cement merchant. Cement was not manufactured in Scotland at the time, but was imported from the Medway. Leith was therefore the perfect base for such a venture. Joseph Allan added plaster of Paris, pavement stone, lime, fireclay and earthenware to this business, becoming a successful builders merchant, growing the business to become one of the largest in Scotland. In 1894 his company was reported as being the largest suppliers of roofing felt in the region; an increasingly popular product due to the increasing cost of roofing slate and timber.
His obituary described him as having “indefatigable energy, strong personality and business tact“. Joseph was remarkable as being the sole suppliers of Portland cement for both the Forth Bridge works and the ill-fated first Tay Bridge.
One of the piers of the Forth Bridge, the iron caisson would be lined with masonry, bonded by Currie’s Portland cement.The construction of the Forth Bridge required some 20,000 tons of Portland cement, which was manufactured on the River Medway and was brought by sea to South Queensferry. Here it was transferred to an old hulk that Currie had purchased called the Hougomont; a ship that had been built in Burma as a convict transport for Australia. The Hougomont could store 1,200 tons of cement, which had to be stored for a certain number of days before it was used. When smallpox broke out amongst the workers in 1886, the Hougomont was moved to Port Edgar and used as an isolation hospital, helping the outbreak to be quickly dealt with.
The Hougomont moored off of one of the Forth Bridge’s stone piersJohn Patrick Currie – born 1848 – continued to run the business and became the largest Scottish building merchant and cement distributor, Scottish agents for I. C. Johnson & Co. Isaac Charles Johnson and his business partner had painstakingly reverse-engineered existing cement products, improved them and then produced a different product that they were careful to make sure was not subject to existing patents.
Johnson & Co.s Portland Cement, London & NewcastleAn 1894 description of the company in a trade publication states:
The commodities which Messrs. Currie & Co. deal in principally are: Portland cement, Scotch and Irish limes, pavement, freestone, crushed granite, Arran sand, slates, fireclay goods, barytes, umber, plaster of Paris, whiting, &c. In all these lines Messrs. Currie & Co. hold large stocks, and are ready to meet any demands with promptitude. Their standing is accepted as a guarantee of quality, and they spare no effort to maintain their high reputation for reliable material. The business in every department receives the direct personal attention of its founder and sole proprietor, Mr. John P. Currie, a gentleman whose commercial capabilities are well demonstrated in the success that has attended this influential concern. The business in which Mr. Currie is now so actively engaged derives its support from a thoroughly representative and increasing connection, and continues to develop.
Rivers of the North – Their Cities and their Commerce.It seems that the Curries named nearly all their properties Eagle Buildings, with at least 3 in Glasgow.
Currie & Co’s Eagle Buildings stables on St. James Street in GlasgowCurrie & Co.’s Eagle Buildings on Bothwell Street, Glasgow. Again an eagle is perched on topJohn Patrick died at home in Edinburgh in March 1919 at the age of 71. After his death, the company seems to have moved its headquarters to another Eagle Buildings, this time in Dock Street, Dundee. By this time it was an agent for the Cement Marketing Company, which would eventually rename itself after its most famous product; Blue Circle Portland Cement. The company was still trading in 1953, after which the trail in newspaper archives goes cold.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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Take the “High Line”: the thread about Leith’s unbuilt park through the rooftops
I found something very interesting hidden away in a cardboard file in a corner of Leith Library. The title – City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices. – was so snappy that I couldn’t help but start reading it. This was the plan for a £90 million redevelopment and rejuvenation of Leith, which by this time was suffering badly from industrial decline, urban depopulation, poor housing stock and a general lack of public amenities. As part of this plan it was proposed that the Edinburgh Corporation as it then was (after 1975 it was Edinburgh District Council) would purchase the abandoned trackbed of the Caledonian Railway which ran from Pilrig Park to Seafield via Restalrig, over Leith Walk and Easter Road. This would be converted into a landscaped walkway through the area, what nowadays we might term a linear park.
Line of the Pilrig to Seafield section of the Caledonian Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of ScotlandThis section of railway, formally known as the Leith New Lines, was one of the last to be built in the city and did not open until 1903. Its purpose was to give the Caley access from its existing line into Leith Docks from the west to the expanding eastern portion of the docklands. It would cut its way through the dense industrial heartlands of Leith and Bonnington, serving these with large and convenient new goods stations.
Ordnance Survey 6-inch scale map of Leith, 1906. The North British Railway is highlighted blue, the Caledonian Railway in red and the Leith New Lines in green. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandOn paper this was a sound proposal but by this time the best potential routes through Leith were already well built on, therefore it had to take a winding and circuitous route requiring substantial and expensive engineering. There were numerous cuttings and viaducts required plus skew girder bridges over thoroughfares at Bonnington Toll, Leith Walk and Easter Road. As if that wasn’t enough, it also had to cross three different North British Railway lines, the Water of Leith and cut beneath Ferry Road.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/40040319893/
This railway never fulfilled its potential, a planned passenger service was never introduced and its twin tracks soon singled. The western section between Newhaven and Bonnington closed in 1965. In 1968 the low bridge over Bonnington Toll was removed and the goods station off Leith Walk at Stead’s Place (Leith Walk West) was closed. For a few years the eastern section at Seafield lingered on giving access to the Leith East goods yard at Salamander Street but this too closed in 1973, making the entire line redundant. British Rail gave notice at this point that it intended to demolish its monumental girder bridges over Leith Walk and Easter Road plus a smaller one over Halmyre Street to reduce their maintenance burden.
Easter Road #NowAndThen image overlay showing the Caledonian Railway bridge in 1974 and the modern Google Streetview background. Original from Edinphoto. This bridge was removed between January and February 1980.The 1975 path scheme saw the opportunity to purchase the route from British Rail before they proceeded with demolition and proposed to replace these large, expensive structures with lightweight footbridges and to retain the smaller bridge over Halmyre Street. This would give an elevated walkway from Pilrig Park, across the arches of the viaducts at Jane Street, Manderston Street and Gordon Street and from there along the embankments and cuttings all the way to Seafield.
Cover, City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices.Proposal diagram for the Leith Walk Sawmills and Caley railway yard land off of Pilrig Park.The bridges at Easter Road and Manderston Street would be removed in early 1980, with that over Leith Walk following in September that year.
It have assumed that because the bridge over Halmyre Street was to be retained that the viaduct between there and Easter Road, which cut its way rudely through the back greens between Gordon Street and Thorntree Street would have been kept too.
1929 aerial photo showing the trackbed of the Leith New Lines between Easter Road (bottom right) heading west towards Leith Walk (top left). The large roof to the top right of the photo is Leith Central Station. That building along with the tenements along the line of Manderston and Gordon Streets have since been demolished. The large white roof belongs to the Capitol cinema, until recently a bingo hall. SPW027351 via Britain from Above.This ambitious urban realm scheme of course never came to pass. By the time an updated version of the Final Plan was published in 1980 it had been quietly dropped. One assumes this was because of the disruption caused to local government when the old unitary Corporation of the City of Edinburgh was replaced in 1975 and split up into the two-tier system of Edinburgh District Council and a combined Lothian Regional Council. Instead there was a cut back scheme to purchase the trackbed between Seafield and Easter Road and to landscape it as a pathway with funding from the Scottish Development Agency (SDA). While this at least did come to pass, the word “landscape” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and in reality this path was really just a strip of compressed dirt covered in dog mess and rubbish, with obstructive barriers to try and stop you cycling it without getting off and pushing. This would not be remedied until around 2010 when it was properly surface, the barriers were removed, new access points were added and lighting was provided.
Excerpt from 1980 report.Item 26 on the above list, the railway embankment through Pilrig Park, did also ended up being achieved although the link through to Leith Walk never happened. The viaduct from Pilrig Park to Leith Walk remains fence off, although recent redevelopment on the site of the former Leith Walk West goods yard means there is now a rather roundabout connection some 45 years later through an access road.
Looking along the viaduct above Jane Street towards Leith Walk on a very grey day in 2021. Photo © SelfItem 27, the second walkway which was planned in both 1975 and 1980, along the old North British Railway trackbed alongside the Water of Leith, from Coburg Street to Warriston, would come to pass. This opened in June 1982, making it the first old railway track to formally be converted to a foot and cycle path in Edinburgh, and the first of many more miles to come.
Line of the Coburg Street to Wariston section of the North British Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of ScotlandThe opportunity to do something between Pilrig Park and Easter Road is one that has never been properly grasped. In more recent times (although over 10 years ago now!) there was a semi-serious attempt to drum up interest in reviving the idea, with a connection between Pilrig Park and Halmyre Street achieved by building a show-piece timber and cable bridge across Leith Walk. How serious this actually was I do not know, I don’t recall any funding ever being in place even for planning, and providing level access to street level at the Thorntree Street end remains a difficult proposition. Even if it had been approved, like other schemes such as the section of Railway between Powderhall and Meadowbank, there’s a very good chance that it would still find itself in development limbo.
Renderings by Biomorphis of their engineered timber and cable bridge structure they proposed over Leith Walk.But if you happen to find yourself walking along past the garages which occupy the Manderston and Gordon Street arches, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually a railway station platform up there above your head, one which was built over 120 years ago but never actually opened. Although some lucky souls in the path have at least had the chance to get off a train there and head down its stairs to street level…
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Hello ^__^ 🐋
I added a tiny (A5) print of my illustration „City Whales“ (from my children's book „Fox of Friendship“) to my shop, slowly working through my backlog …
https://shop.jfml.eu/product/city-whales/
#JfmlArt #art #illustration #creative #DigitalArt #FediArt #CreativeToots #MastoArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #BuyIntoArt #FediGiftShop #GiftIdeas #ShopLocal #ArtForSale #print #artprints #giclee #fantasy #whales #ChildrensBooks #ChildrensBook #owl #birds #city #cityscape #night #surreal #SurrealArt #StarrySky
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Dear Fedivoyagers! ⛵
I reopened my #shop and added this #print 🐺
https://shop.jfml.eu/product/sleepy-gaurdian-a3-print/
Looking for feedback, #WooCommerce is quite the beast with shipping zones and taxes etc. If something doesn't make sense, please tell me ^__^
#JfmlArt #art #illustration #creative #DigitalArt #FediArt #CreativeToots #MastoArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #BuyIntoArt #FediGiftShop #GiftIdeas #ShopLocal #ArtForSale #artprints #giclee #fantasy #vector #wolf #island #summer #horror #cozy #bird #nature #landscape
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Hello, dear fedifolk ^__^
I added „The Shrine“ to my new and shiny shop:
https://shop.jfml.eu/shop/browse-by-illustration/the-shrine/
It's available as #print, #postcard and #PrintOnDemand / #DropShipping ✨
#JfmlArt #art #illustration #creative #DigitalArt #FediArt #MastoArt #CreativeToots #ArtistsOnMastodon #BuyIntoArt #FediGiftShop #GiftIdeas #ShopLocal #ArtForSale #print #artprints #postcard #giclee #snow #winter #animals #crows #deer #fox #isometric #videogames
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Lovely visit to La Belle Adventure yesterday, great mix of French & English language graphic novels. Great to see old chum Neil Slorance's work on the exhibition wall too!
They've also added mini-comics by local Scottish creators too. Still a new bookshop & very deserving of support from the Scottish comics community.
#books #Livres #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #BandeDessinee #Comics #LaBelleAdventure #librairie #bookshop #LeithWalk
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Gibsons of Leith: the thread about the enterprising fish smokers who became pioneers of Scottish aviation
This thread was originally written and published in February 2023.
In a previous thread, we looked at the Edinburgh Aviation Craze of 1910, when a few local citizens dared to dream that they might fly in machines they had crafted from their own hands. One of those men was John Gibson, and this is his story. John was born in September 1856, the first child of Margaret Forrest and John Gibson of New Street, Fisherrow, the small harbour village just to the west of Musselburgh. John (senior) was a fish curer and town councillor, like his father before him, and the family lived in a house by the name of Gibson’s Land. The family moved to Liverpool in the 1860s, business at Fisherrow having been disrupted by the coming of the railways. John Junior went to sea as an apprentice aged 14, learning that trade across the globe on oceanic sailing ships.
In August 1875, when aged just 18, he found himself wrecked off Cape Horn after the on which he was serving had to be abandoned. The Albert Gallatin of Liverpool became uncontrollable after losing her rudder and was in danger of being wrecked on the rocky shore of the Ildefenso Islands to the south of Chile. The ship’s complement of 30 took to the boats; the first mate and 20 seamen in the larger and Captain Groves, his wife and two children, and five seamen including John in the smaller. The latter boat made it safely to Islas Hermite, where they spent 9 days, before setting off again in search of something from which to construct a sail. After 2 days fruitless rowing they landed on another island, where they were reduced to a diet of half a cracker and 3½ ounces of salt beef each per day and suffered badly from exposure. They were fortuitously rescued by the ship Syren of Boston after 18 days. The other 21 men were never seen again.
Islas Hermite, CC-by-SA 3.0, Jerzy StrzeleckiJohn Senior moved the family back to Scotland around this time, re-establishing his fish curing business in Leith, but his son fancied his chances and headed to Australia to prospect for Gold. Not striking it rich, he soon returned home and joined the family trade, dealing in smoked fish in Newhaven. In 1897 he set himself up as a dealer of machinery and soon took to repair work and it was not long before this extended to bicycles. He entered the cycle trade at 109 Leith Walk around 1905, this business soon took the name of the Caledonian Cycle Works. These premises had substantial workshops to the rear, under the Manderston Street railway arches, perfect space for Gibson to indulge in tinkering with bikes, cars and engines.
Plaque dedicated to John Gibson adjacent to his “Caledonian Cycle Works” at 109 Leith Walk, which now houses a Salvation Army shop. The date given for his birth does not match his birth certificate and as nice as it is to imagine the fact, he did not build Scotland’s first aircraft (although he did claim to!).Local newspaper adverts for the Caledonian Cycle Works in 1907It’s not exactly clear why, but in early 1909 John Gibson decided to get himself into the aircraft industry by building his own machines. Perhaps he was inspired by those two other bicycle repair shop proprietors; Orville and Wilbur Wright. Or perhaps it was the contemporary adventures of Scotland’s other aviation pioneers, which had been plastered all over the newspapers. The Barnwell brothers of Stirling – Frank and Harold – had been experimenting with gliders and had even tried to fit an internal combustion engine to one in 1905. In 1908, Lt. Laurence D. L. Gibbs made short, powered hops in a curious, swept-wing, “automatic stability” biplane called the Dunne D.4 in much secrecy in Glen Tilt near Blair Atholl. In July 1909, the Barnwells made the first powered flight in Scotland. Closer to home for Gibson there was a financial incentive to budding aviators too; in September 1909, the directors of the Marine Gardens amusement park in Portobello had offered a £500 prize, good for 1 year, for the first flight across the Firth of Forth by a Briton in a British-built plane, so long as it started from Marine Gardens. It was noted in April 1910 that Mr Charles Hubbard, an engineer living at Viewforth, was experimenting with a Bleriot-type monoplane of his own construction on Portobello Golf Course and had made a number of powered hops before it crashed.
Suitably inspired, Gibson’s first forays into aeroplanes were quarter-scale models, c. 10 feet long and certainly showing the influence of the Wright Brothers: being biplanes controlled by warping the wings and by a canard (a leading control surface rather than a tail), being powered by two propellers driven by chains from a single engine and by landing on skis. They were built both to hone and refine Gibson’s techniques and design, but also as demonstration pieces to be put on public show. In total he built nineteen different models, and the design of his craft evolved over this time.
An early variant Gibson aeroplane, before the Farman type. This one may be that described as being shown at the Leith Flower Show in Victoria Park in August 1910A subsequent model, from a photo submitted to Flight magazine by John Gibson in February 1912. It is beginning to look more like a Farman-type, but still retains features of the earlier craft above such as the chain-driven propellersThe definitive model moved up to half-scale, 15½ feet long and 12 feet in span, and adopted the layout of Henry Farman, a French aviation pioneer and a type which was very popular in the UK at that time. Again a canard biplane, it had movable ailerons on the wing-tips for control, a single, 7-cylinder rotary engine and the refinement of wheels with rubber suspension added to the landing skis. This was built specifically to exhibit in London and Berlin in March and April of 1910 respectively and was sponsored by the North British Rubber Company to exhibit their rubberised aircraft fabric. The structure was of ash wood, braced by piano wires.
The Gibson Farman-type half-scale biplane, at the company’s workshops in Manderston StreetEven before half-sized Farman model was completed, Gibson had already moved on to the construction of a full-sized version of it – Caledonia No. 1. In July 1910 it was ready and The Scotsman reported it to be 30 feet long and 28 feet in span, with a loaded weight of 700 lbs. It was powered by a 3-cylinder, water-cooled engine of 30 hp, driving a 2-bladed propeller of 6 feet 8 inches at 1,100 rpm. The pilot sat on the lower wing, with the engine to his back and the radiators on either side. In contrast to the model, the vertical tails were mounted one above the other, rather than side-by-side. Construction was of silver spruce, with elm skids, and again it was covered in North British rubberised fabric. The aircraft could be disassembled for transport, and a photo of it exists in a field outside Edinburgh being put back together again. Gibson told the press that the only part of his machine that was not built in Scotland was its engine. He had intended to enter the machine into the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting at Lanark Racecourse in August of that year, but the proprietors were wary of the public relations disasters experienced by other events as a result of amateur flyers who could not convince their homespun machines to take off and barred all but experienced pilots in proven aircraft. Gibson was disappointed to be excluded from the Lanark meet, but this was probably for the best as No. 1 refused to take off.
Gibson’s Caledonia No. 1, probably at Balerno. Photograph donated by John Gibson’s son G. T. Gibson to the National Museums of Scotland and on display at the East Fortune Museum of FlightUndeterred, the machine was rebuilt as Caledonia No. 2, and in August it is reputed to have managed to make some short, controlled hops at Buteland Farm, outside Balerno, with Gibson’s 30 year old son – John G. Gibson (the G was for Gibson!) – at the controls. The main visual changes to No. 2 were the twin canards at the front and the curved supporting skids between them and the wheels (which protected the plane in the event of it nosing-over on take off and landing).
Caledonia No. 2, from photos submitted by John Gibson in August 1910, before it had managed a controlled flight. His son, John G., is at the controls.Gibson undertook some of the flying himself, but as injured in a crash and broke his leg. Thereafter he deferred most of the flight testing to his son – John G. There are mentions online of testing being undertaken on Leith Links, but I can find no references to substantiate this, and as far as I’m aware Buteland Farm was used as their test ground. The Gibsons now had a working aircraft and began soliciting for orders, charging £450 for a complete machine. Full-page spread adverts were placed in the Edinburgh and Leith post office directories:
Gibson’s Aeroplanes advert from 1910-11, from the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory.Planes, Tails, Ailerons, supplied on receipt of measurements and other details on very short notice.
Advert for Gibson’s Aeroplanes, 1910-11
Best materials only used. Your orders solicited for Scottish-built Planes.
Spare parts or complete machines.
Wood Spars cut any length, straight-grained and free from knots.
Aeroplane Fabric, all grades, at factory prices.
We make Aluminium castings from customer’s patterns or drawings. Wood patterns made to order.
We undertake Aeroplane repairs.Nine more machines were built by the company in the next few years, most for sale to private customers. In September 1911, Gibson reported to the press that one of his machines – Caledonia No. 11 – had accidentally but successfully performed a “somersault” in the air when being flown at Cramond by Gordon T. Cooper, the son of the secretary of the Edinburgh Aeronautical Association. In November of that year, one of the Gibson machines was included in the display of the Scottish Aeronautical Society at the National Exhibition, at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.
An American Farman biplane in flight in 1910, with a passenger clinging on to a strut next to the pilot.Of the 11 full-size machines built by the Gibsons, four were written off in crashes, one was destroyed in a fire when on display at an exhibition in Brussels and another met the same fate in the Manderston Street workshop. Progress seems then to have stalled, this is perhaps because John G. had graduated from Edinburgh University as a prize-winner and passed an entry exam to the Indian Civil Service, which gained him a prestigious appointment in London with the HM Office of Works. A larger machine was designed in 1913 and was said to be under construction the following year when the outbreak of war saw it being cancelled. This event saw John G. join the Royal Engineers, and he was twice wounded during the conflict. Post-war he took a civil service job attached to the Air Ministry.
Wooden propeller from a Gibson aeroplane at the National Museums of Scotland Museum of Flight at East Fortune. Given the date, and the size, this may have been fitted to the Farman-type half scale model.During the war, the Caledonian Cycles business was relocated to Dalry Road and the Leith Walk premises and its workshops became the Caledonian Motor Works, with additional workshop premises being taken on Sloan Street and Jameson Place nearby. Business became focussed on providing bodies for lorries and post-war the company would become a principal agent in Scotland for Leyland lorries and buses, with premises taken in King Street, Aberdeen to serve the north-east of Scotland. Later they would become an agent for Morris Commercial Vehicles.
John Gibson (senior) died aged 79, at his home at 19 Pilrig Street in Leith on August 7th 1935. The Scottish newspapers mourned his passing and noted a surprising further string to his bow; he was an acknowledged authority on Egyptology and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities. John G.’s younger brother – George Thomson Gibson – seems to have largely taken over the running of the company. George was a capable engineer – taking out his first patent for improvements to motorcycle frame joints in 1918. In the 1950s he took out a series of patents for improvements to refuse vehicles and these would become something of a company speciality.
1957 patent by George T. Gibson for a tipping refuse lorryAnother line of business was “Gibson Towers”, which they designed and built for themselves; mobile platforms for working at height. Still based in Leith, a pleasing throwback to their aviation heritage was the continued use of “Aero, Edinburgh” as the telegram address.
A 1956 advert for Gibson TowersGeorge T. died in Edinburgh in 1960 aged 69. John G. died in 1970, aged 80. The company continued for a while after the death of the Gibson brothers, being closed and wound-up in 1975.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
I just added saving of the collected mushrooms as well a restart button to my GameDevDD Game Jam game "Under Fallen Leaves": https://phoenix616.itch.io/under-fallen-leaves/devlog/1520717/under-fallen-leaves-update-012
#gamedev #indiedev #godot #opensource #freesoftware #freegame #gamejam #gamedevdd #UnderFallenLeaves
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Some of the tiny things I added. A slight delay before showing the animated artwork.
#indiedev #iosdev #liquidglass #buildinpublic #macosdev #ux -
Bizarre #Trump #passport mocked as vanity project
Not patriotism. Its vanity
Its mocked in social media with 1 writing
“No sitting president has ever done this. Coins, park passes, battleships, now your passport. The man cannot find a surface he will not slap his name or face on”
He's 1st living president to in passport & its latest instance of him having his name & face added to buildings, documents other highly visible objects
https://www.thenational.scot/news/26062229.bizarre-donald-trump-passport-mocked-vanity-project/
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@alice
Adding a couple of samples with one of the cargo plus crop looks. I wanted to showcase an example where it gave me _more_ cleavage. It also broadened my shoulders without over masculinization which feels weird, but it might just be the whole disappearing eyeball thing.I can't tell if it's overdoing my muscle tone. My brain says yes, but I'm insecure.
This batch was after they added the watercolor style and it started keeping some of my tattoos instead of always removing them. The styles here are the color illustration.
I very intentionally obscured my waist/back arch to see how that would interact. It didn't seem to make a difference compared to not obscured versions.
I have some examples involving my D.A.R.E crop (for science) but I still need to process all of them and add alt.
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I'd like a uhhhhhh boneless worm
(A skistomid, my personal specie)
#worm-art #monster #skistomid #original-species #worldbuilding -
Added ladder climb state animation.
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Meow ~~ cute word art newly added to my collection: https://1-lisas-baker.pixels.com/featured/meow-lisa-s-baker.html
#meow #cat #cats #caturday #catsofmastodon #mastocats #mastoart #fediverse #fediart #art #arte #artwork #wallart #homedecor #woodprints #canvasprints #artprints #artforsale #buyintoart #pawprints #wordart #typography #Sunday #blue #catlovers
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A bit of whimsy today with Owl No. 01, newly added to my collection: https://1-lisas-baker.pixels.com/featured/owl-no-01-lisa-s-baker.html
#owl #bird #birds #birdsofmastodon #birdsofprey #art #arte #artwork #wallart #homedecor #artforhome #artforsale #buyintoart #mastoart #fediart #fediverse #collage #wordart #nature #patterns #wildlife #whimsical #whimsy #woodprints #artprints #framedprints #stationary
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Donkey Desert Flower Cart, newly added to my collection: https://1-lisas-baker.pixels.com/featured/donkey-desert-flower-cart-lisa-s-baker.html
#Desert #Donkey #Southwest #DonkeyArt #DesertDecor #SouthwestStyle #WhimsicalArt #FloralArt #RusticCharm #DesertBlooms #SouthwestVibes #AnimalArtwork #BurroArt #PastelArt #NatureInspired #BotanicalArt #FlowerLovers #DesertLife #VintageStyle #PeacefulArt #HomeDecorIdeas #ArtForSale #WanderlustArt #BuyIntoArt #MastoArt #fediverse #fediart