{"id":319,"date":"2009-09-28T18:43:31","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T18:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/?p=319"},"modified":"2013-11-19T23:11:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T23:11:13","slug":"ici-nobel-explosives-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/explosives\/ici-nobel-explosives-part-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"ICI Nobel Explosives Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another visit back to the enormous Ardeer site, this time to have a look around the wooded area that contained the gunpowder works. First, though, I passed through the nitroglycerin section – it’s a bizarre landscape of steep hills, tunnels, berms and these corrugated-iron blast walls:<\/p>\n

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Nitroglycerin was transported along open lead-lined troughs – it just ran down under gravity as pumping it would be a really bad idea. In the above picture you can see the remains of a bridge which carried the NG over a train line – and some of the wooden trough supports are still in place:<\/p>\n

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Right, onto the blackpowder works, and an incorporating mill (I think):<\/p>\n

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Next, in a very heavy-duty bunker with camouflage netting still in place, a huge hydraulic press, probably used for pressing gunpowder cake before incorporation.<\/p>\n

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Onto a powder magazine – there used to be dozens of these, each inside it’s own berm, but the lightly-built buildings have mostly gone leaving only the ring of soil. This one, unusually, was still intact, and even had the markings on the floor where boxes were stacked.<\/p>\n

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Next, the testing station, and the detonator labs – there were shoes scattered everywhere. In explosive factories, workers wore rubber or leather overshoes to prevent sparks.<\/p>\n

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Onto the ballistic mortars – I’ve photographed these before, but I can never get enough of these:<\/p>\n

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A new find, though, crammed in the back of a drawer – a slide-rule for working out the power of an explosive from the angle of the ballistic mortar.<\/p>\n

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In one room of the labs is box after box of glass plates – most are not that interesting (high-speed images of explosions) but some are very cool – with a portable lightbox I went through every box. A few examples:<\/p>\n

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Nearby, a detonator and a set of warning flags.<\/p>\n

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Then a long walk northwards to investigate some crescent-shaped buildings on the satellite view – they turn out to be test-firing cells. The first one is for testing rocket motors.<\/p>\n

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The next one, I think, was for testing quarrying charges – this was a plastic tip of a charge.<\/p>\n

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Finally onto a building I’m not sure about – it’s got a blast wall on three sides but the fourth is lightly built, it has what could be presses in it, driven by belts in a narrow chamber behind the wall.<\/p>\n

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Go to the next installment…<\/a><\/p>\n

All images:<\/p>\n

[fsg_gallery id=”1″]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another visit back to the enormous Ardeer site, this time to have a look around the wooded area that contained the gunpowder works. First, though, I passed through the nitroglycerin section – it’s a bizarre landscape of steep hills, tunnels, berms and these corrugated-iron blast walls:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explosives","category-industrial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/3965613946_01e30a741a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3yGoo-59","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1349,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/1349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}