Alpha Mill
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 12:47 pm
One of the things about a forum is how people are prepared to share their knowledge and we were very fortunate to post a photo of the mill we intended making for the Slattocks Junction layout of the Manchester Area Group.https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=853&start=53 The photo which can be seen on the Area Group forum proved that we had not done our research and were swiftly pointed in the right direction by Howard Bolton who clearly knows an awful lot about cotton mills.
After being presented with a list of mills that would be appropriate for our location and a preliminary drawing of the type of mill we should be looking at we were inspired by what was on offer. Howard suggested that rather than trying to make the back of the mill we should model a side and the side which has an engine house was particularly interesting given that there were lots of features that could be modelled.
When we saw this drawing we were immediately taken by the style of the building, it was a lot more interesting than what we had planned which was simply a building with lots of windows. Howard provided us with a whole list of buildings to go and look at whilst they are still there. Tony Williams and myself went off to look at 2 of them and managed to photograph both the Warwick Mill and the Manor Mill which are both in the area (roughly) we are modelling. The Manor is still in use for warehousing but the Warwick is out of use but since it is a listed building it is in use for mobile phone masts. Our luck was in that day as the mobile phone mast engineers were just about to go on site and had unlocked the gates so they let us go onto the property and take some detailed close up photos which have proved to be of excellent value.
The wall that Howard proposed we model is this one shown from the Warwick Mill.
One of the good things about the mills Howard proposed was that a lot of the architects drawings for the construction of the mills were stored on microfiche in the Oldham Local Studies and Archive Centre so having decided that we would be far better off making a model based on Warwick Mill I set off to look at the drawings that were available.
The drawings date to 1907 and I was able to find lots of information about the building. We are mainly interested in the side wall which includes the rope race wall which houses the drive from the engine house to each floor to provide power for the machines. The drawings gave us all the dimensions we needed in order to make a mockup to see if we could make a reasonably accurate model of Warwick Mill. It proved to be the case and the model will fit around our touch screen that drives the layout and actually provides a better view of the layout than the building we originally proposed.
The only issue with our location on the layout involved us not being able to put in a boiler house in the same spot as it would have been at the Warwick Mill. The prototype photo shows the wall of the engine house where the boiler house had been before it was demolished. We don't have the space to make a boiler house there so having checked with Howard we agreed to make one on the other side of the engine house going to the back of the layout.
So, that is how we decided to model our mill and since it was going to be our first I decided to call it Alpha Mill. I checked the book 'The Cotton Mills of Oldham' and there was no Alpha Mill there so that decided that! Also there aren't many letters in Alpha and it will be necessary to put the name on the tower on all 4 sides.
The next post will be on starting the model.
Ralph
After being presented with a list of mills that would be appropriate for our location and a preliminary drawing of the type of mill we should be looking at we were inspired by what was on offer. Howard suggested that rather than trying to make the back of the mill we should model a side and the side which has an engine house was particularly interesting given that there were lots of features that could be modelled.
When we saw this drawing we were immediately taken by the style of the building, it was a lot more interesting than what we had planned which was simply a building with lots of windows. Howard provided us with a whole list of buildings to go and look at whilst they are still there. Tony Williams and myself went off to look at 2 of them and managed to photograph both the Warwick Mill and the Manor Mill which are both in the area (roughly) we are modelling. The Manor is still in use for warehousing but the Warwick is out of use but since it is a listed building it is in use for mobile phone masts. Our luck was in that day as the mobile phone mast engineers were just about to go on site and had unlocked the gates so they let us go onto the property and take some detailed close up photos which have proved to be of excellent value.
The wall that Howard proposed we model is this one shown from the Warwick Mill.
One of the good things about the mills Howard proposed was that a lot of the architects drawings for the construction of the mills were stored on microfiche in the Oldham Local Studies and Archive Centre so having decided that we would be far better off making a model based on Warwick Mill I set off to look at the drawings that were available.
The drawings date to 1907 and I was able to find lots of information about the building. We are mainly interested in the side wall which includes the rope race wall which houses the drive from the engine house to each floor to provide power for the machines. The drawings gave us all the dimensions we needed in order to make a mockup to see if we could make a reasonably accurate model of Warwick Mill. It proved to be the case and the model will fit around our touch screen that drives the layout and actually provides a better view of the layout than the building we originally proposed.
The only issue with our location on the layout involved us not being able to put in a boiler house in the same spot as it would have been at the Warwick Mill. The prototype photo shows the wall of the engine house where the boiler house had been before it was demolished. We don't have the space to make a boiler house there so having checked with Howard we agreed to make one on the other side of the engine house going to the back of the layout.
So, that is how we decided to model our mill and since it was going to be our first I decided to call it Alpha Mill. I checked the book 'The Cotton Mills of Oldham' and there was no Alpha Mill there so that decided that! Also there aren't many letters in Alpha and it will be necessary to put the name on the tower on all 4 sides.
The next post will be on starting the model.
Ralph