Comment posted Quarrying at Glensanda: aggregating aggregates by newsroom.
Am I glad you were there, Murdoch – apart from the pleasure of actually meeting.
Recent comments by newsroom
- Minutes of today’s meeting of ‘Concerned Councillors’ Group
The information is not unconfirmed. It is utterly authentic.
The venue was in Lochgilphead and yes, we admit to being more concerned with the content that the venue.
This does not mean that you are wrong – and there is indeed an additional interest in the session being held outside Kilmory. - Minutes of today’s meeting of ‘Concerned Councillors’ Group
Duplicate salaries would not be possible within the rules.
This would be a matter of sharing the leader’s salary three ways for the duration of the triumvirate. - NOW – 21.00: BBC 2′s ‘Town’ with Nicholas Crane visits Oban
Wasn’t it fantastic – history – and with Catherine Gillies at Dunollie as mercifuly crisp as a brandy snap; the entrepreneurial spirit; the landscape; the seascapes; the island connections; the uniquely beautiful waterfront location that actually addresses its waterfront; the thrilling, mad and testosterone-packed outdoor activities born from the natural resources of a place like this; the masculine industry at Glensanda; the great food; the great music….
Now it all has to be made to be true all of the time.
There was that honest and fundamentally worrying glance at the shops for sale and to let, the shabby properties… and we all know there could have been more of this.
But this programme reminded us all of the core value to Argyll of the unique asset of Oban.
The warmth of the programme should not make us complacent that all is well with Oban – but absolutely determined to get it up to speed and keep it developing. - Minutes of today’s meeting of ‘Concerned Councillors’ Group
The SNP group are clearly unable to progress what they had already agreed at the earlier meeting on 16th May. All of them seem to be totally unable to agree to anything. “Impotent’ gets nowhere near the reality.
The paralysis bears witness to the situation we have already published – that the SNP party now requires its councillors to submit their intentions in advance for signing off [or not] by either the local MSP or an NEC member – and the SNP Constituency Association Convener.
The minutes also bear witness to what we said this morning – that they were squabbling amongst themselves and getting nowhere.
What no one could have imagined – nor would we have dared to publish it – was that we would be getting a New Way hydra as leader.
A triple headed short term leadership with three very different heads – Duncan MacIntyre, Michael Breslin and Vivien Dance.
Did someone say something the other day about popcorn and a seat in the front row?
The difference between the clued up and the clueless revealed in these minutes could not be sharper – and the frustration of the clued up is manifest.
It’s dreadfully funny – but you have to feel real sympathy for Councillor Walsh. Follow him through the minutes and you get the picture. - Serenissima waits for higher tide – and she has had earlier identities
We are, of course aware of that.
Watching at the time, what we saw her do was make marked changes of course over a short distance, some times at 90 degrees and at one point turning through 180 degrees three times in a row.
While some of this could have swinging to tide and current, the repetitions did seem to suggest controlled activity.
And it was only when she settled that her AIS recorded ‘At Anchor.’
powered by SEO Super Comments
My understanding is that the ship’s conveyor boom is only used when discharging. At that time, the cargo is dropped through the hopper doors in the bottom of the holds, onto longitudinal conveyors which take the cargo to the foot of the vertical conveyor (in the un-lovely tower attached to the front of the superstructure). The vertical conveyor then dumps the cargo onto the start of the ship’s discharge conveyor belt, carried in the boom which is swung from the ship above the quay at Amsterdam, or Hamburg, or wherever.
My understanding is that, when loading, the quarry’s own conveyer boom carries the stone chips right above the top of the hold, so that gravity does all of the rest (until the destination port), and the ship’s conveyor boom is simply swung out of the way.
If the ship’s conveyor belt carried the new cargo on-board, you would then need some horizontal conveyors at deck level to get the cargo from the inboard end of that conveyor to the tops of the holds. That would seem to be a bigger change than has been implemented in this rebuild.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
The ship loader is actually on the jetty. It is a very interesting piece of equipment, more elaborate than I had imagined. From what I could see and from what I gleaned from the quarry staff I will try and explain how it works, but I did not get to see how the conveyor collects the stone or how the belt deals with it’s outward travel.
If you look at the two pictures in this article you will see that it’s base is a massive bridge structure that sits on a turntable/pivot at one end and travels in an arc on rails set into the jetty at the outer end, where you can see a driver’s cab is attached. The conveyor to the ship is set in a boom that travels outwards on top of this bridge. It looks like the back end is held down by rollers that will be below the bridge. The boom conveyor can reach the furthest away corner of any of the ships holds.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Am I glad you were there, Murdoch – apart from the pleasure of actually meeting.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Would make a good set for the next James Bond movie, but ideally the baddies would disappear into the mincing machine and that would be best achieved as the ship is unloaded and the cargo sinks into the hoppers at the base of the hold.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I have no objection to the Glensanda operation whatsoever but . . .
let no one tell you that heavy industry does not do cute
compellingly beautiful symmetrical heap of silver crushed stone
the very specific beauty that is part of industry
Am I the only one who finds this eulogy to the industrialisation and total destruction of a huge swathe of countryside a bit odd after the vitriol recently poured on the wind industry?
.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Surely the difference with the wind industry is that it’s creeping over the surface of the country – and the surrounding seas – like some contagion that risks getting out of control, whereas Glensanda is an admittedly very large scale operation but in a carefully chosen area of a landscape big enough to contain it. Yes, it can be surprisingly visible – for example from the road through Glen Nant, 20 miles away – but it’s surely not the ‘total destruction of a huge swathe of countryside’, and it does have a certain grandeur in its sheer scale.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Digging a mountain away in an operation like that is pretty close to total destruction, is it not?
It may be necessary, it may be in the most appropriate place and it may be very clever technically, but Glensanda is not ‘beautiful’ by any stretch of the imagination.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I suppose it depends on the imagination being stretched. Some only see natural beauty while others see beauty in man’s industrial efforts to improve his lifestyle.
To live the lives we desire we sometimes need to move mountains, cut down trees and extract energy. It’s what we do to make good the impact and generate re-growth that is important.
The owners and the staff at Glensanda seem to consider the environmental impact of their every action and look to have it in mind at every stage. Vegetation is evident on the “benches” left from the earlier works.
Fifty years ago when there was a lot of road building, there were small quarries dotted along the roadsides. Today most of these are hardly noticable due to government spending on tidying up schemes, modern machinery and the healing efforts of Mother Nature.
We can look at the ground around Glensanda and see evidence of the toil of the people who lived there before the Clearances. In the future other generations will see evidence of the toil of today’s people.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0