News and Updates
Goodbye, and good riddance, to 2020!
I sure that everyone is looking forward to coming to the end of this extraordinary year,
Let us hope that 2021 will prove to be an improvement, after all it cannot be worse. Can it?
Meanwhile, in these difficult times, have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Tony Green
I managed to complete the third of the documents produced by Redditch manufacturers showing their work during WW2 for today, VE Day.
This concerns the new factory built by BSA on the Studley Road to manufacture the BESA machine gun for the British military. They had the contract in early 1938 and began building the same year. By July 1939 they had produced the first working machine gun off the production line.
This document was produced by the BSA to mark that event and I scanned it to images about 10 years ago for a WW2 event. I do not have an original version and so I am not sure if I have the correct page order.nevertheless, from the images I produced a PDF and, converted that to a ‘flip book’.
You can find and read these documents from Britannia Batteries, the Royal Enfield and the BSA at:
Two things concerning my Alcad History site http://www.alcadhistory.org.uk/
I had this nice e-mail from India….
‘I am Sunil Trikha from India. I visited Alcad thrice in 1980s in connection with transfer of technology for Punjab Power Pack. I have many pleasant memories.
I still remember my friends Mr. David Way, Mr. Cummins & Mr Tony Gray. I learnt a lot from them.
During my first visit Alcad was at its peak with Carpentry shop, component production shop & tool room. It is great to find that you are keeping memories of ALCAD alive.
Wishing you best of health. SUNIL TRIKHA’
I well remember visiting India in the 1980s to resolve a battery problem in a nuclear power station and visiting important customers such as the railways. I found the people there friendly and helpful and it has some good memories. I still have some mementos which live in my living room to remind me of the time.
I have also been working on a document supplied to me by Jane Asher who is the daughter of W.S.Thomson who worked at ‘The Batteries’ at Hunt End and Union Street from 1938 to 1972. He produced a manuscript ‘‘Nickel-Cadmium vented pocket plate storage batteries.’ for the publisher McGraw Hill which was never published.
Jane has supplied me with the original manuscript which I am scanning and using OCR (Optical character recognition) to convert to a Word file and then to a PDF. I will have to recreate the graphs, etc, into a modern format and I will then publish this as a downloadable pdf.
This is rather a specialist area and there will be only limited interest, but I think that it is important that technical information of this type should not be lost and will be available for future historians.
I plan to work on this over the winter when there is less to do in the garden and at Forge Mill Needle Museum.
Tony Green
Local Historian Philip Jarvis invites you to take a step back in time, at St Philip’s Church in Webheath where an exhibition will show how transport in Redditch looked in the 1950s and 1960s.
The exhibition will be open as follows:
Saturday 12th May 10.30 to 5pm
Sunday 13th May 2pm to 5pm
Monday 14th May 10.30 to 8pm.
Tuesday 15th May 10.30 to 5pm.
The exhibition will include displays and photographs of the Railways, Royal Enfield Cycles and Motorcycles, Midland Red Buses, Coaches, Garages and Emergency Vehicles. These will be shown in model form and photographs.
On Saturday 12th May at 3pm There will be a presentation of the Changing Face of the Redditch Railway showing how the railway line from Barnt Green has changed since the edition of a loop line at Alvechurch station. This will include movie clips of the steam era in Redditch.
Admission £2.00 children £1.00.
(Image: A north bound freight train going through Redditch Station in 1962 – Source: Phil Jarvis)
The makers of BBC2’s hit series Back in Time for Tea are seeking West Midlands pupils and teachers for their next exciting time travelling adventure – Back in Time for School! If you’re a parent/guardian of a child in Year 9 or Year 10, or a teacher at any level of the profession, please go to walltowall.co.uk and click on Take Part to find out more!
Welcome to this new addition to the website. Here you will find news and updates related to y Redditch websites which are:
www.redditchhistory.org.uk
www.redditchwalks.org.uk
www.visitredditch.org.uk
www.alcadhistory.org.uk
Regards
Tony