Tag Archives: PRONI

A1 @ A2SN

I wrote here about the workshop, being organised by A2SN, the Archives and Artefacts Study Network, and PRONI, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, entitled

By air, sea and land — Transport & Mobility through the archives.

I attended the workshop yesterday; it was absolutely excellent. I can’t remember the last time I attended an event where every speaker was both a good communicator and worth listening to. The programme covered waterways, roads, railways, aircraft, public transport and shipping, with two more theoretical, but no less interesting, sessions at the end — followed by a reception on and tour of the SS Nomadic.

The timetable had been designed to provide much opportunity for discussion between speakers and attenders: it was successful, thanks largely to its enforcement with a rod of iron, or rather with three sheets of card.

I imagine that the A2SN blog will have a full report when KH has had a chance to recover, so I won’t cover it here, but it was gratifying to note that Waterways Ireland is working on making access to its archive much easier.

If A2SN hold any more events on the island of Ireland, I’ll be there.

 

Archives workshop: a reminder

I mentioned, back in April, that an interesting-looking workshop is scheduled for Belfast on 8 September 2014. It’s being held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [PRONI] in the Titanic Quarter and there’s an optional extra tour and reception on the SS Nomadic afterwards. This post is a reminder.

The programme covers waterways, roads, railways and flight. For this site, the opening session is of great interest: Dawn Livingstone, CEO of Waterways Ireland, is to talk about an interactive archive for Waterways Ireland.

By air, sea and land

By air, sea and land

The workshop is being organised for PRONI by A²SN, the Archives and Artefacts Study Network, supported by the Historical Model Railway Society, the Business Archives Council and the Postal History Society.

The [two-page PDF] brochure is downloadable here PRONI transport archives workshop. The workshop fee is £20/€25 with an extra £3/€3.50 for the SS Nomadic visit. Sterling cheques are accepted; there is provision for paying in euro by online banking.

 

Waterways [and other] archives

For anyone interested in transport history, there is an interesting-looking workshop scheduled for Belfast on 8 September 2014. It’s being held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [PRONI] in the Titanic Quarter and there’s an optional extra tour and reception on the SS Nomadic afterwards.

The programme covers waterways, roads, railways and flight. For this site, the opening session is of great interest: Dawn Livingstone, CEO of Waterways Ireland, is to talk about an interactive archive for Waterways Ireland.

By air, sea and land

By air, sea and land

The workshop is being organised for PRONI by A²SN, the Archives and Artefacts Study Network, supported by the Historical Model Railway Society, the Business Archives Council and the Postal History Society.

The [two-page PDF] brochure is downloadable here PRONI transport archives workshop. The workshop fee is £20/€25 with an extra £3/€3.50 for the SS Nomadic visit. Sterling cheques are accepted; there is provision for paying in euro by online banking.

While on the subject of archives, I might mention again the Archives & Records Association, Ireland branch, whose [freely downloadable PDF] newsletters often cover topics of interest, and their Learn About Archives site here.

G boats, Biffs, armoured cars and the Lagan

On the Grand Canal, M boats (boats with the letter M added to their numbers) were motor barges owned by the Grand Canal Company itself; E boats were engineering boats, used for canal maintenance and B boats (whether motor or horse-drawn) were bye-traders’ or hack boats, boats owned by traders other than the Grand Canal Company itself.

G boats were wooden horse-drawn boats, built to carry turf (peat) during The Emergency, which to the rest of the world was the second world war. Some of them [PDF] were built by Thompsons of Carlow, whose archives are now in the National Archives of Ireland; you can read about them in the Summer 2012 newsletter [PDF] of the Archives & Records Assocation.

The same organisation’s Autumn 2013 newsletter had an interesting article about Lagan Navigation archives in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Unfortunately something has gone wrong with the links on its newsletter web page so the relevant PDF is not available at the moment.

h/t CO’M