The Furnaces and Hopper Truck.

A walk along Riverside to the Technology museum which is open on Sundays. I now have a membership card and hope to get some more pictures as there are lots of interesting things to see in there. This shows the furnace, where the very hot and unpleasant smelling ash was raked out of the ash pans under the grates of the boilers and put into the hopper trucks which ran on rails beneath the sliding ash pit doors of the furnaces. The flue from the furnace to the chimney ran under the boilers and had to be regularly cleared of soot and ash, dug out by hand while the boilers were still in use !  The hoppers were then pushed by hand along the rails to a turntable, then a steam powered winch hauled them to the top of the site where the ash was tipped by hand into the disused brick pits. On special steam days you can see the winch in operation.