Friday Facts and Fotos – 12 14 October 2022
There is renewed interest in Newport Workshops now that the restoration of the clock tower building is actually happening. In the next few weeks, we are going to give some information and photos of the rest of the buildings that are called centre block, which extend south from the clock tower building through to the water tower just inside the main gate on Champion road.
On the plan below the clock tower building is at the centre at the top. The buildings marked ‘stores’ and ‘pattern shop’ is the two-story brick building in the other photos. The ‘copper and tinsmith’ and the ‘brass foundry’ is the single-story dark brown brick building. This was how it was built when opened in 1888 with the original brick section of west block on the left and east block on the right. (Note that the wooden building on the left side of the clock tower building, currently the ‘Steamrail office’, was not added till WW2.) However, big changes happened soon after.
Within two years the stores’ branch took over all these buildings the ‘pattern shop’ was moved across into east block, and the ‘copper and tinsmith’ and ‘brass foundry’ was moved into a corrugated iron building which was added in 1890. This reflects a very early change from lavish to economical building styles. The B&W photo is an early shot of a section of the store and the next of the same section just seven months ago at the Steamrail ‘Open Weekend’ in March this year.
These buildings were the central store which held thousands of items used for construction and maintenance throughout the whole workshops. Many of those items were manufactured within the workshops, so you have the stores branch of the workshops ordering parts to be manufactured to stock a store which can supply everything needed to keep thousands of carriages and wagons and locomotives maintained and new ones being built.
The only remaining external evidence of the original use of this building is the high open passageway through the two-storey section (commonly referred to these days as ‘the tunnel’) with trolley tracks in the road either side. These trolley tracks are shown on the original plan and extend right through east and west blocks and are still visible in many places.
Next building south is the corrugated iron building, which was added in 1909, which we will talk about next week.
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