Not a saint but a boring and safe Volvo car. This beautiful sports model, P1800 was made from 1961 until 1973 and it gained cult status from the TV-series the Saint. The British TV-series with among others, Roger Moore, was made in impressive 118 episodes from 1962 to 1969 where the main character, Simon Templar, drove a California white P1800.
This could be the most beautiful car ever made, ever. What do you think? Ha de Gött!
Some photos from the old industrial belting factory in Göteborg, Sweden.
This historic factory, Göteborgs Remfabrik, was built using clay bricks in 1900 after the original wooden building was destroyed by fire. Most of the machinery, dating from around 1900, was imported from England and powered by a steam engine via belts. In 1916, the steam engine was replaced with an electric motor. Some modernisation took place in 1940s when fluorescent tube lighting was installed. Hardly anything has changed since then.
The factory remained in operation until 1977, when the employees and the owners shut down the machines, locked the doors, and went home – leaving everything as it was. This makes it one of the best-preserved industrial sites in Scandinavia from the early 1900s.
Today, it’s a museum, and most of the equipment can still run. An association of volunteers maintains and run the machines. You can find out more on their website, Göteborgs Remfabrik. These dedicated men and women deserve great respect for keeping history alive. If you ever find yourself in Göteborg, it’s worth a visit.
Never put your fingers in a running machine, ha de Gött!
Rubjerg Knude lighthouse outside Løkken in Denmark has a fantastic story. It was built in 1899 and was lit up in 1900. The tower is built by bricks and is 23 meters high and, at the time it was built the light was 67 meters over the ocean. It was built on wandering sand and was at the end of the last century almost buried in sand.
The lighthouse was taken out of commission already in 1968 due to low visibility from the surrounding sand dunes. A museum was opened in 1988 but was forced to close 2002 when all surrounding buildings were covered in sand. The wind moves the sand towards north-east and at the same time the shore line erodes up to 2 meters every year. The estimate was that the lighthouse would fall into the sea by 2023.
In august to October 2019 the 720 kilo tonnes tower was moved 70 meters inland. An amazing engineering achievement to lift and place the giant on rails and across over the sand. It took 4,5 hours to move the tower to the waiting new concrete foundation. The work was done by a local contractor company under the lead of master bricklayer Kjeld Pedersen, hats off and cheers. It is now estimated to last another 40 years.
I scouted this place with Google Earth and with the light it was everything I hoped for. Beautiful place and an amazing story.
Source: Wikipedia Swedish page
Walk into the light, ha de Gött!
The man made canal, in Swedish Sotekanalen, has been dug and blasted through the rock as a relief work for unemployed stonemason workers. The idea to build a canal came up already in the late 1800 to create a safer passage over the dangerous waters in the Sotefjord. The decision was made 1913 but the work didn’t start until 1931. It was inaugurated in 1935 by the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf. This made the peninsula Ramsvikslandet to an island but it’s now connected to the mainland with a swing bridge.
The canal is 4800 meters long, 4,5 meters deep and 15 meters wide. Today it’s not used for commercial traffic but each year over 50 000 recreation boats passes this beautiful waterway.
No man is an island, ha de Gött!
Stora Bommens bro in Göteborg, Sweden. In English The Large Gate Bridge. The bridge is used as bike and walk bridge over the Harbour Channel but was built as a train bridge. The name comes from the toll gate that was here in the past. The gate protected the channel from invading enemies but also ensured that the mooring fees and toll could be collected.
It was replaced with a replica, where the steel parts has been kept, in 2015 and cannot be opened. The old bridge was a swing bridge, swinging open around its centre leaving two lanes for boats to pass. The old bridge was very low and slowly sinking, making it more and more difficult to pass under during high tide. It was therefore called the cheese slicer bridge by the sightseeing tour boats. The possibility to open was disabled during a renovation in 1929. I haven’t been able to find out why, but a guy-guess is that the harbour was moved out to the river bank as the boats became bigger.
The white building in the background is the the court of appeal for West Sweden.
Hold your head down, ha de Gött!
For many Swedes this quay with the white building behind was the last steps on Swedish soil as they emigrated to America. The building is named Amerikaskjulet, the Amerika Shed. It was built in 1910 to 1911 as a warehouse for the Port of Göteborg. The docking place with number 36 was the first quay with enough depth for the Svenska Amerika Liniens steamboats. As the name suggest the shipping company established in 1915 was dedicated to traffic between Göteborg and New York, USA. The company was closed in 1975 after a, in many cases, dramatic history.
To name this quite large building a shed, must be a proof of the very special humour in Göteborg. It was the first building in the area built of granite stone and concrete. Quite different to the other wooden sheds along the quay. Behind it one of Göteborg’s most famous landmarks, the Seafarers Tower with the statue of a sailors wife looking out to the west praying for husband and sons safe return from the sea. A reminder of the importance of the city as a port that it still holds today as the largest in Sweden.
Sail safe, ha de Gött!
This old sail ship has been a symbol and landmark in Göteborg since 1951. It has been moored basically in the same place since then. It was originally built 1906 in Copenhagen, Denmark as school ship for the Danish merchant fleet. It is the largest sail ship ever built in Scandinavia. She served in Denmark until 1928 and after that the four-masted beauty was sold to Åland. There she served as merchant and passenger ship before finally arriving to Göteborg in 1951. This time to once again serve as a school but without ever to set sail again. Today it is a hotel and restaurant.
Sail, sail away on the winds of hope. Ha de Gött!
The Crown redoubt was built between 1687 and 1700 as part of Göteborg’s defence system. It is built on a steep mountain Risåsberget above Haga city district. Takes your breath away in more ways than one. The stone building is 33 meters high and reaches 87 meters above the sea level. The sconce has a twin Skansen Lejonet (Lion redoubt). Today the fortification has a better use for conferences and parties.
Take a deep breath, ha de Gött!
Since 1889 it has been guiding ships towards the Kosterfjord sea-lane and Resö. Originally the light came from the second floor windows but in 1917 it was replaced with gas driven AGA lighthouse in front of the building. The first floor was the living quarters for the lighthouse keeper with family. Since the the new AGA lighthouse was automatic there was no personnel after 1917. The house was sold to a private owner in 1950. Easy to manage garden, I guess, but probably needs to be painted regularly due to the harsh and salty west winds.
The fully automatic AGA lighthouse was invented by the Swedish inventor Gustaf Dahlén. He was awarded Nobel prize in physics for his work with lighthouse technology. The light was kept burning with the help of carbine gas. To save gas it was started and stopped with the help of a sun-valve also invented by Gustaf Dahlén.
Always steer towards the light, ha de Gött!
Yes, it’s true I’ve got an article published in a local newspaper called Veckovis. It’s very local so I share it here with you. Written in Swedish originally so I hope not too much is lost in translation.
At the top of Norra Bullaren where the lake turns into Enningdalsälven we find this beautiful turquoise pearl. This beautiful bridge is probably missed by most people who pass by on the Blue-Green road towards the Norwegian border. Nowadays, both the store and the petrol station are closed on the Swedish side. But if you stopp from nostalgic reasons, like me, and look down to the lake, you see it. As an avid hobby photographer, you are drawn to such beauty as bees to nectar-filled flowers.
The narrow cast iron bridge with wooden carriageway were built almost 100 years ago. The proud logo from Götaverken, Gothenburg, is embedded in the turquoise together with the year 1926. A work like this must have songs and poetry dedicated to it, I thought. Happily, I threw myself over a famous search engine on returning home. All searches on bridge Vassbotten came up quite empty. Searches on Enningdalsälven resulted in more hits on Älgafallet.
Even though Älgafallet is mighty and makes the photographer’s motive sensors go off at full speed, it was a bridge I wanted to know more about. Here it was important to make a “Message Board” with the thoughts and try something new. Götaverken. For me, who was born in Gothenburg, it is above all a shipyard. My father, who by the way was from Holkekärr in Bullaren, worked there when I was a child. Yes that is correct. I’m half-bulling in the embezzlement, hence the nostalgic stop at the store. The bridge, Bullaren, Götaverken and Gothenburg felt a bit like closing a circle.
Götaverken ceased all operations in 2015, but all documentation has been saved at the National Archives in Gothenburg. Using the well-known search engine, I came to the conclusion that there was an archive of bridges and viaducts. It was in cover number nine for the years 1905 – 1937. Tab 33 Wassbotten, highway bridge Bullarens Härad 1926. A small notice “reading room” meant that it was as far as I could get in the digital world.
Like the Phantom, would I have to leave the deep forests and wide expanses to walk the streets of the city like an ordinary man? With a son studying to be a history teacher at the University of Gothenburg, I did not have to go into the big city. This did not go down well with the wife who missed out on a shopping trip, but it is important to prioritize. After brushing off the archive dust, the good son was able to share lots of information with me.
The contract, with order number 5836, states that the bridge must have a parallel span with a length of 30 meters and a free bridge width of 4 meters. “Materials holding the requirements for cast iron class B shall be used for the iron superstructure except rivets and bolts”. “The bridge parts are to be coated twice with lead paint”. The work was to be completed on 1 October 1926 and anchorages were to be prepared by the client no later than 15 August. The contract was signed 31 March 1926. According to the contract, the price was SEK 14,500 (€1450). According to Statistics Sweden’s Price Converter, this would correspond to SEK 430,000 today (€43,000).
Test loading of the bridge took place on 6 and 7 December 1926, by loading the bridge with a 35 cm thick layer of gravel. According to the calculations in the protocol, the load was then about 600 kg / m2. The bridge arched 17 mm on the southern beam and 21 mm on the northern beam. After the load was removed, the bridge returned to its original position. In the test print protocol, I discovered that the modern spelling of Vassbotten was used with a simple V and not W as in the contract.
The search for more information continued through contact with the Swedish Transport Administration. A very helpful archivist produced the drawing. The drawing which was completed a week later on April 6, 1926. Drawing and subtitling are done by hand. The engineer has based his construction on the Royal Swedish Road and Water Agency’s standard drawings for road and railway bridges A17 and A20. I do not dare to interpret the engineer’s signature so his name will remain unknown. I wonder if he understood that the bridge would still be in use after almost 100 years. Here you can also read that the carriageway is made of wood. Load-bearing plank 4×4 inches and wear surface plank in the dimension 2×5 inches.
I also received information from the Swedish Transport Administration that a renovation and reinforcement had been done in 1956. Wooden planks and steel parts were replaced. The drawing shows that “all wood except the wear plank is impregnated with arsenic and creosote preparations”. “New steel parts are coated with lead paint and coated twice with anti-corrosion paint”. Here too, we can see changes through the history of the bridge. The dimensions of the wooden plank are here stated in millimeters, 50×125.
Lots of technology here so we return to the bridge’s beautiful appearance. Such engineering needs attention and I hope I got someone to look a little extra next time they pass. Maybe someone has been inspired to write a song about it.
Be a bridge over someones troubled waters, ha de Gött!
UlleHaddock 