Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: 1982

An image from 42 years ago to the day on our road trip around South Africa. Driving up on the N1 to the Du Toitskloof Pass (820 metres, 2,690 ft) in the Hawequas Mountains east of Capetown heading north eventually to Kimberley. This road is now the regional route R101 since the opening of the Huguenot Tunnel on the N1 in 1988.

It's difficult to capture the depth of the "Big Hole" in Kimberley but the height of the buildings give an idea of the scale. It's a real vertical wall of rock. Kimberlite, an ultramafic igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite, is most commonly known to be the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after Kimberley where diamonds were mined from this hole. Kimberlite occurs in the Earth's crust in vertical structures known as kimberlite pipes, as well as igneous dykes and can also occur as horizontal sills. The consensus on kimberlites is that they are formed deep within the mantle, hence at high temperatures and pressures. HWW to everyone. Have a great day!

Where else but the Netherlands? The many windmills along this canal in South Holland near Rotterdam are famous but I can't for the life of me remember the name of the area. Help me Jaap, Fred, Trudy... Thanks! It's Kinderdijk of course! Anyway HFF to everyone. Enjoy the weekend.

We drove from Johannesburg to Kruger Park for a short break spending just one night at Pretoriuskop in the park. With no particular plan we just drove around for the day and were surprised how many animals were about although we didn't see any big cats. This pod of hippos were lazing about in the river. In fact they are among the most dangerous animals in the world due to their aggressive and unpredictable nature.

Table Mountain complete with tablecloth as seen from the Camps Bay area. HBM to everyone. Enjoy the start of the new week

On the Trans-Canada Highway in the Rockies west of Calgary. I'm not certain exactly where but I believe we were between Canmore and Banff.

We were living in The Hague at this time and made a Sunday visit to nearby Delft. A fairly quiet day generally but ideal for wandering around the streets and canals of this beautiful town. This view is from Catharijnebrug looking along Oosteinde towards the Nieuwe Kerk on the Markt in the centre of the city. The Kleine Oostpoortbrug is behind the camera. HFF to everyone & have a great weekend.

A view looking west across the Rocky Mountain Trench along which the Columbia River flows northwards (to the right). I'm not 100% sure which peaks are seen but they are in the Dogtooth Range at the northern end of the Purcell Mountains west of Golden. The trench is cut into Cambro-Ordovician McKay Slates and is bounded on this side by the Purcell Thrust dipping west under the Dogtooth Range. The mountain range consists of a series of folds and thrust plates involving Proterozoic and Lower Cambrian rocks. Obviously it's not the main point of interest in this scene but there is a fence (& a railway!!) in there.... HFF & have a great weekend.

Mobil Oil Canadian Tectonic Seminar. The Plateau Mountain Ecological Reserve (although it wasn't called that in 1982) is quite a windswept place at a height of over 8000ft. We made a lunch stop here. The grass covered patterned ground in front is caused by periglacial conditions which shatter the Permian Rocky Mountain quartzite, by thawing & refreezing, into polygonal patterns. This is the crest of an anticline and the quartzite is almost flat-lying. It may be Ecological but in fact it is home to the highest gas well in Canada - Savanna Creek-3A drilled in 1952 at 8132 ft. East of the McConnell Thrust, the zone of highly imbricated and deformed Mesozoic to Tertiary rocks around 50 km wide, forms the Foothills where the Lower Carboniferous & Devonian oil and gas fields are found. The mountains in the background about 9 miles away to the west are in the High Rock Range, on the Alberta/British Columbia boundary, which lies above the Lewis Thrust and forms the Continental Divide. The peaks are in the 9000-10,000 ft range. Mount O'Rourke, left, Mount Pierce, centre, the highest peak right of centre is Mount Farquar with Mounts Holcroft & Scrimger to the right

Yellow-liveried standard gauge HTM 1100, a 600v DC American PCC tram built under licence in Belgium, is on a number 9 service heading for Vrederust from the Kurhaus in Scheveningen and has just crossed Koninginnegracht. This is the stop for Madurodam which is on the left. We lived in the apartment block behind on Nieuwe Parklaan at the time & I used to catch this tram to the office in the Babylon Centre. I didn't need an alarm clock because the squealing of the wheels of the first tram of the day as it negotiated the bends across the canal immediately woke me up! HFF and have a great weekend.

Light, shadow & steam. An early morning shot of the steamy atmosphere inside Sydenham loco shed in Port Elizabeth as the engines were being prepared.

North British-built Class 24 2-8-4 3685 stands ready to go off Sydenham shed while behind Class 15AR 4-8-2 2082 leaves a cloud of steam as it sets off to itself leave the depot. Other 15ARs are on shed including 1802 simmering in front of the buildings on the right.

During our Tectonic Seminar field trip we studied outcrops of Upper Cretaceous Cardium Formation sandstone in the Bow River by the Kananaskis Dam (Foothills sub-province). Towering in the background is Mount Yamnuska which is made up of Cambrian limestones carried 20km from the southwest on the McDonnell thrust and faulted over the Upper Cretaceous, marking the eastern boundary of the Rocky Mountain Front Ranges

The scale of the fabulous compressional tectonic features of the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains are definitely best appreciated from the air and the participants in our Mobil Oil field seminar were privileged to have an overflight of the Rockies on the last day of the course. I was living in The Hague, the Netherlands, at this time and working on the sub-surface Alpine tectonics in the North Sea. Superficially the Geology of Holland is pretty boring but 1000m below the surface in the Dutch offshore all hell breaks loose and believe it or not it looks just like this! It could be a seismic cross-section through the Lower Cretaceous oil fields in Block Q1. The subsurface oil and gas fields in the Foothills west of Calgary are trapped in analogous thrust anticlines.

Dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains a Canadian Pacific freight train heading by 4 unidentified locos - probably EMD SD40s - passes Kananaskis heading east towards Calgary. I was attending a Mobil Oil Tectonic Geology course through the mountains and should have been listening to the description of the rock outcrops here but the chance of a photo of a train in this fabulous landscape was too much of a diversion. Mount Yamnuska, right, & Old Goat Peak, centre, are part of the Rocky Mountain Front Range and the abrupt change between the steeply dipping, folded & thrusted rocks in the west and the flat lying Interior Plains rocks to the east is dramatic. Here Middle Cambrian carbonates have overridden Cretaceous Belly River Formation along the McConnell thrust fault. (I may not have been listening but I still have the field notes!)

In 1982 the Eschweiler Bergwerks Verein (EBV) Alsdorf coke ovens and Grube-Anna mine (off right) north of Aachen were a hive of activity as was the DB main line in the foreground. The green-liveried steam engine is almost certainly Anna no 14 (later renumbered to Anna no 6) built by Krupp in 1940 for Dynamit Nobel. It has been preserved at the Westfälisches Industriemuseum in Dortmund. Unbelievably, gone today are the DB exchange sidings, the coke ovens and all the industrial plant of EBV Grube Anna. The mine closed in 1983 and the coking plant in 1987. The main line survives as does the signal box just seen top left.

Two vintages of trams at the junction of Koninginnegracht and Dr Aletta Jacobsweg. Yellow-liveried HTM 1227, an American PCC tram built under license in Belgium, with a number 9 service is heading for the Kurhaus on the beach in Scheveningen. It is followed by new red and cream GTL8-I number 3014 on an 11 service. The system is standard gauge and is energised at 600v DC Living on Niewe Parklaan at this time, I used to catch the number 9 to the Mobil office in the Babylon Centre which overlooked Den Haag Central station. Madurodam is behind the camera. HFF & have great weekend.

A panorama stitch of two photos I took at the SAR Touws River steam shed in 1982 and that I only recently realised were taken alongside each other for this reason. There are 52 withdrawn steam engines in this Barry Island-like view of the Touws River yard. A total of 131 locos were present with only 4 in steam and although it may look like Woodham's, unlike that scrapyard, only one engine has survived out of these 131.