Other events - Summer Meeting 2002

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A Summer Meeting in Brabant

Canals, windmills and pumping stations may have been predictable on a visit to the Netherlands, but early sound-recording systems, damask weaving and an asparagus-flavoured alcoholic drink certainly widened the scope.

Day 1 - arrival at Veldhoven, Nr Eindhoven
Starting at the Koningshof Hotel in Veldhoven near Eindhoven, an after-dinner lecture by Dr Ayolt Brongers gave an excellent introduction to the geography, geology and archaeology of the Maas Rhine area, which enabled us to better understand the reasons for, and consequences of, the differences between the coastal area (largely below sea-level) and the Brabant Limburg area (hilly) that we would be visiting. Dr Brongers briefly covered the different periods of human occupation and activity up to the 20th century.

Day 2 - DAF trucks and the Philips Historic Products collection,
Our guide took one group round the Eindhoven DAF factory by road train. This plant now concentrates exclusively on producing heavy trucks. Unlike many car factories, virtually all manufacturing operations are carried out within the factory. The cylinder block castings, which arrive from Germany, are machined on a transfer line and the component parts fitted at numerous assembly stations. Chassis are assembled from channel steel, being built up manually on a moving production line before painting. Truck cabs and axles arrive from another DAF factory in Belgium. Quality controls take place at all stages and the complete trucks are road tested before going to the customer.

The other group visited Philips Historic Products which was both a fine museum of mechanical, electrical and electronic items and an overview of the speed at which change takes place, as well as a summary of Philips’ own range of products. We were shown round by Mr Jean Lorte˙e, and some of his colleagues, who enthusiastically demonstrated many of the machines, including, outside the building, a Stirling hot-air engine of about 1953. In their extremely neat store behind the display gallery, was the power stage of a transmitter, first used in Eindhoven in 1927, to transmit to ships, and as far as Dutch possessions in Indonesia. This massive piece of equipment stood about 4 x 4 x 3m. Only a few years later a similar transmitter at Daventry was approximately an eighth the size. Displays included lighting, radios, televisions, hearing aids, mobile phones and calculators. One of the more surprising items was a small set of Philiform, a hexagonal forerunner of Lego.

Day 2 (cont.) - textiles, and a museum
The group then divided again. At Vlisco wax printing we were shown a promotional video illustrating their partners in their mainly African market. We then visited the works which was on summer break so none of the machines was functioning. It was disappointing not to have at least seen a film of the processes, as these are almost unique in Europe.

At Raymaker's velvet finishing works, we saw the finishing operations in the production of cotton-based velvet, the weaving process having been undertaken in the company’s factory in nearby Gemert. The preliminary stages had ceased for the day by the time of our visit but we were able to see the subsequent bleaching, dyeing, cropping and embossing of the velvet undertaken with modern machinery. We were shown the laboratories for quality control and for colour matching of dyes for customers’ requirements, with thousands of variations. After all these hi-tech computer controlled processes it was consoling to find the final inspection of the velvet for faults was by human eye, no machine having yet been devised to do this. With the present specialised production, the large reinforced concrete, multi-storey building had many empty spaces, which enabled the company to store some of their earlier equipment, including all-wooden hand-looms.

A small overflow group visited the Helmond Museum with Dr Giel van Hooff, Lecturer at Eindhoven University and local historian. Based in the 15th century castle and erstwhile home of the Dukes of Brabant, displays included the topography and development of Helmond, as well as a special exhibition of drawings and paintings of men and women at work.

Day 2 (cont.) - breweries and distilleries
We divided again for the IJsvogel distillery at Arcen, which was housed in a restored watermill of 1677, with two waterwheels, one overshot and, above it, an undershot wheel for high water. It transpired that the local council had restored the building without any clear idea of a use when the task was completed. Our guide’s employer was looking for premises for his small-scale distillery and now occupies the grain floor for basic distilling of alcohol. The flavours are added elsewhere, but could be sampled afterwards. Funnily enough only one person sampled the asparagus flavour, which looked and smelt like something you might take to the path-lab!

The Hertog Jan breweryThe Hertog (Duke) Jan Brewery closed in 1980, but was then taken over and operated by a group of enthusiasts to produce ‘special’ beers. A tour of the older facilities – closed since the floods of 1995 – introduced the other group to both the top and bottom fermenting brews, their ingredients and also a correction to the habit of the habit of serving wheat beers with a slice of lemon. (It should be orange.)

Day 3 - Roermond and Maas river control
On Friday we began at the hydropower station at Roermond. This stretch of the Roer – not to be confused with the Ruhr – has been harnessed for power since at least the 13th century. By 1920 the mill on this site had been converted to supply power from two vertical-shaft Francis turbines to Brown Boveri generators, producing upwards of 270 kW. Destroyed in 1945, one of the two was repaired by 1948 and ran until 1974. Restored in 2000 we had the slightly un-nerving experience of going down into the turbine chamber, which would have been full of water when operating. An unusual feature could be seen through a cut-away section of the bevel spur wheel casing: massive wooden cogs each in six sections meshing with a long pinion to give the necessary speed for the generator.

Meindert E Pot of the Netherlands Government Hydraulic Board, engineer in charge of the Maas river navigation, gave an excellent presentation on Maas river control, focusing on the Maastricht area. This odd ‘peninsula’ of land, stretching down between Belgium and Germany and almost to the French border, has belonged to almost everyone at some time owing to its mineral resources and transport links. In 1807, for instance, the French owned this area and started to build the Canal du Nord to give access to the North Sea bypassing the Northern Netherlands. By 1810 France had annexed these parts and the canal, no longer required, was never completed. Later, constant improvements were made to the waterways, and by 1925 a system of barrages and locks enabled vessels of 300 tonnes to reach Maastricht along the Maas. This section was later bypassed by the Julianakanaal, completed in 1939, allowing barges of up to 2000 tonnes to get near the collieries. By 1960 its capacity was insufficient for the ever increasing size of vessels, so new locks were built.

Day 3 (cont.) - Simpelveld and Maastricht canal trips
After lunch we went south to Simpelveld where, after looking round the workshops, a Swedish Nydqvist and Holm locomotive of 1914 was in steam to carry us along the ‘Millions Line’ so called because it cost about 1 million guilders per km in 1934. This connected coalfields with the Maastricht to Aachen line at Simpelveld. With the closure of the coalfields, the line became disused, and is now run by a preservation group. Among items in their collection is a compressed air locomotive of around 1930.

We then returned to Maastricht for a delightful and mainly sunny 4 hr canal trip north along the Zuid Willemsvaart (1822) into the Briegen-Neerharen Canal (1934), and, by now in Belgium, along the Albert Canal (1930-39). Rejoining the Luik Maastricht Canal of 1850 we sank into a lock some 14m deep, before returning to Maastricht, after a brief stop at Nederweert to visit a very small 1920 hydro electricity station driven by the overflow water at a canal lock.

Day 4 - Eindhoven and Maastricht
Saturday was another quiet day looking at mills and bells, on the east side of Eindhoven. Opwettense watermill in Nuenen had two mills, in this case an oil mill and a saw mill, either side of the water course with the undershot waterwheels between them, the larger of the two wheels having a diameter of 9.3m. At Hooidonckse, the very picturesque similarly paired mills had been respectively a corn mill, with additional fulling, bark crushing or oil milling machinery, paired with a later saw mill (now converted to a house). At the Collse Mills at Tongelre, now owned by Eindhoven Municipality, the restored corn mill produces flour for public sale.

The all-metal undershot waterwheel had a most unusual arrangement of attaching diameter-length spokes through the wheel shaft. This drove machinery entirely of wood, utilising peg and lantern gearing at all stages. Alongside, the linseed oil mill, which is currently being restored, was used for the by-product of the more important linen industry. Van Gogh’s painting of the mill in 1884 had been helpful during restoration by showing that both buildings were roofed with red pantiles (where one had been replaced with grey).

For part of our journey we drove alongside the 123 km Zuid Willemsvaart Canal which runs from ‘s-Hertogenbosch to Maastricht. Built 1821-26 to promote greater trade under King Willem I, the 14 locks, which were originally turf-sided, enabled vessels of 700 tonnes to use the waterway. We stopped at one of the locks to see the siphon system by which watercourses traverse the canal. We also watched the approach of an empty barge and were impressed by the perfect timing of the lock keeper in raising the single bascule road bridge so as not to slow down the vessel, or hold up the traffic for more than a few seconds. We even invaded the control room to marvel at the push button controls. When all new locks are in place, all locks and bridges on the Zuid Willemsvaart en Wilhelmina canal will be operated from a central control room in Helmond.

Day 4 (cont) - Asten
The group again divided to visit one of two post mills. Typically, both had suffered fires, displacement and major restoration. Den Evert at Someren had been blown down in 1558, struck by lightening in 1724, shot to pieces in WW2, and then moved, to the Norbertine Abbey at Postel, now in Belgium. The Oudste Mill at Asten dated back to at least 1506. It remained in the hands of its original owners until 1953, was restored in 1960, damaged by fire, and restored again, this time raised on a mound.

After a delightful traditional Brabant lunch of soup, cold meats and cheese accompanied by milk (or other drinks from the bar), and followed by coffee, we went to the Carillon Museum at Asten. Of particular interest was the reconstruction of an C18 bell foundry, where each stage of the process was clearly illustrated. In the carillon section of the museum, we discovered that a carillon has more than 23 bells in chromatic order, although serious carilloneurs prefer 40-50 bells for maximum effect. There are over 200 carillons in the Netherlands, a large number in Belgium, about 20 in Germany and a scattering elsewhere. The visit finished in front of a wonderfully complex astronomical clock – like the one in Prague, only at eye-level - and built 1977-79 with the 21st century refinement of a computer programme.

The Annual dinner was appropriately held at an old brickworks, rebuilt and extended to accommodate large groups like ours with ease.

Day 5 - Appeltern and Ravenstein
On Sunday we went north to De Tuut drainage pumping station at Appeltern. Built 1915-18 to serve a polder of 100 sq. kms, it has two Stork and Co. (Hengelo) uniflow engines with centrifugal pumps capable of lifting 220 m³/min up to 4m. With the Waal and Maas rivers only 15 km apart at this point, and 70% of the country below sea level, water management is as natural, and as important, as breathing. Nevertheless they only operated between October and May, mainly using the two Lancashire boilers, the smaller Cornish boiler used for starting the other two.

Next we visited De Nijverheid tower mill at Ravenstein. Built in 1857, it is the tallest in Brabant. The staging is so high above the town that it gives almost aerial views onto the patchwork of houses and gardens below. Unlike our earlier visits to windmills when there was insufficient wind to move the sweeps, this time the sails were turning. However, they were stopped so that we could venture along the staging to inspect the spring-controlled mechanism of the ‘skyscraper’ brake on the aerofoil section leading edge of the sweeps. Nowadays the mill grinds maize for animal feed and spelt (German wheat) for bread.

Day 5 (cont.) - Waalwijk and Tilburg
We then set off for our picnic site near Waalwijk. But of course it was not just a scenic spot with glorious Hobbema-style avenues leading to and from the site, but there were also the rather sad remains of a pumping engine at a canal lock. This station, built 1897-99 to cope with the growing problem of the combined outflow of the two giants, the Maas and the Rhine, became obsolete around 1966. The building was demolished leaving the Neukirch engine – built in Bremen – exposed, and its ‘spinning top’ pump mounted alongside.

Our last visit was to the Dutch Textile Museum at Tilburg. The woollen industry began to move away from Leiden in the mid 18th century, and thrived at Tilburg until the 1960s, when man-made fibres were deemed fashionable and sent the woollen mills into a rapid decline. Housed in a mill occupied by the Mommers Company until the 1970s, the Museum covers not only the fairly traditional production of a blanket from fleece through to softest, warmest finished product, but also more recent developments in spinning, weaving and machine knitting. Many of the machines were demonstrated for us, as they are regularly for visitors. This includes an ‘air weaving’ machine, which blows the thread through the warp, and a computer-guided weaving machine, in which the skills of the weaver are replaced by those of the computer programmer. In a nearby building are tapestry and damask weaving looms.

The Members evening provided a huge range of subjects and thus ended an extraordinarily interesting and extremely busy four days.

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