Britain Carries On

Northern Advocate, 17 November 1941, Page 8

Britain Carries On

British locomotive engineers are now building 24 railway engines for Turkey. They are part of an order for G 8 locomotives for that country. The engines weigh lOGV2 tons each and their speed is 70 kilometres an hour. Thirty-four locomotives, nearly £250,000 in value, were sent overseas from Britain in the three months ending June 30seven more than during the preceding quarter. During the quarter Britain also shipped 18 locomotive boilers abroad, a total of SG, valued at about £IIO,OOO, for the first half of the year.

Not Ersatz Genuine eau de Cologne is now being made in England from vintage crops of the true floral essential oils and shipped to countries once supplied direct from Germany. The city of Cologne can no longer, of course, supply its most famous product, and the English makers declare that they too will only continue to do so while they can get the carefully chosen constituents of real eau de Cologne. Thus far they have been able to send it to many Empire countries, including Canada, India and South Africa, and also to Egypt, Hongkong and Palestine. Dace From Beer Beautiful hand-made lace from the cottages of England’s country villages is the latest fashion among American women. In the tiny Devonshire village of Beer, where lace-making has been carried on for 400 years, orders from the United States are helping the inhabitants to keep going in wartime. Many of these lace-makers, as skilful as I any in the world, are over 80 years of 1 age. Mrs. Ida Allen, who has been in the craft for 50 years, has made lace for I the present Queen, Queen Mary and Queen Alexandra. A forebear o'f hers ' made the lace for Queen Victoria’s wedding dress. It cost £IOOO. Side by side with the cottage branch of this industry, the great modern lace mills of Nottingham continue despite the war to create new designs for overseas. From the United States and Canada comes a demand for tailored edged, doubleborder curtains by the pair in small, neat effects and fancy Tuscan grounds. Fisher nets, in a heavy combination weave, strongly woven, are being made • for Australia, New Zealand and South 1 Africa, while the Far East is being sent I cheap coloured nets by the yard, mainly j in cotton. Mosquito and filet nets are made for Palestine and for Egypt, where there is also a big demand for “tour-de-lits,” a cheap form of drapery used by the natives.

Sheep’s Milk Cheese Czechoslovak refugees are helping Britain to get cheese from sheep's milk. They have had experience of ewe-milking in Czechoslovakia, v'hich used to export 2000 tons of ewe’s milk cheese a year. The making of this novel cheese has become practicable by the invention of a neu r milking machine just designed in Britain, and, after experiments at the Northamptonshire Farm Institute, 400

I ewes a day are now being milked by it. j The ewes are put in pens in units of six and milking is done at a pulsation speed 1 of 100 per minute. During the milking the milk is automatically transferred to one of two churns, either of which can be emptied without affecting the main vacuum, and power is supplied by a IV2 h.p. engine driving a rotary vacuum pump. British farmers are now to be encour--1 aged to milk their ewes, if only for a short period after weaning the lambs. In both butterfat and curd ewe’s milk is nearly three times as rich as coup’s milk and each ewe could provide between lib. and 21bs. of curd a week for at least four months of the year. There are sc many ewes in Britain that thp people could, it is estimated, get as much cheese from them as they ate before the war and still leave some over for export. Windows for Air Raids “Blitz" blast need no longer send glass , splinters flying in all directions during | air raids over Britain this winter. I The British Government’s Experimental j Building Research Station at Watford has successfully tested three new" alternatives to unprotected glass window's. The first is used in place of window glass. It consists of netting embedded in thick cellulose acetate film which lets in light and keeps out rain. There is a heavier variety to take the place of north lights, roof lights or other glass' on which there is a heavy strain. It equals quarter-inch plate glass in strength. A third device is a lighter form of cellulose netting fixed to window panes by adhesive. A square of plate glass cov- j ered with this netting was put under a j spring-loaded hammer which w T as brought ! down upon it. travelling one-eighth of an I inch beyond the point of impact. The shattered glass remained neatly in position under the netting.