A Treatise On The Principles And Practice Of Dock Engineering

WAREHOUSES AT GREENOCK. 391 capacity of 270,000 cubic feet, which cost £16,147 to build.” The trade at Dundee is largely in Indian jute, a bale of which measures 4 feet by 1 foot 6 inches by 1 foot 9 inches, and weighs 400 Ibs. Warehouses at Greenock.* “ On the south side of the James Watt Dock, at the east end, a block of warehouses, 676 feet in length, has been erected, one warehouse being 275 feet long and one 223 feet long, 106 feet wide and 47 feet high, and two warehouses 89 feet long, 106 feet wide and 57 feet high to eaves and 97 feet to ridges of roofs. The fronts of the warehouses are constructed of cast-iron columns and girders, with wrought-iron sliding doors, and the back, end, and division walls are of brickwork. The two longer warehouses are arranged with two floors above quay level. The two shorter warehouses have four floors above the quay level ; and the insertion of an intermediate floor between the ground and first floors has been provided for. The first floor is made fireproof with 10 by 6 inches rolled beams, spaced 4| feet apart, carrying brick arches 4-^ inches deep at the crown, on top of which the floor is rendered with 1 to 1 Portland cement granolithic com- position I inch thick. The upper floors and roofs are of timber. A well-hole in the centre of each of these warehouses, 24 feet long by 16 feet wide, enables cranes placed on the top floors to load or unload goods from any floor into or out of railway waggons on the ground floor. The ware- houses are intended for general merchandise, but the columns carrying the floors have been cast with openings fitted with valve-flaps, in order that they may be utilised as duets for distributing grain over any portion of any floor, and also for transferring it from a higher to a lower floor, or for loading railway waggons inside the warehouses. In each floor there are openings, with branch pipes connected to the vertical columns, for receiving the spouts of portable hoppers when it is desired to transfer grain to a lower level, but cover-plates ordinarily close the openings in the floors. “There are doorways on the ground floor through the brick party walls separating the warehouses, for railway waggons to pass, closed by double iron doors, separated by an air-space of 9| feet. In front of the warehouses there is a covered way, 27^ feet wide, half outside and half inside the warehouses, enabling loading and unloading to be carried on under cover. This corridor outside the line of warehouses is covered with a fireproof floor similar to that of the warehouses and at the same level, forming a con- tinuous platform, 13 feet wide, in front of the warehouses, on which goods are landed and conveyed into any of the warehouses, thereby enabling imports to be dealt with on the ground floor and exports on the upper floor, and thus admitting of the loading or unloading of the vessels to be largely done by gravitation.” * Kinipple on “Greenock Harbour,” Min. Proc. Inst. C.E., vol. cxxx.