20,000 MORE SILOS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1942, Page 4

20,000 MORE SILOS

■TO STORE BRITAIN'S CATTLE FODDER. SAVING OF SHIPPING TONNAGE. Twenty thousand silos for cattle fodder is the latest contribution of Britain’s concrete makers to the war effort. They are now at work upon this colossal contract. Farmers all over Britain have already put up silos; manufacturers of preserves are following suit with silos to store their waste materials and turn them into feeding stuffs to relieve the strain on the Empire’s shipping. Today more concrete is being used on Britain’s farms than ever before. Buildings in it, from barns to poultry houses, are being run up, and it is being used for water tanks, fence posts, flooring, cattle troughs, guards and stalls, as well as asbetos cement for roofing sheds, rabbit hutches and even buckets. The concrete industry is also helping the war effort with aerodromes runways, some of which need 60,000 square yards of material at a time, and thousands of concrete huts are being set up for the Service departments and for the housing of war workers and the homeless. All constructional repair work on railway and water tunnels is carried out in concrete, sometimes with complete pre-cast arches. Cellars of damaged houses have been concreted and made into wate'r storage tanks. Concrete railway sleepers and pit props for coal mines are replacing imported timber. Hollow concrete blocks are being used not only for building but for air raid protection. The upper works of ships have also been given concrete protection, and, following upon the construction of 100 concrete barges by the Admiralty, the first ocean-going liner of 2,000 tons deadweight has been successfully launched. Machine-gun posts, air raid shelters, oil storage tanks, defence barriers, telegraph poles, groynes, buoys and sinkers for moorings and even anchors .are all being made of concrete for the war.