Hembrug

This is one of the larger buildings on this section of the site. It used to be the filling and cartridge-loading workshop. A cartridge discharges a shot. The cartridge comprises the bullet, the powder charge, the percussion cap, and the shell containing all of these.

This was where primers and tracers were produced. Pressing explosives was a high-risk activity. The contact between an explosive and the oxidizing agent improves when they are mixed, pressed, and ground.

Here, cartridge shells – the casing around the powder charges in weapons – were lacquered. The building was part of the complex where cartridges were produced. Later on, it was used as a washing and changing room.

This used to be the trotyl press shop. Trotyl is short for trinitrotulene, an explosive used to fill grenades. In the workshop, the trotyl was weighed then pressed into small cubes. Mixing, pressing, and grinding improves the contact between an explosive and the oxydizing agent.

Various narrow-gauge railways criss-cross the Hembrug site, along which lorries – small rail wagons – were pushed by employees. This was an easy way to transport heavy goods across the site from the station.

This building is a prime example of a factory building dating from the reconstruction period. It was here that shells and grenade casings were made and stored. In the 1980s, some of it was converted to dip baths, a workshop where grenade casings were degreased, phosphated, lacquered, and muffled.

This is one of only a few small buildings on the site. The carbide installation in the building made the gas for the blacksmiths’ torches and the carbide lamps. The same acetylene gas was used as a pesticide to tackle moles, rats, and mice.

This is where gas masks were made and tested. The story goes that employees could test gas masks for 1 guilder, which was a lot of money back then. In 1937, Opleiding Vaklieden, which later became the Hembrug in-company training centre, was based here.

The Hembrug site was a restricted area where weapons and ammunition were produced by Artillerie Inrichtingen. From the 1970s onwards, civil engineering firm Eurometaal was based here.

If there was an accident in the factory, employees could take refuge in the two reinforced concrete shelters (alongside buildings 294 and 322) until it was safe to return. There are three entrances and exits, an access hole between the two shelters, and a passageway to the emergency station beneath the building.