THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON 19TH OF JUNE 1979 AT VICARAGE ROAD, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS NEWTON PICKLES AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right, we’ll go straight on Newton, the moment we’ve all been waiting for..
R-Victoria Mill Earby.
That’s it, Victoria Mill at Earby.[Shaft broke in 1954]
R-Triple expansion beam engine.
Now, the thing is, did it start out in life as that?
R-It started out as an ordinary straight forward two cylinder beam engine built by Yates and Thom at Blackburn, and it were seven foot stroke. [I’m not sure but Newton may be wrong here. I suspect that this engine was built by J&D Yates who later became J&W Yates, before they amalgamated with Thoms in 1905 {Register of defunct companies}.] The low pressure cylinder bores, when you looked down from the top, were just like the Mersey Tunnel. But anyhow, along comes modern type job, you know, higher pressures and that so it were McNaughted by Petrie and McNaught from Rochdale. [Newton may have fallen into a very common trap here. McNaughting an engine isn’t named after the famous engineers at Rochdale but a cousin of theirs who practised as an engineer, first in Glasgow and later in Manchester. In 1845 (Patent no. 11,001) John McNaught of Glasgow introduced the practice of compounding existing beam engines to increase their power and efficiency. It was William McNaught who founded the firm in Rochdale which, when he retired in 1870 was taken over by his sons John and William and became known as J&W McNaught. They later amalgamated with another Rochdale company who made steam engines, John Petrie who had started in 1814. The firm of Petrie and McNaught undoubtedly converted many engines to the McNaught principle but it was not named after them. My source for these facts is a paper published in 1943 by G B Williamson on ‘Steam Engine Building in Rochdale’ which I came across while rebuilding the Whitelees engine when I moved it to Ellenroad in Rochdale.] By McNaughting I mean they put a high pressure cylinder in the front of the beam, up to the crank, which made that half stroke, three feet six. [Because it was at half radius along the beam.] They put an intermediate cylinder at the other side in the same place, it was a double beam engine, [that also] was three feet six stroke and that made that the intermediate cylinder. [The original high pressure cylinders at the far end of the other side of the beams became the low pressures, see below] Three new boilers in and they put the pressure up from 85psi to 180psi. Now, we’ll start at the beginning!
[Just before Newton starts, this would be a good place to record what I know about Victoria Mill and the engine in November 2000. Earby Mill seems to have been built by CG Bracewell of Green End Earby who was father of William (Billycock) Bracewell. The date of the build looks like 1856 but I’m not certain of this. The engine was built in 1856 by J&D Yates of Blackburn as a simple double. McNaughted in 1896 by J Petrie of Rochdale. 7ft stroke, two cast iron beams about 35 feet long, 4 ft deep in the middle. A crack was found in the trunnion boss by Johnny Pickles when he was working for Henry Brown as an apprentice, this would be between 1903/06. Saxons fitted two new 17 ton steel beams in 1905 and replaced all the old cast iron gearing with steel, machine cut gears. The engine was quartered so the beams ran out of step. Flywheel 22ft6” diameter, 10 arms, six stakes, plug fit on the shaft which was 16” diameter in bearings. Pinions were 6ft diameter and on 6/7” shafts staked on with four keys, 2” wide and 1 ½” thick at the head. When it was McNaughted the original boilers worked at 85psi. These were replaced later with 3 Lancashires running at 180psi. Ran at 38rpm. HP 30” X 3ft6”, IP 48” X 3ft6”, 2LP 40” X 7ft stroke. Corliss HP, circular slide in others. Flyshaft broke in 1954. Ran at about 1500ihp. In a letter to The Model Engineer dated December 2 1954 Johnny Pickles said: “The engine is 98 years old but there is not much left of the original…the shaft has run 82 years and the flywheel 57 years. According to this the shaft was renewed in 1872 and the flywheel in 1897. He knew this engine in 1903/06 when he worked for Browns before going to Burnley Ironworks so we have to trust him. Funny thing is he gives cylinder sizes that are all two inches bigger than Newton’s.]
R-That engine, all through my days, was the most economical engine there was in the district, apart from being the oldest. [1856] , as far as coal consumption was concerned. It ran at 38 revs a minute and it were seven foot stroke on the low pressures and on the crank. Three feet six inches on the high pressure and intermediate. High pressure was 28” bore, intermediate cylinder was 46” bore and the low pressures were 38” bore and seven feet stroke. [Note. Newton’s bore measurements are all 2” less than his dad stated in the letter of 1954 to the Model Engineer. Take your pick!]
Now, one second, you said cylinders, it had two low pressures did it?
R-It had two low pressures, it had HP, IP and the original HP cylinders were left in as LP. Right. Now it started off in my career as a pretty modern engine. Everybody had worked on it. In me father’s day they [H Brown and Sons] used to go to it regular. One of the beam trunnions was always loose, always wanting new keys in. Me father were only a lad, [He was at Browns from when he was 18 to 21. 1903/06] Him and Mr Brown and an old fitter, I forget his name now, th’old fitter, they used to go to it regular at Sundays and put new keys in this beam trunnion. Those keys ‘ud be two inch wide and sixteen inches long, they’d two apiece in. I can just picture me father now, as cheeky as a brush, and he told me I was fed up of working on them keys at Sunday! So one Sunday afternoon, as he was driving these keys in he says, I’m holding t’drift and I says to Old Mr Brown, What do we keep putting keys in this beam for? Well, says Mr Brown, You know very well why we keep putting ‘em in. He were a bit of a religious chap, he didn’t like working at Sunday. Because they’re always coming loose! So me father says, Well, they always will come loose Mr Brown. He said What for John? Father says, It’s cracked isn’t it, through the boss, it has been for this last two years, when you drive these keys in you look at that crack, it opens out. The beam was cracked, right through the centre of the boss. And talking about that beam, it’d be what, 18” through t’boss and t’gudgeons ‘ud be about 9 or 10 inches in diameter in t’middle. Well he says, they nearly all had a fit and fell down staggering , he said they nearly passed out when they saw that crack. So along came Saxons then, they were a well known firm of engineers. The mill were stopped for many a week. They took the old cast iron beams out and replaced ‘em with steel ‘uns and they weighed seventeen ton apiece did them beams. I think they were four foot across middle, you can picture a whale floating in the sea, when that engine were running it just looked like one. They’d taper down to about eighteen inches at each end and they’d be thirty five or six feet long. As long as a Lancashire boiler. There were a chap killed putting ‘em in. Taking ‘em in through the window you know, they’d have nothing then only old wood jibs and tele poles to get ‘em in. And one decided to lean over as they were taking it through the window and it squashed, it were his own fault, he should never have been in the way, it squashed him against the wall. Anyhow, they got these beams in and got it running again and then a few years after it all came loose on its beds and Burnley Ironworks were called in and what they did, they stopped it for a month and they elevated, they lifted it up, the engine. They had is suspended in mid air, they had it on packings and girders and what have you, blocks and chains. Me father said he’d never seen as many blocks and chains in his life. They took all the old stones away which had gone rotten with oil and they put cast iron box beds under it about ten foot down and fastened it all down again and that made it into a decent engine. Oh and Saxons replaced the gearing, it hadn’t a jack wheel on the side of the flywheel, gearing was on the top of the wheel [on the rim]. Saxons put new gearing on it while they were there doing the beams. All machine cut gears and two new pinions. So that made it run beautiful, apart from being out of step!
Where were the pinions?
R-One in front and one behind. You can picture a wheel running on two rollers like. One in front and one behind, they were practically underneath it. Each at a third of the circumference, one at back and one at front. And then of course, after all that were done it worked on through the slump and all that, it were never stopped, and then of course it came my time. I didn’t go down to that engine, very little like. We had an old fitter called Gladney Brown who worked for us a bit, he had a shop in Earby in them days and just occasionally me father ‘ud send me down to get him for help on different jobs. Little bits of damper jobs and such things as that. Till one weekend, I’d be nearly out of me time, it ‘ud be just afore the war. [1937/38] I’d just got home at Saturday dinnertime, I’d been working somewhere, and there were this knock on the door. It were our Mr Brown, and it were very unusual for him to be coming across looking for me. [Newton would be 21 or 22] He says, Newton, will you go down to Earby Mill, you know them spur wheels down in’t floor, there’s one of ‘em come off its keys. They’ve just decided…he were allus down at Earby, he lived in that little shop [From what I can make out, when Browns moved to Barlick they still kept the workshop open in Earby. They liquidated in 1928 and Johnny started up in 1929 in their place, by 1932 he had formed Henry Brown son and Pickles with Henry Brown as a partner. Even so, as late as 1938 it appears that Henry still had the workshop in Earby and this is what Newton is referring to.]
He says, They’ve just had me over has the engineer and one of ‘ems off t’keys practically. I says Ok, I’ll go down to it. So I picked me mate up, which is still me mate today, that’s Bob Fort and off we went down after dinner at Saturday. And th’old engineer there were Bill Lancaster [senior]. We just took a hand hammer and some files and a chisel in an old bag, old do you know, over your shoulder and we went up into the engine house and as soon as he saw us, he looked at me and he looked at Bob and he said What the bloody hell have they sent me, two bits of kids to do a job like this! Oh I says to Bob, That’s a good do for us, if we aren’t wanted let’s get off home. He he he! We were off down the steps but he were out after us, he says Come here! Come here, I didn’t mean it like that. So he took us down to these wheels, they were big wheels, they were six feet in diameter, they drove a thousand looms did them wheels down in the bottom shed. They were steel and he says It’s one of them. I just took one look at it and looked at the keys and I said Who’s been laiking with that? Oh well, he said, We keep having to tighten it, Gladney. Gladney Brown used to be our fitter at the shop. He says He’s always had to be in here knocking ‘em in but he’s off poorly and he hasn’t been in like and it’s one or two of ‘em loose. There were four keys in and I said Aye, it looks so and all, been tapping ‘em in eh? What’s he been using, a rubber hammer! Cause I hadn’t a lot of love for that feller anyway. Anyway, we set to.
Who were the engineer there?
R-Lancaster they called him. So we set to and we came back to the shop and got some staking wedges and I says to Bob, I don’t think it’s moved so far. What we’ll do for a start, they were all marked were these keys, I says We’ll put this wheel into gear properly, we’ll tap all these keys in up to the mark. You know we were down in the muck and the grease and oil. We got the pedestal cap off so’s we could get to the heads of the keys, it were a big shaft, about six or seven inch were that shaft. So we tapped all these keys back, they’d a barring engine and we barred the engine round and we tapped ‘em all back to the proper mark, you know, where they’d been originally fit. Then we popped staking wedges in and knocked the top un out, first we came to. We gets this key out and you’ve never seen anything like it in your life, it were all chewed away, it were like an old horseshoe! So Bob looked at me and I looked at him. Well, he says, We might as well settle down eh! I says, Aye, we might as well settle down to this. So we knocked them all out and came back to Barlick and we’d no blacksmith about, he’d gone home. So Bob says We can make these keys uselves. He says we can make these out of some three be one [3X1 inch]. So we got cracking and we’d two good hammers you know, we’d a compressed air hammer and all, and I thought we might as well do a bit of blacksmithing. So we made one and didn’t do so bad at all and Bob was planing it up so I said I might as well make another forging and Bob came down into the shop off the shaper and he said I’ve machined one like, we’ll leave that one now. We went down to Earby and it weren’t so bad so we fit that one. I think at Saturday night about eleven o’clock we’d two in, we’d two fit. So early Sunday morning we left it and later Sunday morning we went down again and be Sunday tea time we’d got t’other two in and we were ready for tightening the wheel. So we did tighten the wheel and we did tighten it, I mean we were at that age when we could tighten ‘em and it rung like a bell. It were a steel un , be the time we’d finished it it rung like a bell when we were knocking them keys in. Lancaster kept saying, You’re going to break sommat, you’re going to break sommat! And do you know, when we came out of that engine house on Sunday night or early Monday morning, I just forget which, it might have been about three o’clock on Monday morning, that chap ‘ud have given us the mill. I were mother and father to that engine after that right up to it last breath. I even ran it on’t last night out anyway. And all through that career I rebored th’high pressure cylinder, I didn’t bore th’intermediate one because I didn’t think it needed it, but I put a new piston rod in it. I put two new beam trunnions in it, new piston rod and trunnions. High pressure, new high pressure cross head and radius rods. I bored both low pressure cylinders and it took forty eight hours to go once through one of them low pressures running day and night. So I bored both low pressures and I put two new piston rods in them, new pistons and new Ramsbottom rings, did away with Buckleys. I did away with Buckley rings on all the cylinders and put Ramsbottoms in. And it allus had a trick that engine, when you watched it running, it were all out of line were t’low pressure rods. You can picture them coming out of the cylinder seven foot each stroke, first at one side o’t stuffing box and then at t’other. Well, when I put new beam trunnions in I said I’m going to alter this. I’ll never forget it, I took the radius rods off, you know, what keeps it central and me father came down and went up the wall when he saw me with ‘em off. He says Tha shouldn’t have taken them off Newton, tha’ll never get set up, it’s a reight geometrical problem is setting them up. I said Geometrical problem be damned, piston rod only wants to go out, come to t’top in’t same shop it comes out at t’ruddy bottom! It only means moving the pedestals. He says Oh go on then, have it thee own road. So anyhow, wi’ big shifts and little uns and keep barring it round and measuring it we shifted it all. And by gum it did it! It were in the same position when it got to’t top as it were when it come to the bottom. They’d never seen owt like it because, you can picture a beam engine running Stanley, and it goes up and t’piston rod goes whooop, like that but it doesn’t just do that, that way when you’re stood behind it, if you stand in front of it looking parallel to it it also does it that way if them radius rods aren’t right, like a ruddy bow and arrow running. [Newton is describing the parallel motion devised by James Watt to convert the arc described by the end of the beam into true linear motion by means of a parallel linkage anchored to a fixed point separate from the beam by radius rods. Years later when I rebuilt the Whitelees beam engine at Ellenroad I had the same problem and had to find a way of solving it as I had to set new radius rod anchors. Like Newton, I ditched the geometry and did it by common sense fitting practice. I set the beam and the parallel linkage dead level and anchored the radius rods at that. Then I barred the engine round and made minor adjustments until I was satisfied I had it as near as I could get it. Any discrepancy there is after you’ve adjusted them this way is down to the original fitters making the radius rods the wrong length. It always seems to me that they made them too short and introduced a light variation in the linear movement. The engine has run for ten years now with no problems.] They take some setting up does a beam engine. Anyhow I cured all that. Later on in its life I did th’high pressure. Now there were always trouble wi’ bad vacuum. Th’air pumps were absolutely jiggered. There were water squirting out everywhere bar where it should have done. Coffin bottoms had been broken and they were all cemented up and they were leaking. The delivery plates were rotten. So at t’finish up I says to me father There’s going to have to be something done about these air pumps. There’s going to have to be some new uns. He says Reight oh and rings Teddy Woods up at Burnley, he were the secretary of the mill company [Edward woods was a partner in the firm of Proctor and Proctor, chartered accountants in Burnley. They acted for many of the mill companies in the area. Edward Woods was secretary for CHSC and the Earby Mill Co, he was very interested in the engineering side of the job and supervised all the engine repairs.] Teddy Woods and Captain Pilling came along to the shop at Barlick. Captain Pilling were boss at Pillings [at Primet Bridge Colne. They were ironfounders specialising in loom manufacture.] and was also a big shareholder in Earby Mill. They talked about this job between them and me father came out of the office and he says We’ve got a reight job Newton. I said What have we got? He said, To make two new air pumps for Victoria Mill. I said We aren’t putting ‘em in them blooming holes where the old uns are are we? He says No, we’re not, We’re going to make a completely new unit and we’ll put them in the old devil hole and run ‘em off the lineshaft, we’ll make ‘em independent . [Victoria Mill was a spinning mill in its early days and the name ‘Devil Hole’ is a hang over from that trade. It was a room that used to house the devils, the breaking machines that opened the cotton fibre up. They were called devils because they were notorious for catching fire if a small stone of piece of metal got into the drums.] We made two sets of Edward’s air pumps all on one bed, properly independent, proper individual air pumps all fastened together in a pair like a set of twin pumps. We ran ’em with two seven foot rope pulleys with six ropes on. Now that were some job that. I think them pumps weighed seventeen tons when they were on the bed. We put them pumps in one September holidays, they stopped for a week for us. And when we started up we had twenty seven and a half inch of vacuum and that engine had never had anything like that in it’s life. I never saw it wi’ more than twenty one or twenty two inch on it and the coal bill went down by seventeen ton a week. Aye, it did that and that’s fully loaded you know. It were burning some stuff and it went down seventeen ton a week did the coal bill. Which it would do when you think about it Stanley, there were two low pressure cylinders seven foot stroke, vacuum at both sides of the piston on every stroke and that’s running at 38rpm. And that were the last major job that were done as far as rebuilding was concerned till all at once it developed a funny noise. Now then….
When were this, give us a date Newton. [Newton works out a date but he makes it 1953. Johnny’s letter to ME was late in 1954 so I’d favour that.]
R-I think I have a photograph with a date on it anyway. Anyhow, this all started months before it happened. Me father lands in, I’ve just been down to Earby Newton and I’ve been in yon, I’ve been up at t’mill just to have a look at Almond [Tommy Almond, the engineer] I haven’t been for owt particular but yon engine has a queer noise. I wish you’d go down there. I hadn’t been for a week or two so I said, Aye, I’ll go down. I sat and listened to it a long while and I talked to Old Almond and I never said nowt. Almond were th’engineer then and I never said nowt, I came back to t’shop. Me father says What’s ta think of yon engine? I said I don’t know. I think the flywheel shaft’s breaking. Oh Newton, for God’s sake, look at t’size of it and don’t talk so blooming silly! There’s a bolt loose, I’ve heard ‘em make that sort of noise before when I were a young chap. There’s a bolt loose, go down there at weekend and take some men with you and run round all the bolts.
That ud be the segment bolts?
R-Aye, segment bolts. So off we went down there at weekend, three of us, we’d all t’spanners and we went round all the bolts and I didn’t [find anything].
One thing Newton, just a clarification. I’ll just stop you for a minute, sorry. When we talk about segment bolts we mean the bolts that were holding the gear segments on the flywheel rim don’t we.
R-On top of the flywheel rim and also the cotters that held ‘em together other ways [Newton is talking about the fastenings that held the individual segments to their neighbours.] You know there were bolts in, four bolts in each arm. And then in each segment, the arms were under the centre of the segments, there were gibs and cotters through…
Yes.
R-Always laid flush, you couldn’t actually see ‘em when it was running. They were chipped flush so’s they wouldn’t catch anybody. Anyhow we tested everything and all bolts were tight, all the cotters were tight. Now under, in between them segments they had some tapered plates had that engine and sometimes it ud, it used to get one of them loose and it would sound buzzz… as it were going through the teeth and we knew about that so we used to put new uns in. So I came back again and he says Has it gone? I says No, the shaft’s breaking. Anyway he walked away and ignored me when I said that. He went down again during the week, he weren’t satisfied and he came back and he says Go down again this weekend and try all them plates. I said I tried ‘em all last Saturday. He says Well go down and try them again! Tha’s missed one! There’s either a bolt loose in that flywheel or there’s one of them plates loose! I says there’s nowt loose. So anyhow, we all went down again and we went round everything and I were getting sick and Bob and Crabby were getting sick and Tommy Almond were getting sick because he couldn’t go to the pub. We didn’t find owt and this time I tried all the boss cotters, the cotters that held the arms in the flywheel boss. I tried them all and they were tight. Now that flywheel had a cracked boss and it had had some kidney rings shrunk on, so I tried ‘em and they were all right. So I came back to the shop on Monday morning. Well, did you find owt? No I says, the shaft’s breaking. Well he set into me good and proper. He says What’s tha acting on about wi’ that bloody engine. There’s a bolt loose in that flywheel and give up saying that t’shafts breaking. So I walked away and left him, I thought there’s going to be a right falling out do here over a blooming old steam engine if I’m not careful. That were at Monday. Tuesday morning outside Vicarage Road (where Newton lived) banging on the front door at quarter past seven, there were a taxi. Young Almond, Tommy Almond’s lad [were there] Newton, come down to t’mill reight sharp will you, yon engine’s making a bloody noise! I says Well, has yer father getten it stopped? He says No, he won’t stop it. I says all right, I’ll come in me own motor, I had me little van outside, off you go. I gets some shoes on and a jacket and off I went to Earby Mill. I just stood at t’back of the flywheel while it ran, it were totally enclosed in a tin case but you could see the rim. I stood there behind it and watched it and it were trembling like a fiddle string. I says to Tommy Almond, Get this engine stopped quick! He says I’ll have to go round and tell the tenants first. He’d about six tenants in you know and he were well loaded, he had about 1300horse on. I said Reight oh Tommy, thee go and tell thi tenants and as soon as he went down t’ruddy steps Newton went round to the governor and pulled the catch off and shut the stop valve. Th’engine stopped, tenants or no tenants and the flywheel shaft at the low pressure side were smoking. This the funny part about it, low pressure side of the shaft were smoking and young Tommy says What’s up wi’ it Newton? I said The bloody shaft’s broken. Oh heck he says. Anyhow I comes back to Barlick, leaves it stopped, can’t do owt wi’out tackle and I were there be meself so I gets me breakfast, gets a boiler suit on and a tie and gets straightened up. Gets me mate and a couple of labourers and off we went down. Takes some blocks and some chains. So first job of course we did was get some blocks and chains up and we lifted the caps on the main bearings, which we’d had off oft enough and we had ‘em off within an hour. I says, Bar it round. Couldn’t find owt, perfect were them bearings, lovely shaft, beautiful shine on it, very few marks to say it had run knocking up a hundred years. Couldn’t find owt. I thought Oh Pickles, tha’s dropped a reight clanger here, you’ve stopped two and a half thousand looms for nowt! And Harry were at one side, Harry Crabtree and I were at the other side and I’d Charlie Bateman with me and another labourer. I says Go on, bar it round again and I couldn’t find a damn thing, I looked in all the places like radius corner and back o’t cranks and all that and I couldn’t find owt. So I went round to’t low pressure side, that one that’d been hot. I were wi’ Harry at the low pressure side and I says to him, I’ve dropped a reight clanger here haven’t I. He says It looks so, it isn’t often tha drops a clanger like this, what the hell have we stopped the mill for, but let’s face it Newton, what were making that bloody noise? Go on I says to young Tommy Almond, Bar it round again. And little Charlie Bateman were stood at the side of the high pressure crank and t’barring engine were at the low pressure side. Tom went to the barring engine and started it up like, you know, how you do. Oh, what the hell’s he want it barring for again sort of attitude you know, whizzed steam on to it and it moved with a bit of a shudder and little Charlie, the other side, says Oh Newton, come round here. I says What’s up Charlie? Well he says, it were like this cranks here and that cranks there, it were quartered you know, and he says I’m bloody sure when that crank moved at your side mine didn’t! I says Arta certain? He says I’m bloody certain! That crank moved afore mine did. I says Tha’s made my day, get that barring engine stopped. Harry, come on, get these eccentrics off at this side. The two eccentrics that worked, they were circular slide valves on, you know, were’t valves on that engine. They were corliss high pressure but t’lows had circular piston valves in. What I mean by that it twisted ‘em round to ports. They didn’t go up and down, it twisted ‘em round.
Like a circular slide valve, yes.
R-That’s it yes, like a circular slide valve. Anyhow I said Let’s get these eccentrics off at this side. High pressure side. Because these two eccentrics were right up to one another and right up to the flywheel boss. You couldn’t get your rule down between the eccentrics and the boss, it had always been a fault with that thing. Well, they took a fair bit of getting off did them eccentrics because they were big eccentrics. They’d be about three feet six inches in diameter. We got the straps off and fastened the rods up and then uncottered the middles and slid ‘em this way [away from the flywheel boss] up to the bearing, we’d about six inches of room to move ‘em. Harry looked over the top of the eccentrics and pulled his great big two foot, Harry always had a two foot in his pocket, one of them about and inch and a quarter wide and about three sixteenths of an inch thick that he had had since he was a lad. He just pulled it out of his pocket, opened it up to two foot and he says Here we are Newton, sithee, here’s thee noise! And he shoved it right through the bloody shaft and pulled it out at the bottom.
Aye.
R-And I think you have a picture somewhere of us stood on that pedestal with Harry and his two foot. There, I said to Harry Tha’s made my day! I don’t like anyone to be broken down but that’s made my ruddy day. I’ve been arguing with me father for a fortnight about this engine. It had just broken like you’d sawn it. It was straight as a die, you couldn’t have sawn it, you couldn’t have cut it with a flame torch owt like it, it were a hollow shaft, it had about a three and a half inch hole right through it. {It’s very common with shafts of this vintage for them to be bored right through the middle. This removed ‘piping’ which was an area of slag inclusion and weakness which could propagate cracks. This was a concomitant of the early technology of forging large shafts and the early engineers soon found that boring them in this way got rid of the starter zone for cracks and made the shafts more reliable.] and it had just been hanging on with half an inch round the bore for ages, well, a fortnight anyway.
Yes, aye.
R-Or say ever since the noise started. Anyway I get me father down and he were very quiet like. And all the directors and all them, they were quiet like. Give us an idea how long we’ll be stopped. I says A fortnight. Me father says Tha can’t put a shaft in this engine in a fortnight. Well I says, I were only trying to give them an idea, don’t tie me down to it. First of all he says, how you going to get it out of the engine house? Oh I says, that’s one thing I hadn’t thought about. It won’t go past the low pressure cylinder and through the door not with a crank on it won’t. And we’re talking now about three and a half or four ton you know, even with the broken pieces off. Oh I says, Don’t worry, I wonder if them tenants in the shed down there’ll shift me some looms? Engine house windows overlooked the shed in the bottom. No travelling crane or owt like that you know. Why he says, what you going to do with it? I says I’m going to take the roof off and drop it into t’shed. I can put a girder up and put it through one of these windows and put a carriage on it to hang the blocks on. Get hold of it in here, when I get it out take it over the top of the shed and drop it down into the shed with me long lift blocks on to the truck. I’ll never forget this, he says Which truck arta going to use, that wi’t rubber tyres or that wi’t iron wheels, ‘cause if tha uses that wi’t rubber wheels I think they’ll go flat! He he he! So that put us on like a friendly footing again. He must have thought I were barmy or sommat ‘cause we had a bloody truck, it’d carry about fifty ton, he made it years and years ago. I’ll just explain this truck, it were about six foot long and five foot wide and the top boards were four inch thick railway sleepers, all bolted on to some iron brackets that formed the frame and they were made out of three be one steel. And t’wheels, the wheels were eighteen inches diameter and about five inches wide and they must have weighed a couple of hundredweight apiece and it used to take six of us to pull it down the yard empty! He he he, Old Johnny’s truck. Anyway it came in handy for jobs like that I’ll tell you, nobody were afraid of the truck collapsing! But beauty of it were they’d only put a piece of inch and a half leather loom belt on it to pull it wi’ at t’front. He he he! Old Johnny’s truck. Them that made it only put a bit of inch and a half leather loom belt at t’front to pull it wi’. Anyhow, we worked night and day and we got the flywheel jacked up. But let’s finish that tale here, what had saved that engine from a complete smash-up, running wi’ all that load on, had been them two pinions set at a third of the circumference.
In the bottom.
R-In t’bottom because she’d just dropped into the bottom of the teeth and stopped there. And she must have been in the bottom of the teeth for a fortnight, and that were the different noise we were hearing. And with being machine cut wheels, them teeth ‘ud go right into t’bottom. With being machine cut gears she’d ridden on the bottom of the teeth so the wheel didn’t go down into the cellar and jam anything up you know.
It’s a wonder the bearings on them pinions hadn’t been getting hot.
R-It didn’t get hot in the second motion, it’s a wonder they didn’t get hot. First intimation they had that morning were the low pressure main bearing getting hot because of all the extra pressure there were on it. The high pressure bearing were just hanging on wi’ nothing, just going round. It were still driving the mill you know. I couldn’t understand that, it were a miracle, it still kept going on going round, high pressure crank and low so it must have been low pressure and intermediate that were running the mill. It must have been and yet his back pressure gauges had never shown any difference for a fortnight, his compound pressure. Anyway we got it out and we got it into the shop and we put it on the borer to take the crank off that were on the broken end. And I bored the shaft out of the other one. We did all this at nights while we were waiting for the forging. I fetched the forging from Webbs at Bury and it were red hot, it were sizzling it were on some, they put it on some steel girders for me at Webbs, fastened it on wi’ some chains and I brought it red hot, it were just drizzling wi’ rain. I’ll bet everybody thowt the wagon were on fire when I were coming through Burnley, He he he. All steaming up. And it were like the rest of them, you got ‘em here on Saturday and you might as well have gone for it on Monday. We couldn’t turn it till Sunday night, when we got cracking.
When you say you couldn’t turn it till Sunday night, that was because it hadn’t cooled down?
R-It were too hot. It were too hot. We got it in’t lathe and we got it on top of the bed but it were too hot to begin turning. We started turning it at Sunday night. I worked on nights, me an Harry Crabtree. Well, we were turning t’shaft, we also had the old broken shaft on the borer and we were boring the ends out. What I mean wi’th’ends, we bored the old shaft out to save unshrinking ‘em. We didn’t want to warm ‘em unduly. You might as well bore ‘em out, you’ve plenty of time and them cranks weighed two ton apiece. They were seven foot stroke you know, eight or eight foot six …
Yes, they’d be three foot six between the centres. [of the holes]
R-Aye, they were a hell of a length were them, yes.
Now wait a minute, I were just going to, that’s it, now then, one little thing here. That forging you brought back from Webbs. Just to get down to the technicalities of the job a bit, that forging ‘ud have a fair skin on it.
R-Oh aye, a lot of scale.
Yes, now the first roughing cut down that like, what would you do that with?
R-Ordinary high speed steel.
Now, that’s what I was trying to get down to. You take your first cut so you were going down under the skin into the metal.
R-Aye, we’d a fair lathe. Get under the skin, scale ud be flying up on to the top of the tool box! We’d have, let’s be fair, do about five eighths a side on the tool, as much as the lathe ud drive.
Five eighths a side. How deep were you going, an inch?
R-Aye well there’d be about an inch and a half or two inch to come off it uniform, you know, pretty uniform. Uniform at t’side o’t forging.
So you were taking a cut about half an inch deep?
R-We were lessening the diameter an inch. You know it were an irregular shape were that forging, there were the flats you know. But on the corners of your flats you’d got half an inch or five eighths of cut on the first time down.
That swarf ud be coming off in bloody lumps!
R-Oh it were blue and big lumps aye! [Blue because of the heat generated by the cut.] And I got into a bit of bother wi’ me swarf you see. When you’ve got your first cut off and you see, you see when you’ve flats on your turnings come off in bits. But when you’ve been up once and you grind your tool up and you get a right rake on and get another half an inch of cut off they come off all curly. And each turning when it breaks off is nearly as much as a man can lift, when it gets cold enough! Well, at Sunday night we had a damn good do and we’d a fair lot of turnings on Monday morning when Sydney come on the lathe. We put Sydney on the lathe during the day ‘cause he was a damn good turner were Syd. But I allus seemed to manage to get the night job. Now all these turnings were piled up behind the door you see. So we had a chap on that used to move turnings and he shifted ‘em and then Sydney turned all day. Now he’d more or less be just taking the rough off like I were, taking the scale off. Now Monday night it were starting to look like a shaft, it had got clean then so Newton comes in, grinds up and gets some cut on. Well, at Tuesday morning, Sydney comes in about quarter to seven, best to come in sooner and then if the other turner has anything to tell you, it’s better than leaving notes. And he could see where I were like and he says Oh, I’m all right for today. I’d only be about half way up it. And the chap came in and shifted the turnings you know. And when I came in at night, seven o’clock Sydney said He! I had a hell of a job wi’ Old Tommy this morning! I says Why? He said He went home, he threatened he were going to chuck up. It were your father that fetched him back. I said Well, what the hell had he chucked up for? You see what we did, we raked all the turnings from under the lathe and piled ‘em behind the door. And when he came in at morning and saw the pile of turnings that I’d made during the night he says I’m not having this! ‘Cause we were allus pulling his leg you know. He says Yon bugger’s fetched all the turnings back in that I took out yesterday morning! He he he!
(Laughter from Stanley)
R-So he went home! Anyhow, we got the job done. Now the biggest nightmare to me with that engine were , although I’d done all this before but not on so big a scale, were when I’d finished the flywheel shaft and I’d to put it back in the flywheel. Now this engine weren’t a staked wheel, it were a plug fit. What I mean to say is that the shaft were the same size as the bore of the flywheel. So we made gauges to fit the flywheel bore you know, it had been a bit slack on the old shaft so I made some gauges to the bore and we made it a better fit. But it had six keys in, not four, but you see with doing that and making it a plug fit it made the keys a bit lighter. They were only about three and a half inches wide and about two feet long. But there were six in, so after we got the thing back in position and the wheel keyed on.
So how many flats were there on the shaft, six?
R-Six, yes. Six keyways and six flats on the shaft. So anyhow, we got flywheel shaft back in, cut it a bit shorter and got, no need to true the wheel, just set it in position in the pinions and get it keyed on, put six new keys in. Then it comes doesn’t it, to put the cranks on, these bloody great cranks at two tons apiece.
Yes, but your nightmare were what, whether the shaft ‘ud go through?
R-Putting the cranks on. I’d had it on me mind ever since I’d started the job about putting the cranks on. I gave ‘em fourteen thou of nip, which is a hell of a lot. What I mean by that I turned the shaft fourteen thou bigger than the hole in the crank.
Yes, how thick were that shaft at the crank?
R-About fifteen inch. And they’d be about nine inch wide them cranks, I were going to say ten but I’ll say nine inch, it’s a hell of a crank that’s nine inches wide. But they were big cranks. And I thought, now then, I’ve that bugger to warm now and I’ve got to shrink them on to there and get ‘em in the right place., you know, only one keyway in. So we got all the tackle up and had a practice run with one before we started heating it. What I mean be a practice run, you get all your blocks in the correct position , your blocks where you’re going to put it to warm it and your blocks over the shaft where you’re going to transfer it to shove it on. Now them blocks over your shaft, you don’t leave any chances. They’re set in position where that crank’ll go on to that shaft without anybody touching that chain at all. Just take it off one pair of blocks, use them for lowering and highering, straight on to the other and on to the shaft. No bloody pulling or saying up a bit and down a bit. Shove it straight on. So we started warming just after tea, I don’t know what day it was, just after tea we started warming. We’d two sets of rose jets on oxygen and acetylene and I think I’d about ten bottles of each outside and also we’d two great big paraffin blow lamps that we’d had for years and I got them down there as well. We built an asbestos cupboard round the crank, packed it up on firebricks and we started warming it. About one o’clock in the morning the gauge ud just about go in. By the gauge going in I mean I’d made a gauge to the diameter of the shaft with a handle on it so’s we could try it in the crank as we were warming it. At one o’clock it decided to go in the bore of the crank and we’d been blowing at it for like five or six hours. About two o’clock and Harry says, It’ll go on now Newton. I says Aye, it will. It had about two inch of travel, by two inch of travel I mean when you put your gauge point on at one end it’d travel two inch from side to side at the other. He said It’ll go on now. I said, We’ll give it another half an hour Harry.
Yes, when you say you put your point in at the top, you can move it two inches.
R-At the bottom your gauge. If you hold the point of your gauge one end of the bore you can move it across about two inches at the top. That’s what we call travel on the gauge. Now that two inches is equivalent to about ten or fifteen thou of tolerance which made that bore ten or fifteen thou bigger than the shaft. So Harry knew, he’d been with me before on these big jobs. He says It’ll go now and I says Give it another half an hour, we’ll get it as big as we can. It were glowing red, this two ton of metal. So we blew at it till I think about half past two. I said let’s not take any chances. When you’re warming something like that you allus get some scale forming so I allus had a wire brush handy to de-scale it before you push it on. Then we just picked it up and transferred it off one set of blocks on to t’other. There were four of us, I’m emphasising that because you were better wi’ four than you were wi’ bloody ten because if you’ve too many men about things happen. You have a clip round it you know. A special clip so you could have one man one side and one at t’other to keep it straight. When you transfer it to the final set of blocks you just say right, you’ve two pieces of two inch shafting handy, me at one side and Harry at t’other ready to push it on the cheeks to shove it straight on. At the same time you have a dummy key on a handle so you don’t burn yourself and as soon as it’s on you pop that in to make sure it’s lined up right. [This was to ensure that the cranks were in their correct positions when both had been installed, 90 degrees to each other. Usually the low pressure was set 90 degrees in front of the high pressure.] Believe me or believe me not it went straight on Stanley. It just slid up the shaft straight up to the collar, key in and drop the weight on it. What I mean by that is we slacked the block to let the weight of the crank drop on the shaft to stop it sliding about on its own when we let go. And I bet that crank weren’t three minutes by any clock in the world before hell wouldn’t have shifted it, it had shrunk that sharp on to the cold shaft you know. [Newton doesn’t mention it but once the crank had nipped on the shaft, the dummy key with the handle is removed for use on the other crank. The keyway that is left is filled with a dummy key made to fit. It’s called a dummy because it isn’t actually doing anything, the nip on the shaft is more than adequate to hold the crank.]
Cold shaft, aye.
R-Aye, the lads were suited, I can see ‘em yet, they were really chuffed with that crank being on. But I soon stopped ‘em from laughing! There were a sink in the engine house and they all went to the sink when I said Reight lads, a bit of supper now! Like, you know, that’s it, we’ll run home now. I didn’t tell them for how long though. They all went to the sink to wash off you know, off wi’t overalls and hang ‘em up. So I went to the sink to have a wash and Crabby knew, he knew did Harry. I went up to t’sink and then I says Aye, that’s all right lads. Get theselves weshed , you’ve done a good job, get theselves off home and be back in an hour! He he he! That were three o’clock in the morning. Eh what? Well I says, You don’t think I’m going to bed wi’ one crank on and the other off do you? Not likely. I’ll go to bed when the other bugger’s on. Anyway, we got the other on be dinner and then I let ‘em have the afternoon off. I think they’d been out long enough, two days. And we were running on Friday, we’d been stopped , well we weren’t really stopped a fortnight, we were running at Friday and the mill went into production on Monday morning. It never ailed another thing didn’t that engine as far as any major operations were concerned.
Were there any teething troubles with it?
R-No, no teething troubles.
Shaft or owt?
R-No, no hot bearings, nothing at all.
Did it run any different than it did before?
R-It run quieter. It allus had a bit of a fault, when I come to set the flywheel I noticed that one pinion had been running about three eighths over the edge of the teeth. Well, you can’t set a wheel to two that’s staggered. So what I did I set it to the back one which was the most awkward to get at. I set it in line with the back one and I left the front one where it were and it ran till Earby holidays and then I went down with Harry Crabtree and young Jimmy Fort and we knocked the keys back and we moved it into line.
So they were both in line.
R-Aye so they were both in line. But otherwise it never give any trouble didn’t pinion being three eighths out of line but it had been out of line t’other way before. What they couldn’t see was that with running out of line it had worn some ledges on the back pinion so while we were doing the big job I set a labourer on to file the ledges out of the pinion and I lined it up with that wheel ‘cause the front one were easier to get at. And that were the last major operation that were done on that engine apart from the usual, take up the crankpin bearing or take the beam trunnions up, you know, bits of things like that. It ran a lot you know at the end of its life. It ran from seven in the morning until ten at night it did. [Housewife’s shift, six till ten.] He went and got blooming mumps did th’engineer and I went down ‘cause I were the only one that could run it apart from him. He were only a young chap were Tom then. I ran it from seven in the morning until ten at night for about seven or eight bloody week. I thought they were only off a day or two wi’ mumps. And I says to a doctor friend of mine, I says Hey, I’m running that bloody engine at Earby, how long does it take ‘em to come back wi’ mumps? He says Well, how old is he Newton? Oh I says, forty one or forty two. Oh Christ he says, he’ll be months! Bloody dangerous is mumps when thart forty five, it can stop thee from getting childer! I didn’t know that. Anyway the boss came one afternoon, Captain Smith frae Colne and I’m stood on’t balcony like, looking down the yard and looking a bit sorry for meself. He came out to me on the balcony, he were a nice chap and I could get on wi’ him, a lot of people couldn’t but I could because I used to be straight wi’ the feller. I just turned to him and I said How long’s this bloody caper going to be going on? He says What do you mean Newton? Are you having some trouble? I says No but isn’t it a ruddy long while for getting up at half past five in the morning and going home at quarter to eleven at night from here? He says What? Well I says, You know you’ve a night shift running here while ten o’clock? I’m running the night shift, t'other feller were all right weren’t he, he came at half past six and three nights a week he went home at half past five and Joe Plushy were running it while ten. He says Oh blooming heck Newton, I never thought of that! You’re not going to give up are you and leave us all stopped? No, I said, I’m not going to give up but I were there six or seven week wi’ t’mumps job. I didn’t think anybody could get mumps and stop off work seven week.
There was one little thing.
R-Go on.
I think I once heard you talk about that and you said that when you went down the first time on relief you had a bit of bother with the stokers.
R-Oh, second morning.
Yes.
R-First day I had a bit of bother ‘cause t’steam were down and all that. Course, you go down into the boiler house and you get ‘em to steam up and you’re troubles are over, that doesn’t happen no more. But when I went down the second morning, no firemen. He hadn’t turned up and I hung about and hung about because th’oiler didn’t come till ten to seven because he only got paid from that time and he didn’t come so I’d to get down into the boiler house. I set on wi’ only fifty five pound of steam and two thousand loom running. He he he!. Anyhow he comes trailing in at ten past eight and of course he did this three days in one week. Anyway I started to complain about this and they threatened to sack him and the boss came and anyhow they got me a bloke to fire for me at night that came from Colne and he were a moulder. Now he were a right case he were, that moulder. He came dashing up one night and he says Newton, you’d better come down quick! I said What’s to do? He said I think I’ve getten too little water in one boiler, I can’t see it in the gauge! I flew down them steps ‘cause it weren’t so long before they’d had a set of tubes down without water you know. I flew down them steps and I listened to me blooming engine and I thought it’s a bit queer is this. So I went down into t’boiler house and never mind the boiler being blooming empty, it were full reight up to t’lid! He he he! Anyhow he had a good head of steam so I cracked the blow-off valve at the bottom and watched it come out into the dam about as thick as your wrist and it were half an hour before it came unto the bloody glass. Course, I daren’t open it full do because we’d only one boiler on. It were about an hour and a half before it started showing in the glass.
Aye.
R-Now there were one advantage there of course, That engine were about ten or fifteen feet higher than the boiler house or else we’d have been in a right mess there. But I flew up them stairs and opened me high pressure drains I can tell you.
So any water that primed had a good chance of running back down the pipe.
R-Oh aye, well it would run down the pipe you see, it went straight up out of the boiler house and then across the yard and then up again and it had an expansion pipe up there where it went over into the stop valve like a big ‘U’ pipe and that took it up another two or three feet. It were full up to the lid, there’s no doubt about that and I daren’t open it too far wi’ all the looms I had running. I’d 600 looms running in Johnson’s shed. If I’d opened the blow off far enough to get rid of it in say ten to fifteen minutes, I’d have had no steam in the blinking boiler would I and the other boiler were banked up. So anyway, he didn’t do that any more didn’t that character.
SCG/24 November 2000
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