STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

Is that the Whitelees or the main engine?

[Sue]

The beam engine.

[Stanley]

Ah yes. I have had a lot of flak about that. I am 'he who must not to be named' in some quarters as they reckon I made a terrible job of installing it. They forget that it was mission impossible with no drawings and no money and despite the 'terrible job' I did it ran for over twenty years with no problems. If I hadn't stepped in and fought for it the engine would be in Quarry Bank Mill at Styal now. Ah well, the criticisms go with the territory. The air pumps on the main engine are a different kettle of fish. If anyone was to ask me I did work out a possible solution....

[Sue]

I know nothing about that Stanley.

Last Sunday I went with Bob to the Warwickshire model engineering show ,then spent the afternoon with the grandchildren in Coventry. Those engines are magnificent, they are so tactile

[Stanley]

And you do well to steer clear of it which is what I do. It's all down to internal politics and the reports I get indicate that there's a lot of it going on. I always remember what John Pierce, CEO of the borough at the time said to me when he reported that he had been told that the engine had been saved by some Conservative councillors. John was my biggest supporter and it was largely due to him that we did what we did. I asked him why he hadn't spoken up and he said "We are yesterday's men Stanley. Keep quiet and wait for history to decide." He was right, the main thing is that the engines are still there and in 1984 saving them was regarded as mission impossible. That's our legacy.....

[Stanley]

This was my team when we rebuilt the Whitelees. The late Cecil Hufton, a pensioner who lived nearby and cleaned every part before we used it. He was a lovely bloke and worked like a little cart horse. I shame to say I have forgotten the names of the two apprentices from the Rochdale Training School who worked full time with us for three months. All right, they made the occasional mistake including one memorable episode where we turned the engine over and bent a valve rod. The lad had made a mistake and was mortified but I told him it was my fault, I should have checked more carefully. I took him with me to a firm in Castleton, something Bridge Ltd? They put the rod in a big lathe and straightened it for me free. I bet it was straighter when we put it back in than when it was new. We were on mission impossible and it was hard work but on the day we first ran it for Coates we were all quite chuffed!

[Sue]

What year was this Stanley

[Stanley]

Luckily Joan Smith took this pic of me staring the engine on the day we steamed it for Coates and the christening. 13th of May 1992. We had worked until 21:00 the night before to sort out a major problem with the condensate and on this pic I'm venturing into unknown territory because we could still have had egg on our faces but thankfully all went well. I was a happy bunny when we had negotiated that one!

[Stanley]

I got mail yesterday from someone who follows this topic even though he isn't a member. This prompted me to look at the page count and it's over 50,000. It just goes to show that replies to a topic aren't the only measure of its effect.



A lot of people commented on the fact that there were carpets down in the engine house. They were there for a reason. They gave a better grip when you were leaning over the moving parts but their main advantage was that they tended to trap dirt and the more that was in the carpet, the less there was on the engine and in the bearings. That reminds me that one of the disasters that could happen was if you got a bird in the house fluttering round in the roof trusses. Dirt showered down on the engine and made my life a misery until it found its way out through the open door. I had a pigeon in once and in the end I had to borrow an air rifle and shoot it. Sorry kids but it was necessary.

[Stanley]

One of the best things about running the engine was the visitors. Many a timer blokes brought their wives and I always used to ask them whether they enjoyed the engine of were just minding their husband. One lady stood there for a long time on the low pressure side watching the engine running and when I asked her what she thought about it she said that she thought it was the most honest thing she had ever seen. She hit the nail on the head for me, that just about describes it, honest and trustworthy, that was steam engines.....

[Stanley]

In the days when this was the Commercial you could often find a coterie of engineers from the mills having a pint on their way home. They always sat at a separate table because they saw themselves (probably quite correctly) as being a cut above the other customers. A very exclusive club and one which many aspired to! It's obvious from the minute books of the CHSC that they swapped information about wage rates and conditions at the various mills and used this to gain advantage for themselves. Arguments about the best cylinder oil or boiler compo. It was a useful forum for them.

[Stanley]

One of the things about being in charge of the steam engine at the mill was the responsibility you had on your shoulders. You dictated starting and finishing times and if you got it wrong and had a stoppage everyone was losing money. I only ever had to stop the mill once and it wasn't my fault. A rope drive in the warehouse broke a strand and threatened to disintegrate. If it had it could have torn down part of the transmission and be very dangerous. Apart from anything else it filled the warehouse with dust. I had to stop and cut the rope out. It powered the cloth looking machines and we never replaced it, I fitted electric motors to both the plaiting machines over the weekend which was quicker and cheaper.
In my day there were only two men in Barlick who could run the engine as we were the last one, me and Newton Pickles. Newton would come straight up if I called him because he loved running it. I remember once being very poorly after too much Glenfiddich the night before. I rang Newton early in the morning and he started on time for me. When I went in at dinnertime he said "You must have been coming down with something for it to affect you like that!" Probably the nicest thing anyone ever said to me because I was quite ashamed. By the way, this indispensability gave me an edge with the management, they didn't want to upset me!

[Stanley]

My daughter took this pic one day while she was visiting me. The engine is running and I've dropped off for a minute or two. Funny thing was that any change in the sounds woke me immediately!

[Stanley]

One of the shed engineer's responsibilities was the transmission shafts throughout the mill, there were hundreds of them. The big ones had oil bottles on them and were checked at regular intervals but the smaller ones on the long lineshafts had grease pads on top of the shaft in a box. Over time these dried out and ideally a contractor was brought in once a year to clean out all the boxes and fit fresh pads. The management at Bancroft saw this as unnecessary expenditure and so occasionally we got 'squealers', a bearing running hot and protesting. The first sign that this was about to happen was that the dirt down on the box would go brown with the heat. Another good sign was that whilst quiet when running at speed they would squeal as the shafting slowed down. So at night, when I was stopping for the day I would slam the steam valve shut and run into the shed so I could be there when the shafting slowed, it took a couple of minutes to come to rest. If there was a potential dry bearing I got a clue where it was when it squealed and if I followed the noise I could usually pick out which one it was by the colour of the down on it. A quick trip in with the ladder, a new pad of shafting waste put in and a small pad of 'hot neck' waste (same as shafting waste but soaked with high temperature grease which melted when the bearing was dangerously hot.). Shafting waste was wool shoddy mixed with grease.

[Stanley]

Hundreds of bearings!

[Stanley]

The bearings on the lineshaft were lubricated by oil bottles which had to be examined and topped up every week. When the shed was demolished these bearings were as good as the day they were installed. Better in fact because over the years they had gained a high polish.

[Stanley]

A good example of the longevity of a big journal running in bronze bearings. Despite almost 100 years of service and running with a collapsed bottom shell this journal on the Jubilee engine flywheel shaft is still in good condition.

[Stanley]

In contrast to the journal above, the ones on waterwheels were often the most neglected. Often showered with water while they were working they were difficult to keep lubricated and suffered badly. If you look in the LTP at Newton Pickles' transcripts you'll find his account of fitting a new bearing on the water wheel at County Brook. They took the bronze step up on the bus and skated it down the fields to the mill! Johnny told Newton and his mate Jim Fort that the van was busy! The journals soon got roped (covered with grooves worn by the bearing) and Newton relates that when they fitted the new step it ran very hot so they dosed it with Victory Compound which Newton said was basically crushed rotten brick. He said it screamed its head off for a minute or two and then settled down. Here's the old shaft at County Brook, still preserved outside the office.

[Stanley]

Another example of how bad a waterwheel journal could get and still run. This is on the large shaft from the Glasshouse wheel which had to be re-cast for installation at Quarry Bank because it had broken just inside the right hand spoke housing. It makes you wonder how it didn't constantly destroy the brass steps! (Perhaps it did....)

[Stanley]

There was a lot to be said for more than adequate lubrication of big bearings. This very large aquarium on the fly shaft at Ellenroad is a case in point. These bearings were so heavily loaded at one point that when the left hand engine was used alone and driving the whole mill pushing out about 1500hp, the engineer installed a water cooling coil in the oil reservoir to keep the bearing temperature down.

[Stanley]

One type of engine I never had any experience of was the Uniflow. Best described as the two-stroke of the steam engine world, they had steam valves at each end and a ring of exhaust ports round the middle of the cylinder. They couldn't run fully expansive because of this central exhaust, had to be run with a lot of compression at the end of the stroke before steam admission and generally ran at higher speeds with a short stroke.
Newton Pickles hated them when used as prime movers in the mill. When they were starting or stopping they ran very lumpy because of the high compression and were a cause of frequent bevel gear breakages in the transmission system. He said they were at their best when on duties like running a generator but even then he didn't like them because of their high exhaust pressures, very often used for process steam when running with no condenser. Another problem was that because they had a constant temperature gradient between the cylinder end and the exhaust ports they had to be bored barrel shaped to keep them parallel when running at operating temperatures. A few were relatively successful in mills, Newton had one at Holmfirth but on the whole they never became popular and Neston said that they bankrupted some engine builders who went in for them big time.

[Stanley]

Another ploy that was used occasionally to increase the overall efficiency of a steam plant was to run non-condensing and use the exhaust for process steam. Bellis and Morcom generating sets could be installed with their own system. Newton had a lot of experience with this and he said that all his customers gave it up after a while because the saving on process steam was less than the increase in fuel costs caused by losing the free power from running with a vacuum on the back end of the engine. Possibly the only instances where this worked long term was when the large urban power stations ran non-condensing and supplied exhaust steam to district heating systems.

[Stanley]

Very few mills made the transition from reciprocating engines to steam turbines. Elk at Royton was one and had a turbine from when it was built in 1927.

[chinatyke]

Very few mills made the transition from reciprocating engines to steam turbines.

What was the reason for that? What happened to the exhaust steam from the turbine, was it reheated and recycled?

[Stanley]

China, basically it was expensive new technology that came in just as money available for investment was drying up. The recapitalisation schemes after the Great War in the spinning industry in south Lancashire were based on bad economics and ruined many forms but did result in some new mills. Elk was one of them. As far as I know they ran condensing but could have provided process steam. Biggest complication was the high speed that needed complicated gear trains to get the transmission speed of the shafting in the mill right. The modern reciprocating engines that competed with them were known technology, very efficient and high torque which was good for driving the mills.