STEEPLEJACK'S CORNER 2012

[Stanley]

Stott's designed Ellenroad as well. They were a very busy firm!

[Invernahaille]

Good to see the sites picking up a little, Stanley.

[Stanley]

Still on life support Robert in terms of new posts, John Burlison is doing a fine job finding me interesting pics. However, if you look at the page views there are still a lot of hits from non-members.... I shall persist.....

[Stanley]

I mentioned John and up he pops, well done John.....



Here's what John wrote....

The Royd Mill, off Chamber Road, Hollinwood, Oldham, built for the Murgatroyd family in 1907, this chimney being one of only two full height stacks remaining in Oldham, now with Manor Mill being the last, early in 2014 the chimney sadly was demolished by David Swift.

Below is a news report on a modification about the nuisance of black smoke.

Regards
John Burlison

Friday 14th March 1913

An interesting demonstration of the consumption of smoke in the boiler fires of a big cotton factory was given yesterday afternoon at the works of Messrs. Murgatroyd Brothers, at the Royd Mill, in Hollinwood. The smoke-consuming plant, which had been fitted to the fireboxes and which has now been in use at the mill for some months, is known as Thornton's Patent Smoke Consumer and Fuel Economiser, and is manufactured by Mr. J. T. Thornton, of Huddersfield. It has already been successfully adopted in several large industrial undertakings, and at yesterday's demonstration a number of manufacturers who have still to solve the problem of smoke-consumption at their own factories took a keen interest in its work.

The fires to which the new appliance has been fitted have caused a good deal of trouble during the last two years by the quantity of black smoke they have emitted from time to time. For the purposes of demonstration yesterday the smoke-consuming plant was first of all put out of action to give the visitors an opportunity of seeing the smoke usually sent up when the fires were stoked. There was a strong southerly wind blowing at the time and the smoke was therefore not so black as it would otherwise have been.

To the eye of the layman it certainly seemed "black" enough as did most of the smoke coming from the neighbouring mills, but the local smoke inspector, who was there, described it as quite a "medium stoke." If that were taken to be black, he said, there would be nothing for it but to fine all the owners in Oldham. The smoke was not, therefore, black enough to incur a fine, but it was far from transparent, and when, almost immediately, the smoke consumer was put to work there was a remarkable change.

In a few seconds the smoke coming from the stack was no more than a thin, transparent film, blown rapidly along on the wind and scarcely to be distinguished from the grey clouds behind. Half a minute later there was not a sign that the boilers were in use.

[Invernahaille]

Ellenroad and Garfield have had their moments in producing heavy black smoke. That was about 40 years ago, if I remember. Ronnie my father cleared the flues out on a few occasions.

[Stanley]

Robert. There was a time when the old engineers believed that black smoke meant that you were getting the most out of the boiler and the mill owners also knew no better, all they knew was that if the chimney was shoving black smoke out the engineer was struggling to make steam and this meant their mill was working flat out so they never discouraged it. Coal was cheap and profits were high. The first efforts (1810) to address efficiency happened in Cornwall where coal was dear because it all had to be imported from South Wales so there was an incentive to seek improvement. If you look up Lean's Engine Reporter on Google you'll find plenty of references to what they did. The consequence was that Cornwall was far ahead of mainland Britain in efficiency. Eventually, but much later, the same incentive, dear coal and falling profits forced change in the rest of the country, when the Navy went over to oil burning in WW1 they didn't like black smoke as it gave their position away and of course they discovered that if they reduced the smoke they actually improved steam raising. Boiler manufacturers and experimental engineers came up with solutions like the smoke reducer that John mentioned which was probably balancing over and under fire draught to get optimum burn.
In 1844 Fairbairn patented the twin flued Lancashire boiler. There had been twin flued boilers before on railway locos but in that case the engineers were after better heat transfer. We know that Fairbairn had efficiency in mind because one of the advantages cited for the new boiler was that fact that furnaces could be fired alternately so that one fire was always burning white hot and the gases from that ignited the smoke when the the two flows met at the back of the boiler. Hence the need for the mid feather in the downtake at the back and explosion boxes, the cross ignition happened in the sole flue where it was contained and could do no damage. This meant you could have near smokeless burning if the draught was moderated correctly.
However, the mill owners were slow to change and it wasn't until the advent of WW2 when fuel efficiency was paramount that efficiency and smokeless running was really pursued. The government financed research and issued the results in two volumes, covering the efficient production of steam and burning of fuel.. The final nail in the coffin of smoke was the Clean Air acts after WW2 when smoke reduction became statutory.
One final curiosity, if you read 'The Crowthers of Bankdam' by Thomas Armstrong he has a fictitious incident where the mill was shut down but the owner instructed the engineer to burn rubbish and make smoke to give the impression the mill was running.

[Tizer]

Interesting posts on black smoke. I suppose it's relevant to the present situation in China where they have abundant coal and lack the motivation to burn it efficiently, although climate change is now getting their leaders sufficiently worried to do something about it. I suppose developments in the efficiency in burning coal (and then oil) provided a foundation for the need in the late 1900s to improve efficiency in burning waste and in crematoriums to avoid pollution of the atmosphere. And then catalytic converters in motor car exhausts etc and the present concerns about `PM', particulate matter, from diesel engines.

Changing the subject, in a novel I'm reading set in the USA around 1900 there's a suggestion that the owners of steamboats would sometimes push the captains (if captain is the right term) of the boats to `lower the water in the boiler' to get up more steam if the boat was behind schedule. The captains would resist because of the danger of a boiler explosion. Would `lowering the water in the boiler' really provide more power?

[Invernahaille]

Tizer,
To follow up on your question. Schoolboy science comes in to play. Water turns into steam at 212f/100c. If you have less volume of water it will turn to steam quicker. However, you need to keep up steam pressure and therefore need a good water supply to maintain that pressure. There is also the danger of damage to the boiler if there is an insufficient supply.
That is why there are sight glasses on boilers indicating high and low level water levels.
Think about it, no water-no steam.

[Tizer]

Thanks, that makes it clear. The book I'm reading is `The Striker' by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott and set in 1902 at the time of big labour disputes in the US, particularly in Pittsburgh. Part of it involves action on the Monongahela River with steam paddle tugs pushing `tows' of coal and also big paddle steamers. I didn't get on with Clive Cussler books in the past but these Justin Scott ones about a detective called Isaac Bell are interesting with plenty of technical and historical detail. The books still have the usual Cussler schoolboy hero type of characters but I just ignore that and enjoy the background!

[Invernahaille]

This Link show a good photo of boiler operation controls and gauges etc.
. http://www.ribblevalleyrail.co.uk/ELLEN ... 67%20X.jpg

[plaques]

Would `lowering the water in the boiler' really provide more power?

The quick answer is NO. But you would be able to raise steam much quicker. I suppose on a river system the demand is constantly changing so to increase the steam quickly would give the boat a better response and therefore a greater journey speed. The danger as Invernahaile has pointed out that low water would expose the heater tubes if it was slopping about a bit. Better to be safe than sorry and run on a full tank.

[Stanley]

I see the lowering water problem a little differently as I have been in that position myself but in different circumstances. I doubt if the order would be 'lower the water'. The amount of steam a boiler produces depends solely on the speed with which you can transfer heat from the fuel to the water in the boiler. The only time the quantity of water would have a bearing would be when raising steam from cold and even then you would want the furnace tubes covered to get maximum heat transfer. Where I can see an order being dangerous is if an engineer found himself in a position where he was making steam and passing it out of the boiler to the engine faster than his feed water arrangements could replace the water. In those circumstances the engineer would be watching his water dropping to a dangerous level and wanting to cut down on steam use to let his feed arrangements catch up. In that case the dangerous order would be to ignore the water level, which would be potential disaster. There is another aspect to the question. Many of these older boilers relied on injectors to force water into the boiler. A big injector uses a lot of steam and in addition introducing cold water slows steam production down so you get a double whammy, dropping steam by using the injector and at the same time lowering water temperature which equates to lowering steam pressure also.

[Invernahaille]

Its all about coefficients!

[Steeplejerk]

Dave Hurst ,Stuart st power station

[Stanley]

He needs feeding up Tom!

[Invernahaille]

Here is a link to a very old painting of Ellenroad and Garfield Mills. Must be prior 1948 because the Bentgate Estate has not been built.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... GZn6e1bEAw

[Stanley]

Some nice pics on that site.... Nice to see Joan and Thelma, two of my first volunteers.....

[Stanley]

Another old image of Ellenroad and Garfield in 1919 when Ellenroad was just about to be rebuilt after the fire.



Ellenroad burned down on January 19 1916. All the lights are on it the mill so it's either before 1916 or just after the mill was rebuilt after the Great War

[Stanley]

I've always been glad that my job forced me to overcome my fear of heights and got me into climbing chimneys and I was so lucky to have a bloke like Peter Tatham to educate me. Does anything beat the sense of achievement when you have climbed a couple of hundred feet and get a view like this?



A nice day on Ellenroad stack in 1987.....

[Invernahaille]

Stanley,
The painting shows the prefabs on Hawthorne Lane, and New-Hey county school. The prefabs were built as temporary housing just after WW II, Temporary, they where still inhabited until 1965, when they built brick bungalows to replace them.

[Stanley]

Interesting Robert.... So that makes it later than I thought. Garfield was getting away with murder then because of the smoke. Another possible clue to nailing the date down even further is that the yard on the end of Ellenroad appears empty and the crèche and canteen were built there at the end of the war and later the sports facility.

[Invernahaille]

Perhaps we should start another subject.......History Detectives

[PanBiker]

Go for it, could be interesting.

[Stanley]

I think we do it all the time on OG. Look at the detective work in genealogy. Remember the fun we had with Steve's Ice Cream and the lamp post?

[Stanley]

Peter Tatham's cut into Sunnybank stack at Helmshore in 1977. Very slender and heavily banded, the stack was surprisingly stubborn. When cut more than half way through and swaying gently it still remained standing so Peter pulled everyone off the job and retreated to the caravan for a brew. He said it would go and as it was an enclosed site there was no danger. He was right, after about twenty minutes a strong gust of wind did the trick. It was over 200 feet high and fell almost unbroken because of the bands.