I asked Newton to explain what he meant by leaving them slack up to the bonnets.
“The bores were tapered the wrong way. They’d bored ‘em from the wrong side. You see when you start boring a casting with a lot of length to the bore you naturally get a spot of tool wear. You did when using ordinary tools anyway, you got a spot of tool wear and they’d started boring them from the bonnet end and we always bored us Corliss valves from the cover end, the blank end. Then if it went smaller it went smaller up to the bonnet and when you shoved ‘em in it were OK. (You always put the valves in from the opposite end to the bonnet.) Say you did lose ten thou on the bore, which I never did lose anything hardly, but they had done. If they had been the other way I could have turned me valves ten thou of taper and they’d have fit perfectly. So I couldn’t see turning them valves to fit the small end and leaving ’em slack at the bonnet end which meant they wouldn’t have rested correctly on the face and there’d have been some steam leakage for a heck of a long time before they wore themselves down. So what I did I turned all the valves and I said to Harry Crabtree don’t put the bonnets on. I turned all valves with a taper on to put ‘em in from the bonnet end. He says, and I’ll never forget Harry, “What are you doing?” I’m turning the taper same way as it is. He says, “Well who’s going to pull the buggers out if there’s anything wrong with them?” I says, look, we’re going to have to chance it, if there’s anything wrong with them valves we’ll have to take the bonnets off to get them out. Him and me knew all about it. So I turned these valves wi’ a taper of ten thou less at the tail end and we put them in from the bonnet end and then put the bonnets on after. You allus get that bit of (tolerance) where you can move ‘em about, you’ve got to have running tolerance. We poked ‘em in on to the tees (The tee bar that drove the valves from the bonnet via a slot in the valve itself) all four and nobody knew about it because they never came out again. But you know it would have been a hell of a long time before they wore down enough to get them out the other end and I’ve always wondered what would have happened if someone had gone and tried to take the buggers out. Anyway we got it all together and at about two or three o’clock in the morning we were ready for putting the steam pipe back. We’d had to take the steam pipe down to get the cylinder into the engine house because it ran over the window. We were all getting a bit at bands end, we’d worked night and day for seven days solid and two of me labourers were putting t’steam pipe up and making joints while me and Harry were finishing the cylinder off and bits o’ pipes, drains and one thing and another. About quarter past six, happen a bit sooner, we’ll say six o’clock in the morning, I says right put some steam on at the boiler house. They put steam on in the boiler house and I don’t know what them lads had been doing but it blew the Taylor’s ring clean out of one of the joints and everyone were asleep on the floor except me and Harry.
A Taylor’s ring is a corrugated joint ring that you put between the joints in your steam pipe lengths. I used to fill Taylor’s rings up with Manganesite. Anyway, Harry says come on Newton let’s get the steam turned off get up on the bloody scaffold and make it us self! So me and Harry set to, there’d be a dozen seven eighths of an inch bolts round that flange, we were absolutely buggered and we made the joint and it were red hot. We’d been out in the snow all week and we finished up wi’ the last joint bloody red hot wi’ all the windows out! Anyhow we got running as near as I can tell about quarter to seven and she picked her feet up and got hold of the vacuum and she were off. I says to Sidney leave the bloody thing running, it’s seven o’clock nearly. The weavers had been notified to come in Monday morning, if they want to come in they can do. So we ran on and sometime between seven and half past Sidney vanished, he went home for his breakfast and he said he’d be back in a bit. Quarter to eight there were a hell of a noise in’t low pressure cylinder, grind and grunt. I hooked the governor off and stopped her instantly. Harry says what’s that! I said I think I know what it is, I think there’ll be some core sand that’s dropped out of a corner that they couldn’t get out of the porting and it’s dropped in the cylinder bore, we’ll have to get rid of that! Harry says what we going to do, take t’covers off? I said are we buggery! This time o’t day and been up all week and never been to bed? There’s a core flange on top of the steam chest you know same as there is underneath for the moulders to get their muck out. I says we’ll take that flange off Harry and we’ll put a drop of oil in and then we’ll put it back on. So we took this flange off which would be about two feet in diameter and a dozen seven eighths nuts on it. We had the blocks up so we lifted it off and we put a drop of oil in, about thirty bloody gallon! He he he! I started it up meself, th’engineer never appeared, so I started up about half past eight and there were a lot of sizzling and spitting and a nice greasy piston rod and all running a bit black. I says I think we’ve shifted it and it just purred away and never ailed owt any more.
So that’s when I came home for me breakfast ‘cause I said to Harry you’re all right now you look after it I’ll just nip across t’road, I’ll get the wife to make me breakfast have a wash and a shave and I’ll be back in half an hour. I might have been a bit longer than half an hour. I goes back and me mate’s sat in the chair round t’corner a little, there were like a little vestibule and a chair round there and a desk and he’s there in that corner and he’s hard on! I thought oh my God brand new engine and about £12,000 of a job running on its own! And just then I saw this cap come down the far side and just walk round the bottom and it were Jack Sneath the engineer from Fernbank. He said no need to worry Newton I’ve been here since you went up that yard. As soon as you walked up them steps he were asleep and you hadn’t got out of sight. He must have come in one way as I went out the other. So I thought thank God because he’d had plenty of experience with that sort of thing. I stopped there and Harry come home and nobody turned up, no Sidney, and it were another fortnight before he turned up. His nerve had gone you know and he were a long time before he really came to.
He used to come for me and knock me up at half past six in the morning saying I can’t start it, I’ll never start it this morning. (Newton is talking about Sydney Heaton here) All sorts of excuses warmer’s been left on all night, air pump’s red hot and all that sort of carry on. I’d walk across and there’d be nothing, I’d just open the stop valve at five to seven and within ten minutes he’d be all right. He’d say I’m all right now. Aye, especially on Monday. Oh he came across many a time and I talked to his wife, he’d had a terrible shock with that job you know. After a month or two he were as reight as rain. She said he used to get up in the middle of the night to take the dog out you know.”
We started to talk about how keen your senses got when you lived with an engine and Newton agreed. “I mean you see, we’ve been at it all these years and it doesn’t matter what, or where you are, if there’s a change of noise, suddenly you want to know what it is don’t you.” I agreed and made the point that you spend all the rest of your life listening. People have often seen me jump at a strange noise and thought I was nervous but I always told them not to confuse nervousness with being alert and having quick reactions. You don’t survive long running big lumps like steam engines if you aren’t listening.
The engine ran for a further fourteen years after this repair and finally closed down in 1966.
Crow Nest LP side after the repair.