STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

Some visitors were better looking than others and more notable. Linda Lloyd Jones and Daniel at Bancroft in 1977. Linda is a nice lass and is now head of exhibitions at the V&A in London.

[Stanley]

I searched for an hour yesterday but couldn't find this pic and then her name popped into my head as I was dropping to sleep last night. Another notable visitor to the engine house, Sue Braden in 1976 seen here looking at some of my pics with Daniel. She was in charge of one of the big galleries in London, I shall ask Daniel which one....
I was wrong, she worked for a publisher, Routledge, and had been sent to interview Daniel for a book they were publishing for Gulbenkian on artists in the community (Published in 1978). Daniel was sponsored by the Gulbenkian Foundation in his job as Artist in Residence for Pendle....

[Stanley]

Some visitors had more impact on my life than others. Here is the late David Moore, then Principal of Nelson and Colne College. Daniel brought him to meet this madman he had found in Barlick. David looked at some of my pics and writings and suggested that I go back to night school at the college in a new project that had started, Open College, designed specially for mature students. This was the first time I had met David, we clicked and became great friends. I did Open College and qualified for university and from that chance meeting my life changed completely. All down to the magic of the engine house....
I have always wondered at the fact that running the engine was a matter of rigid routine, discipline and hard work. Running my life was always a matter of pure chance. Opportunities arose and I grabbed them, no planning or routine at all. Funny thing life.......

[Stanley]

When you go into an engine house with rope drive watch the ropes and see how steady they are. This is a fairly long exposure and you can see that the ropes are running steady with no swaying. If you see this you know that the engine is set up well and the valves are correctly set. Notice the shine on the ropes, the best maintenance you could do was to keep them well covered with tallow and graphite. Funnily enough this improved the grip on the grooves in the wheel and the coating stopped the ropes drying out and 'nesting'. That's when loose fibres come off the rope as it runs and it's a sure sign of wear. Some of these ropes, the ones sagging the most, are the original 1920s ropes.

[Stanley]

When I first took over the running of the engine at Bancroft I had this touching belief that you could learn anything from books and so I read everything I could get hold of on steam engines. I soon realised that while the academics and engineers who had written the books were incredibly knowledgeable about the principles they had very little experience of the practicalities. There was nothing about the day to day running of an engine. The only way you learned that was either by making a lot of mistakes or finding someone who knew what he was talking about. I was lucky enough to find Newton Pickles and he was wonderfully patient with me and set me on the right road. The principles he drilled into me served me well and I always say that he taught me all I know about engines. Since then I have found that the best way to continue to learn is to take them to pieces and refurbish them or, even better, grab a lump of iron and make your own! You soon learn all the problems the old engineers faced as there is no difference (apart from scale) between building a small engine and the very largest!
So, if you really want to learn, get hold of a lathe and start making 'em!

[Stanley]

Thinking about rope drives took my mind back to the use of leather belts and even woven steel ones in some mills. Newton told a good story about fitting a new forty feet long belt at one mill and while they were doing the job the owner turned up to inspect the job. He complained that he didn't like the fact that the belt was made of small pieces joined together. Newton asked him if he had ever seen a cow forty feet long! These big leather belts were multi-layered and riveted together with copper rivets and were a masterpiece. I'm not sure why some mills opted for belt drive on this scale, I could never see the advantage. The biggest belt at Bancroft was on the tape engine drive to the shafting and never gave any trouble.



Notice the mechanism for moving the belt between the fast and loose pulleys. The drum on the engine was wide enough to accept the shift. This allowed the donkey to be put in gear with the shafting as the main engine stopped, it was important that the tapes ran continuously to finish a set without waste. It also allowed the tapes to run overtime if needed.

[chinatyke]

The engineering technology of steam cylinders and internal combustion pistons appears similar (to a none engineer), so did any of the steam engine manufacturers adapt later to produce automotive engines? I've an idea Foden manufactured both, but was this duplicity widespread?

[Stanley]

You're right China and yes, people like Fodens made the crossover. Leyland did it as well and in fact at one time made steam lawn mowers. Fowler at Leeds tried the same route with the Fowler Field Marshall diesel tractor and had some success, they also made diesel crawlers. I have an idea that Gardner at Patricroft made hot air engines before diesels and Crossley I think started with steam but went to gas engines. Fosters at Lincoln were steam tractor men but I thyink got into internal combustion for a while after they developed the crawler and made the first tanks.

[Stanley]

The lids on the economiser at Bancroft removed ready for flueing. This was done immediately after blowing the boiler down as it helped cool the flues ready for Charlie and his men coming in the next day. Notice the flue door at the back which gave access to the flue to the chimney. The small bits of white debris are lumps of the fireclay which I used to 'lute' the lids when I replaced them to ensure there were no leaks reducing the draught. I was always short of draught!
One thing that always struck me was that you could tell from the colour which part of the flues it had come from. The dust from the economisers was always black. I never weighed that one up!

[Stanley]

This mechanism on the drive to the scrapers on the economiser tubes always fascinated me. It was very ingenious and automatically reversed the drive to the chains on the scrapers working on the economiser tubes when they had reached the limit of their travel. The upright lever was connected to the reversing mechanism and when it reached a certain point the loose weight in the slot at the top rolled over unbalancing the lever and forcing it to fall to the opposite rotation. So simple and practical. As long as you kept it well oiled it was very reliable. I could watch it for minutes on end!

[Stanley]

The economiser at Bancroft in 1977. Directly behind the boiler its function was to extract waste heat from the flue gases and allow the feed water to be heated up as it circulated. When new they worked at above boiler pressure and so the water could be superheated. The accepted figure was that every 10degrees Fahrenheit you raised the temperature of the feed, you raised the overall efficiency of the boiler by 1%. Due to deterioration in in the wall thickness of the CI tubes the economiser had been rejected by the insurance company and so we had to run it at atmospheric pressure. This reduced the gain but we could still get a useful amount of heat out of it. The control directly in front of the boiler operates a damper in the flue which allowed gas to get in the economiser and we regulated this to get the optimum temperature. The control on the right is for the damper in the by-pass flue which if opened fully allowed the flue gases to go directly to the chimney bottom. Using a combination of the two you could maintain maximum draught and an exit temperature from the economiser of close to 212F beyond which you got boiling in the connie which was not productive.

[Stanley]

Looking at that picture reminds me of how hot it was on the boiler top and of course, bone dry. The boiler house was a dusty place and once a week I used to sweep the boiler top to keep it somewhere near clean. The insulation was asbestos and so while I was breathing in the clouds of dust (no face masks then!) i was taking in significant amounts of asbestos. That was forty years ago and I am coming up to 80 years old. have I got away with it? If so, how come I have not succumbed to the dreaded asbestosis and emphysema like so many of my mates? The thought never leaves me and so while you may admire the engineering, never forget that there was a human cost.

[Stanley]

The boiler was insulated with asbestos as well and contributed to contamination of the dust. One of the things that is often forgotten when demolishing boiler settings. If you do the tests you'll find that the brickwork is contaminated by asbestos that has filtered into the cracks over the years. The old insulating contractors always referred to it as 'pig muck' a hangover from the early years of the industry when pig muck mixed with fibre was the favoured material for insulating pipes.

[Stanley]

When I was researching bobbin mills in the Lake District I found out that the mills that used steam power had a slatted cast iron floor above the boiler and used the space for finish drying the timber used to make the bobbins as the drier the wood, the better it was to turn.

[Stanley]

Visitors to the engine house were often intrigued by the fact that there were coffee and teapots scattered about on the engine bed, always next to a lubricator. This one was from a tea service my mother used for years. They were full of oil and placed next to the lubricator so that when you went round the oils you could top up the lubricators to give a constant feed to the bearings. In turn they were filled from a large metal jug that lived on the LP bed just in front of the cylinder. The idea was that all the oil used was at the same temperature and therefore flowed at the same speed as the oil already in use. Only a small point but it was the small things that gave you consistency and reliability.

[Stanley]

We always left a crack of steam on using the warmer on the HP cylinder.



This was done using the small black handwheel level with the top of the cylinder. This was piped directly into the steam main which had full boiler pressure on it and at the bottom into the exhaust valve chest. This kept the HP cylinder hot all night and as it travelled through the receiver under the footplates and into the LP cylinder it warmed that as well. This meant that should you be late getting going in the morning you had hot cylinders and no problems with condensate. Starting a cold engine is never a good idea! A side benefit was that when you arrived at work on a dark cold morning and opened the engine house door it was warm and welcoming. Good for the engineer and firebeater but even better for the engine. The firebeater had a key to the house as well and so when he was in early warming the shed he could sit in the warm engine house and not the cold boiler house!

[Stanley]

There was a more important use of the 'warmer' and actually the one for which it was first intended. If you opened the valve fully it charged the receiver between the HP exhaust and the LP inlet with steam and this pressure was shown on the compound gauge. If the engine had stopped in a position where it could not start because the valve events were wrong on the HP cylinder you could charge the receiver to about 50psi, open the main steam valve a crack and then manually open the appropriate valve on the LP using the valve key. That shoved the engine over centre and as soon as the eccentric opened the valve on the HP, just as it would do in normal running, the engine was away and soon picked its feet up. Then shut the warmer and gradually open the main steam valve to fully open. Trip the governor in and you were up and running. This saved barring the engine round until an HP steam valve was open.

[Stanley]

If we had been stopped for a while, particularly in cold weather, as at Xmas break, we kept the engine and the house warm and even put a bit of heat into the shed. Before our first morning start I always barred the engine round for at least ten minutes before attempting a start. Bancroft was a good shed as regards 'stiction' in the lineshaft bearings but it was always a good thing to make sure all the bearings were free. Some mills were far worse. Big Mill at Earby had a very complicated extended shafting system and always had to be barred round before starting, in cold weather for as much as half an hour. If this wasn't done it was impossible to get the engine up to weaving speed on starting. They had to have all the boilers on the verge of blowing off at starting time. All this because the engine was working at its limits. The big danger if a cold system was started suddenly was that the first stroke could shear the crank pin off, this wasn't common but it did happen and was an ever present danger. Once the shafting was up to speed and started to generate some heat in the bearings everything was OK.



The Victoria beam engine at Big Mill Earby. Newton said it was the most economical engine in the district in terms of coal burned versus number of looms.

[Stanley]

At Big Mill there was a big run of shafting to the later sheds which fronted on New Road. The alignment of the shaft had to be adjusted part way along the shed by a skew gear. This was always very noisy because it was badly fitted and when the mill was running the noise of the gear howling could be heard all over the middle of Earby. I remember it well.....

[Stanley]

John Burlison bought a slide collection and gave me two of Ellenroad. Here's one of them, when the mill was up for sale from 1983 to 1984 when Coates Inks bought it.

[Stanley]

The other slide.... Note the sale notice... It wasn't 277,000 square feet but 27,700 and it was due to this simple mistake, picked up by my mate Robert Aram that I eventually was asked by Coates Inks to have a look at the possibilities of getting the engine up and running. It's a long story........

[Stanley]

I think steam engines should have a public health warning... they get into your blood! If you haven't done it already have a look at the topic Shed Matters and decide for yourselves whether I am right or not.....

[Stanley]

The sale notice on Ellenroad.... Here's an extract from Vol 3 of Stanley's Story...

"Remember my mate Robert Aram, the collector of chimneys, mill dams and almost any industrial archaeological artefact? One of the ways Robert kept his finger on the pulse of what was available was to tread the ground. He used to allocate time each week to travelling round the region and visiting little known and out of the way sites. Of late he had got more time for this, he had taken my advice when I told him he had to make up his mind whether he was a property developer or a teacher. He couldn’t be both. He had given up teaching and was developing some of the sites he had bought to finance his lifestyle and his activities as the most active private collector of artefacts pertaining to the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

Sometime during 1983 he called in at Ellenroad. The mill had closed in 1982 and Robert knew it was empty but guarded by a local security firm. He had a cup of tea with the guard and during the course of the conversation the man said the mill contained 2,500,000 square feet of space. Robert told him he was wrong but the man insisted. He said he would bet Robert a tenner that he was right, Robert said “Righto!” and they went round to the side of the mill that faced the motorway and the guard directed Robert’s attention to the sign advertising the property for sale. Sure enough, the sign said 2,500,000 square feet! It was a signwriter’s mistake and should have been 250,000 square feet but Robert told the guard he was right and gave him a tenner! The guard was surprised, he had only been using a figure of speech. He took the tenner and when Robert gave him his card and asked him to remember his name if there was anything he should know, the guard took notice and pinned it on the wall in his cabin.

During 1984 Gavin Bone was a regular visitor to the site as Coates made up their mind whether to buy it or not. He was sat having a cup of tea with the security guard one day, this was of course the only place where this was possible on site, everything else was shut down, and voiced a problem he had out loud, “Where the hell do I find someone who knows about steam engines?” The guard pricked his ears up, grabbed Robert’s card off the wall and said to Gavin “Try him, he knows all about them.” Robert’s tenner was beginning to pay off!

Gavin rang Robert and asked him about the engine. Robert told him he had the wrong man and gave Gavin two names, one was John Robinson at the Science Museum and the other was me. Gavin rang John who told him the bloke he wanted was Stanley Graham. Gavin said “That’s funny, you’re the second person to tell me that this week!” So Gavin rang me and this whole connection fell into place. What happened next was up to me."

Notice that the sale notice in 1983 had been corrected, the original lettering giving over 2 million square feet has been amended. Someone else must have noticed! I didn't know this had been done until I saw John's 1983 image.....

[Stanley]

One forgotten corner of steam engine tenting is 'asbestos filled cocks'. These were used mainly on things like water and pressure gauges and were ordinary bronze conical cocks needing only a 90 degree turn to fully open or close. Plain bronze cocks are prone to leakage so firms like Hopkinson's introduced the asbestos filled ones. They had grooves in the plug and body which could be filled with 'indurated asbestos', finely divided asbestos mixed with a rubber compound. You fitted the cock and rammed the packing in with specially ground punches until they were full than assembled the cock and put it into service. The heat vulcanised the rubber and converted the packing into a very durable seal that was very long lived. Indurated asbestos was banned when the dangers of asbestos became a concern together with many other asbestos based packings. A shame because they were never a source of airborne fibres which are the real danger. I still have some indurated asbestos and if anyone wants some for an old cock they know where to come!

[Stanley]

In Forgotten Corners I mentioned F T Fairchild and Sons, the well known Barlick stone masons. Newton told me that they were noted in the early days for accurate stonework in engine beds. Worth making a few points about this.
Barlick was lucky in that we had a good source of non-bedded hard millstone grit at the Upper Hill Quarries run by Sagar's. The lower quarry on Salterforth Lane was particularly good in that the stone there was harder. I know this because my old mate Jack Platt used to run the stone saws there and he told me it took a lot longer to cut than the stone from the top quarry which was favoured for setts and building stone. The lower quarry stone was mostly sawn for cills, lintels and jambs and if necessary, much larger blocks for engine beds.
Once installed the stones had to be checked to make sure the top face was perfectly flat and level. The way the masons did this was to cut a bunch of wooden pegs all exactly the same length and drill holes to suit into the top face. These holes were taken down until the tops of the pegs levelled perfectly and then the bed was dressed off down to the bottoms of the holes. The result was a very accurate surface that could be guaranteed to be level.