STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

There were worse places to be on a nice summer morning.... Ernie Roberts, Roy Wellock and John Plummer in 1977.

[Stanley]

Many sheds used thick whitewash to blank the windows out and as the days got darker they went on the roof again and scrubbed the coating of lime off with coarse wire wool. We used thin wash and by the end of summer it had washed off naturally with the summer rain. One job less!
The hot summer of 1976 caused me more problems than winter cold. Temperatures in the shed rose to very high levels and one day Mary Wilkin came to me in the early afternoon and said there was a funny noise in the shafting near her loom. When I went on to have a look I found that three of the cross shafts had expanded so much they were grinding their way into the wall! I marked them and that night John Plummer and I went in and cut some of the ends of the 2 1/2" shafts with hacksaws, it was hot work! The thing that intrigued me was that this had never happened before so the temperature that day must have been the highest since the shed was built after WW1.

[Stanley]

The outside toilet block for the workers at Bancroft Shed. Ladies on the left and gents on the right. Note the cast iron grills for ventilation and to keep them cold in winter, it cut down on lingering! This was in 1979. I was responsible for the toilets and in the hot summer of 1976 the timbers supporting the glass roof on the ladies block shrank and I had to do a repair during the day because the management wouldn't pay the overtime. They were in use while I was up there and I have to tell you my education advanced rapidly!

[Stanley]

One of my duties was to maintain this sanitary towel incinerator in the Ladies toilets. Incredibly smelly when in use it was nevertheless preferable to disposal via the lavatories as the Bancroft drains were notoriously liable to stoppages. The worst thing that happened was the advent of paper disposable knickers..... Being engineer involved many tasks....... I quite liked the pineapple chunks......

[Stanley]

As engineer I had the onerous duty of being in charge of toilet rolls.... Colin Macro, the cloth carrier, was responsible for keeping the lavatories supplied and he used to come down to the engine house. He gathered up the corners of the fent he wore as a brat and I filled the pouch with toilet rolls. Aprons were often used as carrier bags by women when shopping.
Shortly after starting I found that a better grade of toilet roll was only slightly more expensive so I started ordering them. The weavers noticed and it didn't do my reputation any harm!



Colin and Mary Cawdrey in the tackler's cabin during the last days of Bancroft....

[Stanley]

It struck me that I may have lost some readers with fents and brats. A fent is the imperfect end of a roll of cloth when it is taken off the loom and is cut off and used for a variety of purposes on of which was wrapping round your waist to form an apron when it became a brat. Very handy but it was noticeable that many weavers still used floral pinnies instead of a brat.



Mary Cawdrey, Ernie Roberts and Gwen having a break in the tackler's cabin. If you look closely you'll see that Gwen has a brat on protecting the bottom of her coverall.

[Stanley]

Some time in the late 1970s there was a reorganisation of the Factory Inspectorate. Up to that point we had come under the Yorkshire area but became the responsibility of the Lancashire branch in Manchester. They sent out a young inspector to visit us and when he saw the 'unguarded' lumps of steel whirling about on the engine and all the unprotected belts in the weaving shed he was obviously shocked and said he would have to consult with his superiors. Shortly afterwards the head of the branch turned up with a bunch of his young inspectors who had never seen a steam driven weaving shed before. He took them round the mill and when he came back he took me on one side and asked me how long I thought we would survive. I told him the truth, we were under constant threat of closure. He told his young inspectors that what they had seen was old style British industry and the only thing that mattered was the Accident Book. We hadn't had a serious accident for many years. He said that all they were interested in was safety and it was obvious that we were a safe place of work and wouldn't be running much longer so their job wasn't to close the mill down but simply watch and learn. What a sensible man! We passed the inspection and never had any more trouble with the men from Manchester.

[Stanley]

We always had warning of a Factory Inspector's visit and on one occasion I did my job properly and got Foulds in to reeve a new rope on the teagle hoist on the front of the mill. After they had gone, the day before the visit, I noticed that they had made a mistake and fitted the three rope clamps on the teagle head the wrong way round. I got onto Briggs and Duxbury immediately and they sent three men up with a forty foot ladder. We reared it and I went up with a spanner to reverse the clips. I have never been as frightened in my life! I can climb a 300ft stack no problem because you are looking at brickwork within touching distance but I can tell you that when you are climbing forty feet up a swaying ladder (not fastened on at the top) and when you look through the rungs all you can see is Pen Y Gent thirty miles away it's a very funny feeling. I reversed the clips, got back to terra firma and swore I would never do that again!
We passed the inspection OK and just out of interest I told the inspector about the clips and he said I had taught him something he didn't know, he had no idea there was a right and wrong way for them.....

[Stanley]

The engine at Bancroft was insured by Vulcan, the same company that had the boiler. I have heard of insurance companies demanding that pistons be taken out for inspection but all our surveyor did was come in for a cup of tea, walk round the engine and listen to it. That was it! Good man....
Note that the insurance wasn't for repair of the engine in case of accident in Bancroft's case. All we had was a Loss of Profits policy that covered Nutters for any profits lost if a stoppage lasted for more than two days. Very few firms had full insurance, indeed many of them didn't have insurance at all on the engine as it wasn't statutory like the boiler. Instead, the better firms paid what the insurance would have cost them into a separate contingency fund ready for any event. Bishop's House at Burnley was like that. When the flywheel burst and wrecked the engine they had plenty of money in the fund for all the repairs needed.

[Stanley]

The insurance company stipulated that there should always be someone directly responsible for the engine and with it at all times. The same applied to the boiler because it had no automatic controls. One of the biggest sources of problems with modern economic boilers with automatic controls was that the management immediately did away with the boiler man and gave the responsibility to the maintenance staff. You wouldn't believe how they could be neglected under that regime....

[Stanley]

John Burlison sent me this Watkins image from his book.

[Stanley]

John sent this interesting document.....

[Whyperion]

The engine at Bancroft was insured by Vulcan, the same company that had the boiler. I have heard of insurance companies demanding that pistons be taken out for inspection but all our surveyor did was come in for a cup of tea, walk round the engine and listen to it. That was it! Good man....
Note that the insurance wasn't for repair of the engine in case of accident in Bancroft's case. All we had was a Loss of Profits policy that covered Nutters for any profits lost if a stoppage lasted for more than two days. Very few firms had full insurance, indeed many of them didn't have insurance at all on the engine as it wasn't statutory like the boiler. Instead, the better firms paid what the insurance would have cost them into a separate contingency fund ready for any event. Bishop's House at Burnley was like that. When the flywheel burst and wrecked the engine they had plenty of money in the fund for all the repairs needed.

I suppose if one could lay off workers without pay, and other fixed costs were relatively minimal, then loss of profits would be sufficient. When ones own plant was out of action would there generally be excess capacity elsewhere that could be subcontracted out, or were there normally some excess completed inventory to fulfil expected orders for a week or two?

[Stanley]

Burnley Ironworks drawing of Calf Hall engine con rod 1895. This was a new engine in a new shed.

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

Sorry about that one, here's a better version. Click to enlarge. This was in the days when drawings like these were works of art!

[Stanley]

John Burlison sent me this close up of the corrosion caused by the seating blocks under the Durban Mill boiler. Notice the difference between the perfect preservation in the plates nearest to us compared with the pitting under the blocks. Notice that the rivet heads aren't eroded at all.

[Stanley]

Another example of how corrosion can attack under the seating blocks. If the boiler setting was damp it could be even worse. Hard to comprehend but this could eventually rot 3/4" of boiler quality plate to the extent that the boiler became dangerous. One of the most common causes of boilers being downgraded during their working life.

[Stanley]

Probably worth recording that 'Boiler Quality Plate' was an official designation for very high quality steel plate that tested positive for Toughness, ductility and anti-corrosion properties. Every sheet was numbered and certified, the certificate being stamped on the sheet. Every repair using the plate had to certify the quality and the customer was given the details of the certificate stamped on the full sheet. This was a crucial condition of use and if not complied with the repair was condemned automatically by the Boiler Surveyor.

[Stanley]

Another precaution the insurance companies imposed on boiler repairers or indeed, manufacturers, was that any welding done on the boiler had to be performed by a 'coded welder' using the appropriate 'coded procedure' for the task. The codings varied with the nature of the task and in the case of very complicated repairs the welder and the procedure had to be certified by doing test pieces using the appropriate procedure. These were then tested to destruction and the results assessed. Many factors were involved in these assessments and they were all done to a very high standard.

[Stanley]

I can remember how surprised I was when I got word of the job at Bancroft and approached them that they bit my hand off even though I knew nothing about running engines. I think they made a good choice but I have often wondered what the full story behind the decision was. I found out later that there was a queue of applicants as engine tenter was always seen as a plum job at the mill. This caused a few problems at first because in some quarters there were bad feelings about me being parachuted in to do the job. This never bothered me because I got on well with the weavers and Jim Pollard the weaving manager. When I took over running the engine after a spell as firebeater Jim did everything he could to get me up to speed, I used to sit him down in the engine house and bombard him with questions which he always answered. The same thing happened when I discovered Newton Pickles and in the end I got quite a good education on the running of weaving sheds and the management of large steam engines. I was very lucky.....

[Stanley]

Jim Pollard, weaving manager at Bancroft, in the engine house reading my proposal for fitting a new feed pump. Jim was a good man for me, I used to fly all my schemes for improvement past him before putting them in the office for management to make the final decision. They rejected this one initially but when I said I'd install it for nothing if they would give me the value of half the fuel savings they rapidly changed their minds......
This was a ploy that Johnny Pickles used time and time again with success when he was quoting for installing condensate return systems which were another sure bet.

[Stanley]

I've always said that if you want to understand steam engines properly, make one and get it to work! The latest one is coming on nicely. I have a house full of engines! (and then there are the ones I have given away....)

[Stanley]

The barring engine at Bancroft Shed. Used for turning the engine over for maintenance or to alter position for a clean start. I never used it for starting, I preferred to use the valves instead, by opening the appropriate valve with steam in the receiver between the HP and LP cylinders you could start from any position.
Called a 'barring engine' because it replaced the old method of using a large pinch bar on a fulcrum using slots in the flywheel rim.

[Stanley]

The barring engine on the Jubilee engine. (click to enlarge) Notice that the drive to the wheel is not via the conventional gear wheel but by a very coarse sprocket to the left of the final drive gear. This sprocket mated with the original barring holes, pockets cast in the face of the flywheel when Yates first built the engine. As designed it had no barring engine but was turned using a very large pinch bar and a fulcrum point immediately in front of the wheel. The barring engine was a later addition.