THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

In the days when I was going into steel works I used to like to watch them blowing a Bessemer Converter which burnt the carbon out of the mix by blowing air in through tuyeres in the bottom. Regulating the strength and length of the blast was down to the melter who put a pair of dark glasses on and watched the colour of the flame roaring out of the mouth of the converter. He was a key man and knew when the correct carbon content had been reached. If a melter broke his dark glasses it was a disaster because the tint was always slightly different and he had to adapt.
Many years ago I was told a story by a man from the Science Museum. He contacted me to ask for suggestions for someone capable of repairing an old riveted Bessemer Converter vessel. When British Steel stopped using their last converter they ordered it to be scrapped but the manager had a big hole on the site at the time so he buried it. Years later it was dug up and repaired. I don't know where it is now.
Melters and other key men in the steel works always wore white silk scarves as a badge of office.

[Stanley]

We tend to forget but before the days of motorway building, as late as the early 1970s, Earby was on the direct route from Tyneside to the North West. A lot of heavy traffic came through. A firm called Econofreight had a contract for their 8 wheeled tipper wagons that brought them through Kelbrook. They ran Foden wagons with FD6 supercharged two stroke diesels. These engines were small but ran at extremely high revs and to get power you had to keep them revving as fast as possible so lots of gear changes. I used to love standing outside the Craven Heifer and hear thanm coming up the slight gradient from Sough, three downward shifts for that small incline. You could tell them a mile off from the sound, the blower made as much noise as the exhaust. Another regular visitor was Ridings and Queensgate Motors of Gateshead and Longridge. Two firms amalgamated into one. They used more conventional motors with Gardner engines and were notable for having very neatly roped and sheeted loads on their flats.
I have a funny story about this.... In the days before motorways I was in the steel works at Middlesbrough loading a nine ton steel ingot still hot from the shop. It was raining and steam rose off it. There were two ingots which were a rush order for a firm in Trafford Park at Manchester and another wagon was with me for the second. I got talking to the driver and he said it would be the following day when he delivered. This surprised me because it was early in the morning and I asked him which way he was going. He said A1 to Hill Top café just south of Doncaster where he would spend the night, then through Sheffield to Manchester. I told him I would be delivering in the afternoon of the same day and he refused to accept that there was a better route. I told him that he should have a word with Ridings and Queensgate because if he was right, they had been going the wrong way for fifty years! I delivered that afternoon and was home for tea, they asked me where the other ingot was and I kept stum.... Everyone assumes that wagon drivers know the way, forget it! You'd be amazed how many were miles out of their way.

[Tripps]

And an Esso road map obtainable at every garage was only 6d. I think Shell had one too.
You didn't go the long way when you were pedaling.

[Stanley]

Exactly, I had a bunch of them in the cab. Best sat nav ever!
WARNING!!
The following may not be suitable for anyone with a delicate nature!








I was watching Billy Connolly on 'Who do you think you are?' last night. He was as funny as he is in his shows. He had a big surprise when he discovered he had Indian ancestry and that his great great grandfather was treated in hospital for syphilis. Same experience as me and my dad. The researcher showed Billy a description of a mass inspection of troops for venereal disease and I was reminded of an occasion in 1954 when, along with about 200 others I was paraded in the dining hall without trousers or underwear. The doctor came down the line lifting your penis up with a wooden ruler and inspecting the family jewels. It was always known as a 'short arm' inspection. I wonder what happened to the ruler afterwards.... Officially it was an FFI (Freedom from infection) inspection. The army was very hot on STDs, free condoms were handed out at the guardhouse if you were going out and theoretically, if you had sexual contact you were supposed to have an inspection by the MO. If you did you weren't charged if you picked anything up.

[Big Kev]

They ran Foden wagons with FD6 supercharged two stroke diesels. These engines were small but ran at extremely high revs and to get power you had to keep them revving as fast as possible so lots of gear changes.

Vicarage Motors have an old motor coach currently under renovation. It has a 3 cylinder, 6 piston 2 stroke diesel engine in it.

[Stanley]

Kev, that will be the Rootes TSR3 with the Rootes blower. Commer wagons had them and they were incredibly noisy, burned their exhausts out regularly when hard pressed. There was a Welsh firm who converted short wheelbase tippers to artic units and they favoured the Commer two stroke. Incidentally the Foden two stroke used a modified Rootes blower, not a turbocharger but a proper mechanically driven supercharger.

[Stanley]

Can anyone remember when the railways used horses and four wheeled drays to deliver goods? Many firms kept their horses on during WW2 because of fuel shortages, the Co-op and the railways had big stables and some fine horses. I can remember in the late 1960s I was off to London one night in my tramping days and the quickest route out to the old A34 was through the centre of Manchester at night, no traffic at all. I was coming up to what was then London Road Station when a bobby flagged me down and jumped into the passenger seat in the cab. I asked him what was up and he said "watch this!". Within a couple of minutes I saw the strangest thing ever, the street was alive and it wasn't until they got in the headlights that I realised it was thousands and thousands of rats! I'd heard about a 'tide of rats' but never seen one before. The bobby had been warned on the police telephone box (there were many of these in the days before radios, they had a blue light on top which flashed when there was a call). This was at the time when they were starting the redevelopment of London Road Station and there were enormous stables under one part of it. They had started work ripping the stables out and disturbed the rats and I just happened to be in the right (or wrong) place when they decided to flit en masse. It was one of those peculiar things which very few people get the chance to see and I'll never forget it. I remember that when they had passed there were odd dead rats laid on the ground. I suppose these were old and infirm rats that couldn't stand the violence with which they were jumping over each other in their panic. I've never met anyone who has seen this and many people don't believe me but I assure you it happened and that bobby was very eager to get in the cab with me, out of harm's way. Mind you, I think they would have ignored anything in their path. This would be the same thing as the old tradition that rats leave a sinking ship. Incidentally, at the docks, the boats moored at the quay always had large conical shields fitted on the mooring lines to stop rats climbing aboard up the cables.

[David Whipp]

A good tail!

[Stanley]

Another sight that was quite frequent until about 1970 was a tramp, usually a man but not always, walking up the side of the road or knocking on doors in towns asking for food. They usually went to the big isolated houses and were often given something. If I came across one on the road I shared my butties with them.

[Stanley]

Does anyone remember Platers and Stampers at Burnley? Better known as Prestige in later years but long gone now I suspect. They were one of the first firms to get into stainless steel kitchen ware after the war and to own a set of Prestige pans with copper bottoms was to be at the cutting edge of kitchen technology. When Vera and I got married in 1959 we were given a set as a wedding present and they never wore out. I'll bet my daughters are still using them. Before that the 'modern' pans were thin steel porcelain enamelled pans, they replaced the old cast iron ones. Enamelled pans were not easy to use because they were so thin that it was easy to burn what you were cooking. Funnily enough, some of the most expensive cooking pots you can buy today are enamelled cast iron. Think Le Creuset casseroles.

[Tripps]

I have such a copper bottomed Prestige pan, inherited, and still in regular use. I know it to be at least fifty years old. Sometimes I give it a treat and polish the visible copper ring round the bottom. It will last longer than I will.

[plaques]

Prestige (Platers and Stampers) was a speculative build by the Burnley Council. Paid for out of the ‘rates’ on land owned by the council. Opened in 1937 at a cost of over £90000 the government of the day refused to take part in the venture. It eventually closed in 1992 taking some of the workers pension fund with it.

[Stanley]

I always used to be struck when passing through Burnley of two famous names close to each other. I forget the road. They were Riley's Billiard Table works and Burco-Dean who made the electric boilers.

[chinatyke]

I always used to be struck when passing through Burnley of two famous names close to each other. I forget the road. They were Riley's Billiard Table works and Burco-Dean who made the electric boilers.

Was it Accrington Road? Riley's was at the traffic lights where you turn down to Rosegrove. Or you could have been coming around the ring road (Rossendale Road) towards Rosegrove, same traffic lights.

[Tripps]

Good to see you about China. News today says there is another earthquake in your area.

[chinatyke]

Good to see you about China. News today says there is another earthquake in your area.

Thanks for thinking of me. The earthquake was in Yunnan, the province next to ours to the northwest. This earthquake measured 6.6 on the Richter scale and we didn't feel it. A level 1 emergency response has been declared and relief supplies are being sent from Nanning and elsewhere. The reports so far indicate only 1 person killed but there is a lot of damage to houses. There are a lot of poor rural areas in Yunnan with many old houses made from sun dried mud bricks which don't have much earthquake resistance. I've just been watching it on our local news.

No doubt there will be some relief fund set up and I'll donate to that, some of these people are very poor and cannot afford to lose what little they have, very sad.

I was in northwestern Yunnan in August, a beautiful area of high mountains stretching into Tibet but a very geologically active area.

[plaques]

I always used to be struck when passing through Burnley of two famous names close to each other. I forget the road. They were Riley's Billiard Table works and Burco-Dean who made the electric boilers.

Riley's was at the junction of Rosegrove Lane/Rossendale Rd and Accrington Rd. It used to be called Billy Holts before Riley's took it over.
Burco-Dean is a little more complex. Dean's was on Accrington Rd. only the building frontage is now standing. Dean's merged with Burco who had their works near Lowerhouse lane just below Rosegrove. It was housed in what used to be Waterside Mill. This building has now been totally demolished.

[Stanley]

They were both world brands in their time. I think I'm right in saying that Riley's were taken over and there is a link between them and the Star tables we see on the TV. A very specialised job making those big slate bed tables. (LINK)

[Tripps]

i see - glad to hear that. I got my Yunnans mixed up with my Nannings.

The World Gymnastics is on TV now - and it's from Nanning, Guangxi. That would mean nothing to me were it not for this site. The world is getting smaller.

[chinatyke]

45th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships. As you view the gymnastics look for the clips that show scenes of Nanning city and Guangxi Province, I live in a lovely part of the World. Included in these shots is one very short clip of a working bamboo water wheel like the one I posted some time ago. I still cannot tell what its purpose is. The gymnastics have been incredible, amazing things those youngsters can do.

[Stanley]

In my youth gymnastics was PE and we were forced into baggy shorts and made to do exercises by people who were usually ex-army trainers. All very strange and not enjoyable at all. I can't remember it being a mainstream sporting activity then. But of course we didn't have the media we have now and perhaps it was going on unseen.

[Stanley]

Do Gym changing rooms still have the strange smell of sweaty young boys and ancient rubber plimsolls?
Thinking back, we were bombarded with smells. I remember being somewhere with John Ingoe one day and I said "There's someone burning coal round here". He laughed at me but the smell was unmistakeable and you never forget it. There was a difference between coal and coke. Coke was a much harsher smell and caught your throat. Grocer's shops were lovely, a mixture of cheese, coffee and spices. The last shop I went into that smelled like that was a Greek Shop in Perth where all the spices were in open topped sacks and you scooped out what what you needed into paper bags. The pepper corner was a real pipe-opener!

[Stanley]

I saw a clip of the original Italian Connection last night and the Bedford bus they used reminded me of the infamous 'Chinese Six' configuration that became popular for a while as it meant you could have longer flats and higher payloads for minimum cost by adding a second pair of steering wheels. All right in principle but incredibly hard on front tyres, adding a trailing back axle soon became the preferred option.



I love this pic I found on the web. A Chinese Six test chassis out on test. You used to see a lot of this, drivers perched on a packing case and wearing as much clothing as they could lay their hands on. Note the trade plates and the fact that this was left hand drive. Made for Export? You can still see Chinese Six tractor units used for spreading the axle load on maximum capacity artics but they aren't as heavily loaded as the rigids were.

[chinatyke]

Still popular here, Stanley.

[Bodger]

As a lad in the 1940/50s, i saw a lot of chassis drivers, we lived on the A616, Sheffield to Huddersfield road, the drivers were normally heading in the Huddersfield direction, i was told they were going to have coach bodies fitted but where i know not .
Another sight at the time was the drivers thumbing lifts with the trade plates under their arm.