THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

There was another matter that had to be cleared up when I left Billy and went back to the Dairy. When Harrisons lost their last contract with the dairy all the wagons were scrapped except for TWY 972, the 'S' type Bedford that had been my first wagon when I started full time for the brothers.



This wagon carried the 'B' Licence and I parked it up on the lane at Hey Farm. That had to be moved and Billy sold it to Ernie Dawson at Thornton Hall Farm and they used it for many years as internal transport on the farm, mainly at haytime.

[chinatyke]

A lot of retired trucks ended up as "noddy wagons" for internal use on large sites where they got well used and abused until they completely fell apart!

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

This used to be quite common. A car converted to a wagon for use on the farm. This Austin heavy Twelve was at work for Abel Taylor at Green Bank Farm on Old Gisburn Track in 1957. Used only as haytime transport it survived for many years. Early one morning I took it from Green Bank to Wheathead Farm at Blacko on the road via the old lane from Sandbeds to the Moorcock and then down the road to Wheathead. No tax, licence, insurance, brakes, lights or exhaust..... Those were the days!

[Stanley]

One of the activities which seems to have died these days is the trade in second hand furniture. 'Brown Furniture', in other words anything made of proper wood by skilled cabinet makers is a drug on the market. If you read the Calf Hall Shed Company minute books for the immediate post war period when small businesses were renting space in redundant mills you'll find that storage space for old furniture was in demand. Today, I suspect most old furniture is scrapped.

[Stanley]

I do a lot of people watching and apart from the fact that sight of a pair of good leather shoes is now as rare as finding hen's teeth clothing is now almost totally in the wear and throw away category. The only exceptions are uniforms and under that heading I include certain professions. If you see a young man in dark trousers and wearing a white shirt you can bet your bottom dollar he's an accountant or estate agent.
I am, of course, an anachronism as I can't afford new clothes and all my old ones place me firmly in the world of forty years ago. All I can say is that my feet remain warm and dry even in winter or wet weather. This attitude is definitely Flatley Dryer country now.

[Stanley]

Following on from that I polished my 50 year old Lobb's shoes yesterday in preparation for our set off to Skipton. That act of polishing my shoes is in itself Flatley Dryer country

[Stanley]

I remembered an aspect of computing from the distant past of 40 years ago. Harry and Janet were always into high end software engineering and I remember that they never turned their home computers off, they left them running day and night, just switched the monitors off. I asked why and it was because the programmes they were using were so big it tool 15 minutes for a normal PC to start up and load the programmes. At work they were using different machines, were they RISC based and multiple processors? That's definitely Flatley Dryer country today.

[PanBiker]

I used to repair RISC based processor machines to component level. 32 bit when the infant PC world was still on 8 bit.

[Stanley]

I still remember upgrading my Amstrad from 256k memory to 512k. King of the road!!

[PanBiker]

Into Monty Python's Yorkshiremen territory now even though you are an off cummed un.

256K luxury! My fourth computer, 16K BBC Model A. We sold the BBC micro's and I had trained to repair them to component level, so I started with an A model then got the kit to upgrade it to Model B spec. About a dozen IC's to add some of the bigger ones in sockets and a few dozen passive components plus the ram chips to take it to the heady heights of 32K. You also added a raft of expansion socket underneath for connecting accessories. Floppy drives, Parallel printer and access to the 1MHz bus on the machine for interfacing other goodies.6502 processor with built in assembler so you could write some nifty programs. I used it extensively with my amateur radio gear for RTTY, Amtor and Packet Radio, the forerunners of email and some aspects of the mobile phone network. The Beeb could accept programs encoded to ROM and had 4 slots available as standard. I built an EPROM writer and had quite a few of the radio programs running from ROM rather than having to wait for the thrashings of a 5.25" floppy drive. I moved up to an external Winchester drive when they dropped in price. I also used the EPROM writer to program a new ROM for modifying a multi mode CB transceiver up onto the 10M amateur band. Happy days.

[Big Kev]

My only experience of radio was the CB in my wagon in the 1990s

[Stanley]

My radio receiver building was confined to making a crystal set during the war. After that technology left me behind. Ian's post above is double dutch to me!

[Stanley]

This was the first portable radio I ever saw in about 1950. It was a Romac and the aerial was in the shoulder strap. It used U2 batteries and ate them! I think that it was a valve radio, before the days of transistors.

[PanBiker]

Late 1940's that one Stanley, about 1948 and it was a portable using valves. We used to have a PYE portable valve job, the case was a small red suitcase which made it seem like a clandestine spy radio when I was a little lad.

[Stanley]

Bicycle lamps were dead simple in the 1950s, If you couldn't afford a dynamo driven by the side wall of the back tyre you used one of these...



They were also the standard go-to torch for use in the blackout!

[PanBiker]

A screw down spring loaded switch onto the top contact of the battery, front contact to the back of the bulb.

[Stanley]

The batteries were old technology, carbon electrodes and I think a magnesium paste compound for the filler. Two cells giving 3 volts.

[PanBiker]

Bang on there Stanley, we still used to have them on the battery rack when I started work.

[Tizer]

A zinc case, carbon electrode and paste of manganese dioxide and ammonium chloride. When I was 12 years old and had my `Chemistry Experiments at Home for Boys and Girls' book (note the `Girls' - extraordinary for a book published in about 1950) it showed me how to use the zinc from a battery and some dilute HCl to make hydrogen - good fun making bangs! You could use the manganese dioxide with some potassium chlorate to make oxygen and do the famous trick of blowing out the flame of a burning taper then plunging it into the oxygen and seeing it burst into flame again! Happy days! Zinc-carbon battery

Have you still got a carbide lamp? Smithsonian Inst.

[Whyperion]

The batteries were old technology, carbon electrodes and I think a magnesium paste compound for the filler. Two cells giving 3 volts.

If you want to cheat scan in the old artwork and print out new , wrap around the carboard inner of a tin foil or similar roll from the kitchen. internally use a AA modern battery and make up suitable spring connections to it with some card for the tube ends to fit to your bike light.

[Stanley]

"Have you still got a carbide lamp?"



Yes Peter. And I have the reserve container and a tin of carbide as well. I got the cap lamp when I had to go into the tunnels under Ellenroad engine house to inspect them. Flatley dryer country of course but still a very practical bit of kit. Try reviving your state of the art battery lamp by peeing in it! It works with one of these if you have some carbide handy.

[Big Kev]

This is definitely flatley drier territory

[Cathy]

That image gives me the chills Big Kev.
To think that children would have played with ‘the fake snow’.

[Big Kev]

It's scary stuff Cathy. I've been on a few training courses for asbestos, ths potential consequences are horrendous.