The 2000 gallon stainless steel Darham tank off my old milk tanker in 2014 when it was being used at Bail Farm, West Marton as a reservoir for the cleaning solution used to flush the milk pipes in their dairy operations.
It was used for the same purpose in the later days of the dairy after the vehicle had been scrapped.
The reason for these two pics is because thinking about Covid19 it struck me that one of the things I have learned by experience is a working knowledge of bio-security at the sharp end. In those days the driver was responsible for the cleanliness of his tank and we had weekly swabs taken and cultures grown to check on how well we were doing our job.
On the face of it we had ideal conditions for keeping the tanks clean, we had access to the proper chemicals, hoses in which steam and water could be mixed to give any temperature you wanted and stainless steel tanks. The procedure was to get in the tank, swill all the milk off, then scrub the interior with a soft sweeping brush followed by another swill and then a twenty minutes steam out by putting the hose in the cock at the rear and purging the tank with high pressure steam. Guaranteed to produce perfect results every time? Unfortunately not.
The mistake made most often was to do the initial swill with hot water. This was a mistake, it encouraged what was called 'milk stone' which was a deposit on the surface of the steel. We learned that some bugs under that stone could survive the chemicals and even the sterilisation by steam. They are tough little buggers! The cure for this was once you had the tank free of stone, use cold water for the swill.
We had two chemicals, one called ODC used in hot water and a pink powder for use in cold water and I always used the latter as I had noted that a lot of people who used ODC seemed to have stomach troubles and in some cases I suspected it caused cancer as two friends at Holme on Spalding Moor Dairy who used it regularly both died of stomach cancer, bit of a coincidence! The pink powder seemed to work, I always had a low bug count on the inspections. Other dairies recognised this because they did cultures of the milk we took in to them and one consequence was that when I delivered to East Lancashire Dairies at Strangeways in Manchester my milk was always chosen by the Rabbi for bottling for kosher milk. (They were the nearest dairy to the big Jewish community in Prestwich.) The first job when you got to the dairy was to open the lid of the tank and give the milk a good stir with a large stainless steel posser to mix the cream back in as it had risen to the top. The tanks were always full to the neck and so there was no movement in transit to disturb it. As soon as I had finished this the Rabbi climbed up, put his prayer shawl on and say a few prayers over the milk. I asked him one day what difference it made. He looked at me and said, “That is a matter between the milk and God.” Not a bad answer when you think about it but I get the feeling it was a line he had used before!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Thinking about the present plight of the steel industry and looking back my mind went to the big steelworks I used to load out of when I was on the tramp. All of them gone today. This is a billet of steel fresh from the soaking pit. It reminds me of a load I had out of Dorman Long at Middlesbrough many years ago in the 1960s. An eight ton ingot of steel so hot it burned into the 3X3 timbers it lay on on the bed of the wagon. It was raining as I went to Trafford Park at Manchester and steam rose in clouds from it. I used to load out of Llanwern as well straight off the rolling mill. That was plate and also very hot. Ropes were no good on such loads, so I used chains with Stephenson tightening toggles.
All loads can be dangerous but I particularly remember seeing a wagon at St Asaph one day. The brakes had failed on the hill and the plate had slid forwards on impact and sliced the cab and the driver in two. I'm glad I had my time on the tramp, it was an education but at times a very hard one. Not really a forgotten corner for me, I can still remember many of the loads.....
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I said yesterday that driving tramp was an education. One thing I learned was that some trades were still doing very nicely thank you using 19th century technology. The classic example was the steam driven textile industry of course, still a lot of it running in the 1960s. I found a candle and night light factory in the middle of Otley that hadn't changed for over a century. Skin yards, cooperages, fat rendering plants were all operating unchanged. I loaded out of the British Steel River Don steelworks and was amazed to see their Davey 12,000hp steam engine still working driving the rolling mills. (LINK) At that time it was the most powerful steam engine operating in Europe, there was a bigger one in the US.
The lesson I learned was that if it isn't broke, don't mend it! As long as a technology was making a profit (and don't forget that the capital cost had been long written off the books) there was nothing to be gained by modernising.
Since then technology has advanced so quickly that this way of operating is largely superseded and is a forgotten corner. Even so, I'll bet there are still odd corners still using the old machines on a small scale. Good luck to them!
The 12,000hp River Don engine as it is today, in preservation at Kelham Island in Sheffield.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Stanley wrote: ↑09 Mar 2020, 04:48
I found a candle and night light factory in the middle of Otley that hadn't changed for over a century. Skin yards, cooperages, fat rendering plants were all operating unchanged.
Was that Fred Gibson & Co Ltd? I worked for them after they moved to Guiseley but I remember visiting their old place on the square in Otley town centre.
I have been very lucky in my working life to have had access to many things which are now forgotten corners, here's one of them. Sorry about the length of it but some things need to be recorded.
"I don’t suppose anybody who reads this will know the first thing about hot riveting and it’s a lost art now so I’ll describe the process in full as we’ll be doing a bit more later. Hot riveting is a wonderful way of joining steel plates together to make a pressure vessel or, as in the old days, iron ships, in fact anything made out of heavy steel plate. It has the advantage over welding that it is reasonably flexible, the structure can breathe slightly and this wards against failure by thermal stress. The basic principle of the process is that an iron rivet, which is a piece of low carbon steel bar with a half round head on one end, is heated white hot, inserted in the holes through the plates to be joined, ‘held up’ into the hole at the head end and the other end is hammered down into a domed shape while hot. This hammering expands the rivet in the hole and forms another head on the plain end. As the rivet cools it shrinks and pulls the two plates tightly together.
‘Holding up’ is the job of the second man on the team. He has to be in position on the opposite side of the plate from the riveter who is hammering the rivet to shape the head on what was the plain end of the rivet. In the case of an enclosed pressure vessel, this means he has to be inside the vessel. His function is to apply resistance to the pre-formed head of the rivet to hold it in place and give the riveter something to hammer against. In its simplest form, holding up is achieved by holding a heavy hammer head against the rivet but for a really tight joint the hold has to be solid. This is achieved by using a holding up bar which is placed on the head of the rivet and jammed against something solid. As this has to be done very quickly so as not to allow the rivet to cool down a special strut with an enclosed cylinder and piston is used. If compressed air is applied to this strut it lengthens and gives a very quick hold which is dead solid. It may have occurred to you that the process of riveting the head up will be noisy! You’re quite right, it is the worst and most damaging noise you can imagine especially if you are in a confined space in a vessel. All riveters eventually get serious ear damage, Dennis and Joe were both very hard of hearing for this reason even though they usually used ear protection.
Knocking up the plain end of the rivet could be done with a hand hammer but unless there was a very good reason it was always done with a pneumatic gun which delivers heavy blows in very quick succession. The gun has the facility of being able to accept a variety of shaped tools for the actual contact with the rivet. These were in the form of a hardened steel cup and ensured that an even and well shaped head was formed. Apart from the other skills involved it is essential to have a rivet which is exactly the right length, in other words, which has sufficient metal protruding from the plate to allow a good head to be formed.
So, we have two men, the riveter and the second man holding up. There is a third man in the team whose job is to heat the rivets in a portable forge. He has to have the rivets white hot and just beginning to sparkle. When a piece of iron reaches a temperature where it is hot enough to start burning because of combination with the oxygen in the air, it sparkles like a firework. This actually damages the structure of the iron in the rivet so the trick is to get them to a point where this process is just starting on the surface of the metal. This means that the rivet is as soft as it can be without damage and is what a blacksmith calls welding heat because at this point if two pieces of steel are at the same temperature they weld together when hammered. This doesn’t happen in the case of rivets because the plate they are inserted in is cold. The portable forge is a shallow tray on a stand which has a fire in it fuelled by ‘breeze’ which is very small coke. Coke is coal which has been heated until all the volatiles have been driven off and thus burns without smoke but with plenty of clear fumes! The fire is livened up by blowing compressed air into the base of the tray and this can easily get hot enough to melt iron. As we are using compressed air at about 150psi for the riveting gun and the holding up bar it is easy to arrange a branch off this supply for the forge.
Back to the firebox. We have it stood in the middle of the floor, Paul is at the forge, Joe is inside the box with his holding up bar and Dennis is stood ready with his gun on the outside. Paul passes a hot rivet, white hot and sparkling from the fire to Joe who inserts it in the hole, gets his bar in place quickly and then he gives Dennis a shout to let him know he has it dead firm. Dennis immediately applies the gun and starts hammering the rivet straight down into the plate. This first series of blows ‘upsets’ the rivet, in other words it forces it to expand in the hole until it has filled it completely, it flows to the shape of the hole. Experience tells Dennis when this is achieved and he then carries on but swings the handle of the gun round in a circle so that he is hitting the rivet head from all sides. He has chosen a cup size which will allow him to do this without the plate interfering with this action. He does this until the rivet has cooled down to black heat and is perfectly formed. A correctly sized rivet properly hammered leaves a slight ridge of metal around the base of the head. Once all the rivets are in place this ridge is hammered in using a specially shaped caulking tool and this places extra pressure on the plate. ‘Caulking’ an old rivet will sometimes cure a slight weep of water. Recognise that when Dennis stops the rivet continues to cool and as it does it grips the plates together even tighter than the force that the riveting process has applied. This is the beauty of hot riveting, the squeeze that comes into play as the rivet cools.
Once you have got set up, this process goes on very rapidly. While Dennis is knocking the first rivet up, Paul is heating the next, in fact he has a series of rivets in the fire warming up and as he passes one to Joe he moves them all nearer the heart of the fire so that there is a progression. On a very big job like ship-building, the forge may be some distance from the riveters and the hot rivets are thrown and caught by a succession of lads until they get to the job. As long as you have a thick pair of gloves this is a very quick way of getting rivets from forge to hole.
Once every empty hole has a rivet in, the bolts which were the temporary hold are taken out and the remaining holes riveted up. There is a lot of skill in deciding which rivets go in first as the process of squeezing the plates up together alters the shape of the construction slightly because the plates, even though they are cold, swell slightly as they are forced together. This is particularly important on corners and curved surfaces. There is the added complication that in order to accommodate the shape of a vessel it is often necessary to have three thicknesses of plate at some point. These may have to be tapered off before riveting starts so that a perfect joint can be assured.
You may be wondering how watertight a vessel made like this can be. I have seen us make boilers which had to be hydraulically tested to almost 600psi and the riveted joints were tight even at that pressure. Sometimes there can be a tiny weep, this is not seen as a problem because if left alone it will ‘heal up’ very quickly as corrosion builds in the joint. This can be accelerated by putting a bit of sal ammoniac (Ammonium chloride) in the water, a very common practice in the old days. Some old boiler makers advocated peeing in the boiler before filling it with water! What was certain was that, once in service, the natural formation of scale on the internal surfaces would ensure that these minor leaks healed up very quickly. This was the point where you needed an experienced boiler inspector because he would know what was an acceptable weep as opposed to a leak. The younger, modern inspectors don’t have this depth of experience and this can lead to serious problems as they demand a level of perfection which isn’t necessary or even attainable.
Once the firebox was riveted together, the foundation ring had to be fitted to its base. This was done without distorting the ring because it is already a perfect fit in the wrapper having been in there before. This was done by grinding off metal from the inside of the ring where it was proud and building up with weld where it was short. Once we were sure we had a good fit and the ring would still enter the bottom of the wrapper we were ready for putting the box in.
Before the box was fitted we did a thorough inspection of the interior of the wrapper and boiler because it was all easily accessible at this point. Any pitting caused by corrosion was built up by welding and grinding flat. Once we were sure we were as near perfect as possible, the fire hole door ring had to be temporarily fixed in place while we put the firebox in the wrapper. This was done by tacking it in place with a few blobs of weld which could be ground out once we had some bolts in. We couldn’t put the bolts in to hold it of course because there was only just enough room to get the firebox in the wrapper without any bolt heads getting in the way. The firebox was put in place under the boiler as it hung on the crane and then the boiler was lowered slowly and the firebox persuaded into place by a few hammer blows where necessary. It was a tight fit on the foundation ring but we eventually got it in place. The next job was to drill the holes in the firebox base for the new rivets. This was done by drilling through the existing holes in the boiler wrapper and the foundation ring. While Dennis and Paul were doing this I had been making special long bolts in the lathe which were a good fit in the rivet holes through the foundation ring. We put one of these bolts through every other hole and tightened them dead tight. The same was done round the firing hole and the firebox was then in its correct position.
We lifted the boiler and blocked it up so that it was at a comfortable height for working on and started riveting again on the foundation ring. Joe got inside with the holding up bar, Paul got the riveting forge into action and Dennis riveted up until all the holes were filled. Some of the holes had to be drifted into position with a tapered bar and one or two needed cleaning up with the drill. This was due to the construction distorting as the fastenings were made. Eventually we got to the stage where we could take the temporary fixing bolts out and replace them with rivets. These were done one at a time so as to minimise movement in the wrapper and box as the work progressed. Once the foundation ring was dealt with, the rivets in the firebox hole ring were put in and closed up. When all the rivets were in place the next stage began, fitting the stays. Take note that we were able to lift the boiler and set it on blocks at the perfect working height, in situ repairs don’t allow this luxury and accessibility can be a big problem.
The firebox was connected to the crown and wrapper sides by steel stays which were thinned down slightly in the middle and threaded at each end. I had made these in the lathe while the other jobs were going on. The trick with making these was to cut the thread on both ends in one pass so that they were in pitch with each other. As both holes were tapped at the same time, this meant that the stays screwed in easily with no distortion of the plate. The original stay holes were already drilled and cleaned up in the outer wrapper and these were used as a guide for drilling right through into the firebox. Once these holes were drilled they were all tapped straight through from the outside using a special, long stay tap which cleaned the thread in the wrapper and made a new thread in the firebox. When all these had been tapped the stays were fitted.
The stays were screwed in from the outside until enough thread protruded into the firebox to take a nut. These nuts were all fitted and tightened. This left enough thread protruding on the outside of the wrapper to form into a head but of course they were cold. Dennis brought them up to a bright heat with the oxy acetylene burner and then riveted them over into a good head. Once all the stays had been treated like this the firebox was immovably held in the wrapper.
The next job was to fix the long stays in the boiler. The long stays are long steel bars which pass through the front plate of the shell in the smokebox at the front and go right down the boiler, over the crown of the firebox and fix into the backplate of the boiler on the footplate. These were made with a larger diameter thread on the front end so that they could be easily inserted from the smoke box end. At the backplate end there was a shoulder on the stay so that it could be screwed up hard against the plate when in place. The whole of the stay was thinned down enough so that it would pass through the large backing nut for the front thread. We inserted the stay, slipped the front backing nut on by reaching through the boiler manhole, inserted the stay in the backplate and tightened it up and then screwed the large backing nut up behind the front plate. The nuts were then fitted on the outside at each end of the boiler and tightened. We were ready for the boiler tubes.
The basic method of fixing boiler tubes is to get them in place and then expand the end of the tube so that is a tight fit in the hole using a special rotary expanding mandrel. In some cases the insurance companies demand a run of weld round the tube once it is in place. This can be a good thing in the firebox as it gives extra metal to withstand the erosion of the hot gases as they enter the tubes. The tubes are cut to length, inserted in the boiler with the correct protrusion at each end and then jammed into place at the smokebox end with a nail flattened out into a wedge shape at the end. This is to stop the tube turning under the action of the mandrel as the firebox end is expanded. All the tubes are fitted and expanded in the firebox and then the same is done at the front end.
We’re almost finished now, all we have to do is fit the fusible plug in the crown of the firebox. This is a bronze boss threaded to fit a hole in the crown. It has a hole drilled right through it but the drilling is filled with a special alloy which melts at a lower temperature than bronze. This is a safety device which, if properly maintained, ensures that if the water level drops below the crown the fusible plug will melt allowing steam and water to blow down onto the fire and extinguish it. In case you’re wondering why the plug didn’t blow at Harewood when I was driving the saw, we found out later that it was choked with scale and couldn’t work!
We are ready now for the last job, pressure testing the boiler. All the holes in the boiler shell have to be blanked off and a connection made for the pump. The boiler is filled with water, shut up and pumped up to whatever the insurance company has decided will be the test pressure. Normally, this is 50% higher than working pressure but after a heavy repair like this it is common for the inspector to ask for 100%. This is a very severe test on the boiler and we used to do everything we could to get them to allow a lower test. This wasn’t because we weren’t sure the boiler could stand the pressure, it is possible to do a lot of harm to a boiler by over-testing it. It’s amazing how a boiler can stretch when you get up to high test pressures like this.
There is one problem with hydraulic testing which is peculiar to traction engines. The cylinder block is riveted on to the top of the boiler and the last thing you want to do is disturb this. The problem is that the seal on the boiler depends on the regulator valve on the cylinder being in good order. A joint will leak cold water while it is perfectly tight under steam and very few regulator valves are perfectly seated. The trick is to get to the valve and put a thin sheet of rubber between the valve and the seat and make sure it is tightly held down. This makes a good seal but you’ve got to remember to take it out afterwards!
We had no problems with this boiler. The required pressure was applied and apart from a couple of small weeps which would heal up in the first few hours of service, the boiler was tight and passed for duty. We saw it a few months later in steam at Swinton and it was as good as new."
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I am not going to go into the budget promise a a tenner a pothole but one corner that has definitely been forgotten is proper road maintenance. The policy of temporary repairs of potholes by simply dropping tarmac in and tamping it down has failed as everyone knew it would. I noticed yesterday that two of the repairs outside Barlic Bites done about 6 months ago are once more marked as pedestrian hazards as the 'repair' has crumbled and broken out. There's a major pothole at the junction of Skipton Road with Gisburn Road that is definitely not going to be permanently repaired by chucking a tenner at it!
Add bad maintenance of the gulley grates and trip hazards on pavements and I'm afraid our ancestors who laid the roads down would be ashamed of us. How bad can it get? No signs of any real improvement and I'm afraid £500million for 50 million potholes isn't going to make any difference at all.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Stanley wrote: ↑12 Mar 2020, 06:01
Add bad maintenance of the gulley grates and trip hazards on pavements and I'm afraid our ancestors who laid the roads down would be ashamed of us.
I noted that on Salterforth Talk yesterday the Parish Council are advertising a position for a Lengthsman. Now there's a breath of fresh air, I would apply If I were a bit more mobile on my feet.
Trying to puzzle out where it is Cathy. I like the washing on the line!
Wonderful Ian, when they did away with the lengthmen the rot set in. I used to see them at work frequently when I was on the grocery round and picking up milk and always valued their work, particularly their local knowledge. They knew when trouble was going to arise before it happened. All the frost pockets and drains liable to clog and spill on the road. As usual of course they were seen as 'unskilled labour' and dispensable. No such thing as unskilled labour!! I was unskilled as well..... Phooey!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Good Observation Ian. Thanks... One thing I have frequently commented on is the fact that we have far more trees now than in the landscapes of only 50 years ago.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
It would appear that a major forgotten corner is the fact that life is a terminal disease! I do not know better than anyone else but I am beginning to suspect that the 'cure' for the present pandemic as prescribed by the authorities might be worse than the disease. It's an uncomfortable fact but viruses and microbes are smart and fast moving, we have seen it all before from Biblical 'plague' through Black Death and Spanish flue to more recent episodes like Asian flu in the late 1950s. It may be that we may have to accept that there is no such thing as medical science enabling us to be 100% disease free.
I know it isn't a popular view but resignation to the facts of life isn't a council of despair, it's just common sense and a time for common sense and personal responsibility. Rushing round like blue-arsed flies and imposing lock downs and cuts in travel might prove to be the most damaging aspect of our collective official response when the dust eventually settles. (As it will!)
This is just a personal view, we are all allowed to go to hell in our own way!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Very much on the same theme as yesterday. If you are reasonably intelligent and aware, you pick up things as you pass through life. I've seen my share of the Four Horsemen, ("Four horsemen of the Apocalypse, in Christianity, the four horsemen who, according to the book of Revelation (6:1–8), appear with the opening of the seven seals that bring forth the cataclysm of the apocalypse. The first horseman rides a white horse, which scholars sometimes interpret to symbolize Christ; the second horseman rides a red horse and symbolizes war and bloodshed; the third rides a black horse and symbolizes famine; and the fourth horseman rides a pale horse and represents pestilence and death.") and I think that with very few exceptions, the bad events I have seen were all triggered by either politicians or Mother Nature doing her own thing.
At the moment we are seeing an example of the latter being exacerbated by the actions of politicians. When we work miracles by manipulating genes we see it as a 'good thing'. When Mother Nature does it by mutation we see it as 'a pestilence' and bad. As I understand it, Covid19 is happening because those smart little viruses cracked the problem of animal to human transmission. (I'm sure it is far more complicated than that but that's my perception)
If this is the case we should accept it and deal with the consequences. In the case of the Black Death in 1348 Mother Church had a clear and simple explanation, it was God punishing us for our sins. We have moved on a bit from that but are still faced with the old Law of Nature, What can't be cured must be endured. This is where we are now and until medical science produces an affective vaccine Covid19 is going to be a part of our lives. It may be that the ability to accept a simple fact like this is a Forgotten Corner.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Really Medical. but it appears that the Covid/Corona viruses mutate faster than others, which renders Vaccines (and presumably general crowd immunity) less, if not totally, ineffective.
Given that there is some thought that a vector in the transmission of Plagues was the human flea - it was probably a blood borne disease. - which explained the spread when generally people travelled long distances less frequntley- but still enough to spread diseases, compared to the wide / world wide travel of today
Stanley wrote: ↑12 Mar 2020, 06:01
Add bad maintenance of the gulley grates and trip hazards on pavements and I'm afraid our ancestors who laid the roads down would be ashamed of us.
I noted that on Salterforth Talk yesterday the Parish Council are advertising a position for a Lengthsman. Now there's a breath of fresh air, I would apply If I were a bit more mobile on my feet.
I really should write to the Council/s about the road mis-maintenance and repair.
But is there being a reversion of power to the Parish level? After all amalgamations of the various local boards, UDC and RDCs to Boroughs much new funding is going to smaller local (outside of London's system), control. Is it that administration being too large (other than joint working on some bits -cemetaries, legal for example), does not work effectively?
Infections are in the news. (In case you hadn't noticed!) My mind goes back to the days of the Fever Wagon and isolation hospitals. Attitudes were more fatalistic then. If a child got German Measles (Rubella) there was often a party for the girls so that they could catch the mild disease as it gave them immunity in future pregnancy. ("Rubella can also be transmitted from a mother to her developing baby (foetus) through the placenta. This can be very dangerous to the foetus, especially if the mother gets rubella early on in her pregnancy. Rubella can cause deafness, heart problems, intellectual disability, and many other problems in developing foetuses)
This practice is a no-no today but at the time it made a lot of sense. Definitely a forgotten corner!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
