STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

I modelled the hand wheel on the one at Bancroft.

[Stanley]

Never forget that there is as much going on underneath and engine as on top. Ellenroad cellar in 1987.

[Stanley]

Queen Street at Harle Syke. Oil filters in cellar in 1987.

[hartley353]

Article in yesterdays Manchester Evening News on Ellen Rd, It appears they are once again experiencing financial difficulties. They require funding or a large increase in footfall or at the least free coal.

[Stanley]

Some things never change.... I spent most of my time chasing funding, it's a full time job.



Queen Street trying to save coal in 1987. They were trying to save fuel by running on one furnace but it was badly done and useless.

[Stanley]

Billy Webster running Brook Shed engine at Earby.

[Whyperion]

Does Ellenroad ( and Bancroft come to that ), have to run on coal , though its expensivish to transport and the quality can be variable , can old timber be used , Tizer mentioned down his way a local window company were getting rid of their unwanted timber frames to steam generation usage.

[Stanley]

Bancroft has run on scrap timber since the Trust started. At Ellenroad it would mean taking the stokers out and modifying the boiler. Then there is the storage of enough scrap timber....



The Cornish Boiler at Bancroft being restored in 1982. No stoker fitted so easy to hand fire with wood.

[Stanley]

Daniel Meadows pic of Stanley getting the stoker cams out of the way so he could go into the furnace on Bancroft boiler to do an essential repair. We had been firing all day so despite the boiler being emptied and the dampers being wide open it was still a hot furnace. Unfortunate, but it had to be done.

[Stanley]

Daniel entered this pic of me in the furnace in the Hassleblad competition. It was beaten into second place by a pic of ladies looking after a public toilet.....

[Stanley]

Inside the firebox.... Not the nicest place in the world!

[Stanley]

A little known problem with excessive exposure to steam engines, you start making your own!

[Stanley]

This is the late Alan Andrew's drawing of Trencherfield Engine at Wigan Pier, Wigan. In 2001 I inspected this engine at the request of John Ingoe of Rochdale Electric Welding in connection with a job they were doing on the barring engine. I noticed that the flywheel was loose, told them they must stop it and to date (March 2002) it has not run since.

[Pluggy]

Stanley's engines run too, this is still out there.

[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXEvFYDQsGQ[/BBvideo]

[Stanley]

And that was only 40psi of compressed air. The same engine on 120psi steam ran a 14ft steam launch for years.



My mate Paul (checked shirt) demonstrating his steam launch in steam at Ellenroad in 1991. He appeared once on Granada TV giving the strange weather man a lift....

[Stanley]

I get a lot of pleasure looking back on the pics of progress at Ellenroad in the 1980s. This was in 1989 and shows some of my MSC lads working on the never ending task of cleaning the engine up. At this stage we had done all of the major jobs, for instance inside the house we had all new windows, re-decorated, the dry rot eliminated and the wooden ceiling in the lobby replaced, so much work! but we were getting there and what originally looked like mission impossible was looking like a finished job! The MSC lads loved working on it and many of them went on to get jobs afterwards on the strength of their involvement in the project.

[Stanley]

The engine in 1985 before we started the clean up. A bit of TLC is long overdue! Nobody will ever know how much hard work went into the engine alone. Then there was the rest of the complex... Looking back I often wonder how we ever got it done! This was why the Manpower Services labour were so happy to work there, they could see the results and it helped them to realise that there were jobs that were worthwhile. They did everything under expert supervision apart from the really specialised jobs like pipe welding.

[Bodger]

Stanley, did you ever come across a set like this in the engine room ?
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/an ... ay-274535/

[Stanley]

No Bodge, they look a bit ornate to me. The only purpose-made oil vessel I ever saw was the cylinder oil kettle on the Bancroft engine which was custom made to fit a hole in the top of the HP cylinder lining to keep the oil thin.





Here's my mother's old coffee pot being used as a ready-use oil kettle for the Low Pressure crank lubricator at Bancroft. I had two big stainless steel jugs that were originally in the canteen for reserve cylinder oil warming on the engine bed as well. You can see it below in front of the LP cylinder.

[Stanley]

Small drip feed oilers. These are modern ones, the older ones were not chrome plated.

[Stanley]

The other SS kettle warming cylinder oil on the HP cylinder top. The lubricator on the right is a lunkenheimer pump for injecting cylinder oil under pressure if needed. Useful for giving an initial dose of oil before starting the engine. The lady on the back wall next to the clock is one of the Shiloh calender images. I had about eight of them scattered around the engine house. Edmund Gartside once told me that deciding each year what image to use take up more boardroom time than any other single subject. The small loudspeaker is the ship to shore communication with the office....

[Stanley]

The Saxon engine at Sawn Mill, Oldham.

[Stanley]

The HP side of Bancroft engine. Lots of information here! Carpet was to trap the dust. Note the cottin waste round the bed to catch any oil spills. Shiloh calendar ladies on the walls. Nice place to work.

[Stanley]

I seemed to spend a lot of time sleeping! Joan Smith's pic of Stanley running Ellenroad engine in 1989. (I had been up since 2am!)

[Stanley]

Rope race at Mons Mill.