STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

About half way through the refurb I spent a lot of money on a 13mm lens for Mrs Nikon and for the first time I was able to get a picture of the whole engine. Can you wonder that this engine suited me down to the ground? We had a long way to go when I did this pic but it was beginning to come together!

[Stanley]

I was reminded by the engine pic of one strange thing we found out while working on the project. We had a Fire Officer in to advise on means of exit and told him that we had a plan to build a tower behind the left hand wall and install an alternative means of exit. He told us that the dark band of glazed brick was radio-active and that when we wanted to cut the wall they would do it for us. Evidently the brown pigment in glazes used before about 1900 was uranium oxide. So if you have an old brown teapot don't spend too long staring at it, it's bad for your eyes!

[Stanley]

Young John Pickles stopping Bancroft engine in 1977. Start 'em young!

[Stanley]

Newton's model of an undertype engine. This was a very popular self-contained power unit at one time. Just drop it on the floor next to a source of water and off you go.

[Stanley]

Johnny Pickles made this model undertype in the 1930s.

[Stanley]

Undertypes came in all sorts of sizes. This is probably around 400hp.

[Stanley]

The Browett and Lindley pilot engine at Ellenroad in 1985.

[Stanley]

B&L made them as big as this 1000hp engine installed to make leccy for Salford Tramways.

[Stanley]

J A Pickles model mill engine; scale one inch to one foot. (He said later that this was too small, the valve gear was watchmaking!) The model was in Cliffe Castle Museum at Keighley and was later moved to Moorside Industrial Museum at Bradford. The last I heard was when they asked me to go and look at it because it was seized up. I refused because they had been running it on compressed air and never oiled it up afterwards. In the left background is the 1927 lathe that Johnny made, it's in my front room now!

[Stanley]

The model made by students at Blackpool and Fylde College of the engine house at Ellenroad. The chimney isn't to scale as if it was full size it would have reached the ceiling!

[Stanley]

Two engine tenters, Joan Smith, volunteer at Ellenroad and Hedley Bradshaw, retired tenter of the engine at Spring Mill, Earby. Joan visited Hedley right up to his death. He was a lovely bloke but in his later days he lost all short term memory. The funny thing was that if you talked to him about the old days he was as sharp as a needle. Joan and her mate Thelma Smith ran the engine at Ellenroad one day right from firing up in the morning until shutting down at the end of the day after completing a training course I ran there. I've always said that this was the first time two ladies had done this and it was one of the best things I ever did. You'd be amazed at the troubles it caused, one volunteer left the engine in disgust because two women had been allowed to tun it. Funny old world isn't it!

[Stanley]

Joan and Thelma at Ellenroad. Very happy memories.... Two impressive women!

[Stanley]

A very early traction engine I found at Steam Joe's in Minnesota. He told me it had wrought iron furnace tubes and that he had bought it from the Ford museum at Dearborn.

[Stanley]

The plug fit shaft on the Dee Mill engine. You can see that the stakes fit directly on to the shaft with no gap to the flywheel. December 1992 shortly before I demolished the engine.

[Stanley]

The low pressure tail slide on the Bancroft engine with the linkage which drove the air pump in the cellar via the bell crank. Proper engineering!

[Tripps]

That's the picture - now with some audio.......thanks to Calluna

James and Mary Jane

[Stanley]

The vanishing tail rod on the HP side at Bancroft.

[Stanley]

All water power needs a source and when I was researching water power in the Lake District for the old DOE I spent many happy hours following water courses and finishing up in some forgotten locations. Here's a good example, the weir based on a natural hard rock band in the bed of the stream that was the start of the mill race that fed Fell's at Troutbeck Bridge in the Lake District.

[Stanley]

Posting that image reminded me of the brilliant year I had researching water power in the Lake District for the DOE. It filled in the gap nicely between Bancroft closing in December 1978 and my start at Lancaster in summer 1979. I was charged with finding all the water powered bobbin mills I could identify and then going to photograph them. Nobody had realised how many there were and I had a whale of a time finding them on the ground and doing slides for the DOE which were used for a lecture at the RI in Mayfair. This triggered me off to investigate local watermills in 1982 when I was at Pendle Heritage. I was amazed by how many there were within a five mile radius of Barrowford. Doreen Crowther sent me a closely written excerpt from her research into local wills and indentures which was invaluable. I forget how many there were but I have all the details in files and perhaps it's time I got them all together and published them on OG.

[Stanley]

I was reminded of Dalton Mills at Keighley on the Steeplejack's thread. Here's the pic of the biggest engine Bracewell at Burnley ever built which drove the mills. It's seen here after the jack wheel gear disintegrated and it was replaced by two smaller Pollit and Wigzell engines because this was a faster and cheaper alternative to the major repair needed on the old beam engine.

[Stanley]

Copy of an insurance picture of an engine in Oldham(?) which had overspeeded. Note the flywheel boss, the flywheel has exploded.
The smash at Dalton mills wasn't due to overspeeding, it was the failure of one of the pinion bearings connecting the shafting to the gear on the jack wheel which jammed it up and ripped the gear off before the engine could be stopped. Dangerous things steam engines!

[Stanley]

Copy of an insurance picture of a chimney collapse. I seem to remember the chimney was being straightened at the time.

[Stanley]

The turbine house at Arkwright's Masson Mill, Matlock Bath.

[Stanley]

One of the two large turbines at Masson Mill. This is the gearbox and alternator, the turbine itself is below the floor. Runs 24X7 supplying the mill and putting excess into the national grid.

[Stanley]

Masson weir on River Derwent and head race to the turbines. There were two turbines, one running 24X7, the other older one used in times of high water.