STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

Sawn Mill engine at Oldham. Saxon engine.

[Stanley]

That last engine was in Dawn Mill (LINK). It was given as 'Sawn' on the image but I had never heard of it so I did some digging. I went back to my book 'Steam Engine Research Resources', based on Arthur Robert's Black Book and here's what Arthur reported: 2Lancashire Cotton Corporation, Dawn Mill at Shaw. Engines named Venus and Mars. (Contact) Mr W Holding. 1800hp twin tandem compound engine by George Saxon of Manchester, 1902. Two 20" HP, two 40" LP X 5ft stroke. 180psi steam, 71 1/2rpm, 24 ft flywheel, 35 ropes. Corliss valves on all cylinders. Supports to piston rods between cylinders.

[Stanley]

Further information on the George Saxon engine at the Dawn Mill from John Burlison. These details were from Frank Wightman's notes, an ex-millwright with Saxon's.

Dawn Mill 1902. George Saxon 1,400 i. h. p. Twin Tandem Compound engine. 140 p.s.i. steam pressure.
26ft Flywheel for 35 ropes. 60" Stroke. Cylinder-1 (20.5") Cylinder-2 (40.5") Cylinder-3 (20.5") Cylinder-4 (40.5") All Cylinders with Corliss Valves.

I never met Frank but it was his drawing of the Whitelees engine I used when I was rebuilding it and Rochdale MBC planning department had lost the drawings I got them to make before I moved it. Only problem was that Frank had forgotten to put the raising blocks in between the entablature beam and the trunnion pedestals...



Frank's drawing. Click to enlarge.

[Tripps]

"Only problem was that Frank had forgotten to put the raising blocks in between the entablature beam and the trunnion pedestals... "

I spotted that straight away.

[Stanley]

I wish I had! Funny thing was that when we were designing the pit we knew that we had very little clearance under the roof. On the day I went to sign the drawings off (An irrevocable step!) I asked Peter Dawson, my architect, to make one last adjustment, make the pit 12" deeper. He asked me why and I told him I didn't know but it would be almost impossible to cut into the reinforced concrete bottom if there was an error. He laughed and did it. Imagine my thoughts when during the rebuild I found that the engine was 10" taller than I had calculated because of the raising blocks. I rang Peter and told him and we had a good laugh, we put it down to my Fairy Godmother but I have often wondered if I had subconsciously noted the discrepancy during the weeks I spent studying Frank's drawing and measuring components which was the only way I could design the pit after RMBC had lost the drawings....

[Stanley]

The Whitelees beam in place and on its raising blocks. The entablature beam was broken and repaired with a patch so I mounted it with a steel beam on each side. If you like puzzles, work out how we got it up there by hand with not enough clearance under the roof for chain blocks.....

[Stanley]

In 1986 Mons chimney and engine house were being demolished and this shows the engine house. The Carel Freres engine had been scrapped but you can still see the massive beds in the house for the biggest engine ever installed in a mill in the NW. The original intention was to build the other half of the mill to the right of the engine house but economic conditions and subsidence on the site ruled against it and it was never built. This is why the 4,000hp Mons engine never ran at full power.

[Stanley]

Has anyone worked out how I got the last lift on the Whitelees beam? The problem was not enough room for the block and tackle under the roof, we were short of a skyhook. So, we drilled a hole in the concrete roof, put a short girder up on blocks outside on the flat roof and used this as the anchor for a pull-lift, a special ratchet block for use in tight corners with a limited lift. We got the beam as high as we could, grabbed it with the pull-lift and wambled it across into position. We had half an inch to spare and it took most of the day.



Skyhook at Spring Mill, Earby. This was put in to do the lifting for a new drive from the engine to an alternator. This was mounted on the old engine bed that had been left in when the mill was modernised and a new engine installed.

[plaques]

And I thought you were going to tell us that with two sturdy workshop ladders you got your mate to leaver up one end until you got it on your shoulder.
Once up the ladder it was then threaded through with your mate on the other side. Finally it was lifted by the pair of you until it was fitted. QED.

[Stanley]

We were good men P, but not that good! I loved lifting problems and am a big fan of skyhooks. Too often the designers and architects forget them! When we replaced the roof on the rope race Peter Dawson, my architect, looked at me a bit askance when I specified three very heavy steel beams (14" web). I told him that I had an offer of three for nothing and that sometime in the future when a heavy lift was needed in the rope race someone would look at the beams and say Hello! There was an engineer involved here!



In the later engine houses a travelling gantry was installed like this one at Bancroft in 1976. Still there of course.

[Stanley]

Hydraulic test on the boiler at Ellenroad done by Rochdale Electric Welding in 1989. A crucial moment in the refurbishment. The boiler passed with flying colours withstanding 50% more than its original operating pressure and so could be insured for operation at 180psi.

[Stanley]

A word about hydraulic testing of boilers. It's the biggest strain you ever put on them and I remember one day I had to do a test for a young boiler surveyor on a high pressure boiler. I forget the working pressure but the test pressure was almost 500psi. I didn't pump it by hand, I coupled our pressure washer up to it and got the pressure with no sweat. The surveyor wanted the pressure leaving on it for 20 minutes, he was young and doing it by the book. After about five minutes he decided there was a leak because the pressure was falling slightly. I told him that he was wrong, the boiler was stretching and we were doing more harm than good. He didn't believe me but I let the pressure off while he went and made a phone call. A few minutes later he came back and said his boss agreed with me. He was very sensible about it and perhaps learned something that day.
You had to be very careful, especially with second hand boilers. High pressure boilers were very uncommon, anything red-lined above 180psi and in good nick was a very saleable item. We had one in once that was clearly stamped on the top lid rim as a manufacturing test for a working pressure of 250psi but John refused to accept it when we had a good look at it, someone had been criminally irresponsible and faked the stamp because they thought it was going straight for export to Pakistan. I can't remember what happened to that one.

[plaques]

In my younger days a great play was made on using ultrasonics for measure wall section thickness. This technique could determine if any corrosion had taken place inside the boiler. I often wonder if it was actually used in practice. Access to all the boiler surface and the time required would have been a limiting factor. Stanley, did you ever try this technique?

[Stanley]

Dave, our NDT man testing a boiler weld using ultra-sound at Rochdale in 1996. Non Destructive Testing, NDT, was widely used, indeed mandatory in some cases, on boiler welds and the integrity of plates and other big lumps of metal. Ultra sound, which Dave is using here, was the most common and usually efficient. Magnetic flux was used in some specialised cases and in nuclear installations X rays were widely used. These were all specialised procedures and needed extensive training especially in interpreting the results of the tests. A bad operator could angle the beam badly and pass through two welds in a corner and interpret the result as an inclusion in the weld. The only test we used on the shop floor was crack detection using dye penetration in which the area to be tested was cleaned thoroughly, sprayed with dye and then washed off with solvent. Then a thin coating of chalk was sprayed on and any die trapped in a crack would show up clearly. A very useful quick test.
Dave did the con rods and cranks on the Ellenroad engine for me, free!, and passed them even though slag inclusions from the forging process showed up and had to be assessed. He told me at the time that our con rods gave better results than the shafts in large alternators he tested for the CEGB, he said they'd be very happy with ours! Interpretation was all and Dave was a good man. Unfortunately he died young.

[Stanley]

Your question on NDT got me to thinking about the skill of the welders at REW. The thing that surprised me when I first saw them working was how small the welding rods were even for large fillet welds. 8s was about as big as they went. They told me that they got less inclusions with the smaller rods by putting a thin layer in, grinding it off and repeating the process. I don't think I ever saw one of their welds knocked back.

[plaques]

Subsequent welding layers annealed the layer below it. This prevented the welds being "as cast" ie: hard and brittle. A minimum of three layers was always recommended.

[Stanley]

Exactly right. I used to love helping them do 'impossible' jobs. My friend Mark Roberts once did a weld on a very small boiler on the inside of a 4" hand-hole using a rod bent into a 'U' shape and me holding a mirror inside so he could see. I still don't know how he did it.

[Stanley]

Often overlooked but the boiler man's best friend and the engine tenter as well. We both had an eye on the pressure gauge all the time and I know this sounds far fetched but both of us could walk into a room, look at the gauge and know immediately whether it was moving up or down. Don't ask me how but it's true.

[Stanley]

The engine room gauges at Bancroft in 1976. The engine is running on normal load. The top one is the vacuum. The left hand one is the condition in the receiver below the floor connecting the high pressure and low pressure cylinders, not much load on so it is running at slightly above atmospheric pressure. With a heavier load this could rise as far as 20psi. The right hand gauge is the steam pressure in the pipe above the HP cylinder, slightly below what the boiler gauge would be reading. The loops in the pipes to the gauges are water traps which prevented condensation getting into the actual gauge. One thing you can't see is that the cock below the steam gauge is partly closed. This damped out the variations in the pressure in the steam pipe as the valves opened and closed. These cause to steam gauge to fluctuate and this meant increased wear. One glance told you all you needed to know about conditions in the mill and the boiler house. We ran at the most comfortable pressure for the engine depending on load. Under normal conditions this was about 120psi but if the shed lights were on, increasing the load, we went up to 140psi. The red line was 150psi and a good firebeater never allowed it to get to the point where the safety valve opened as this was waste.

[plaques]

The loops in the pipes have a more practical use. There is no need to make the pipes an exact length. The loops acting like a spring will accommodate small changes in length and allow the pipes to be assembled more easily.

[Stanley]

Nothing 'more practical' than stopping water getting into the gauge P! These are very heavy copper pipes and I doubt if that was the main reason.

[Stanley]

Inside the flue box at the base of the chimney at Ellenroad. 1987.

[Stanley]

Daniel Meadows pic of Charlie Sutton cleaning the flue that by-passed the economisers at Bancroft in 1978. A lousy job.....

[Stanley]

It wasn't all heroic engineering. I was in charge of the urinals as well....

[Stanley]

This incinerator in the ladies toilets at Bancroft was one of my least favourite maintenance jobs. Pictured in 1980 during the demolition.