STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

The power plant staff in many big mills (or very well run ones...) was the engineer, the boiler man and a labourer. The labourer did general duties but was often described as an 'oiler'. Part of his job was general lubrication and inspection of the power train throughout the mill. In my case at Bancroft I was the oiler as well! On odd occasions I had to run the boiler, lots of running up and down steps! Much of the lubrication of shafting could only be done safely when it was stationary so it was overtime work at weekend or during the holidays. It was the oiler who got cotton waste trapped in the governor ropes at Bishop House in Burnley, it threw the ropes off and because the engineer had omitted to insert the 'safety peg' in the governor linkage the engine went boggart, the flywheel exploded and one weaver was killed. See Newton's transcripts in the LTP.

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge. Frank Wightman's drawing of the Whitelees engine. Due to a mistake in the RMBC planning department they lost the drawings that were made of the engine in situ at the foundry in Rochdale. I had to use Frank's drawing and only found out as we built it that he had omitted the rising blocks for the beam trunnion bearings. Good job I had allowed an extras 18" in the depth of the pit!

[Stanley]

In the 1980s when I was running Ellenroad I was lucky in that a coterie of the first engine enthusiasts were alive and well and often visited to see how we were going on. Frank Wightman was a member of the club but I never met him. I remember there was one man who many regarded as a nuisance because he couldn't half rabbit on and waste time. I always tolerated this because I soon learned that if you had the patience to listen to the stories he repeated over and over again, there was the occasional valuable nugget of information. This was how I first became aware of Frank and his work, George Watkins and the problems that the Whitelees engine suffered from its installation. It was this group which saved the engine when it was removed from the mill at Littleborough when the CWS modernised their blanket manufacture. They had good contacts at Holroyd's who were in Petrie's original foundry in Rochdale and they persuaded the management to build a special house where the engine could be displayed turned by an electric motor. This was never a star attraction but preserved the engine for the future. It was when Reynolds PLC, the then owners of the foundry decided to close and convert to a DIY store that the saga of the Whitelees which led to it coming to Ellenroad started. The group were influential even then, they knew the right men on the Council and supported us all the way. All this started long before Industrial Archaeology became a respectable branch of academe. The same applies to Arthur Roberts and his black books. Look them up on this site....

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge. The repair to the entablature beam of the Whitelees engine I discovered when we were removing the engine from Holcroft foundry. A heavy plate on each side and evidently of long standing. The beam is completely broken in two inside the plates. Almost certainly caused by a slug of water in the cylinder as a result of the cylinder being mounted too high to accommodate a wrongly sized eduction pipe when first erected. Inside the cylinder deep groves had been chiselled into the cylinder bottom to encourage condensate to drain. I often wonder how they managed to do this, it's right at the bottom of the cylinder. When the piston was at the bottom of its stroke it covered the drain hole. My old steam men remembered hearing about this accident but nobody had an accurate date. This is why when I installed it I did the same as they had done at Holcroft, I enclosed the beam and supported it between two large RSJs.

[Stanley]

By the way, I also mounted the cylinder at the correct height and altered the level of the coffin bottom to suit. This gave clearance at each end of the piston stroke but meant I had to adjust the stroke on the sir pump.

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge this Frank Wightman drawing of Nile mill mill work. Thanks to John Burlison. He says he thinks Frank gave this drawing to a neighbour...

[Stanley]

John Burlison has sent me this splendid picture of Magnet Mill engine at Oldham.
Here's Arthur Robert's entry from the Black Book:
MAGNET MILL. OLDHAM
Mr Leng.[?] 2200hp twin tandem compound engine by George Saxon, Openshaw, 1903. Two 20”HP and two 44”LP (front) X 5ft stroke. All Corliss valves. 160psi, 64½rpm. 27ft flywheel, 35 ropes. No tail rods but semi-circular supports to piston rods between each pair of cylinders. Air pumps driven from each crosshead.

[Stanley]

Also from John Burlison..... December 21 1966.

[Stanley]

The most neglected parts of ant steam plant is usually the flues.... This is what a new flue should look like! The main flue at Ellenroad after I rebuilt it....

[Stanley]

What it looked like when we started. See Steeplejack’s Corner for the full story.

[Stanley]

You learn by doing.... Ellenroad taught me many things about steam plant and one of the most surprising was the economy you could get from tight leak free flues and having what the old designers would say was far too much draught. When I reset the boiler and completely rebuilt the flues at Ellenroad we had a near perfect setting and a single boiler running on a 240ft stack designed and sized for five boilers. When we first fired it after finishing the rebuild I was surprised to find that from dead cold to full steam we only used about 30cwt of coal. Newton was amazed, he had never seen anything like it, usually it took 4 or 5 tons! I hadn't planned this, it was accidental. I finally realised that the reason was that due to the good draught, once the flue had warmed up we could run with the side dampers cracked down to within 6" of closed. This meant that the hottest flue gas at the top of the side flue was staying in the flue, the cooler gas at floor level was all that was being pulled out. This led me to the conclusion that almost all the old boilers were under flued and would have benefited from more draught. There was no way I could have found this out any other way.....

[Stanley]

Another thing at Ellenroad was that for various reasons we had to build a wall forty feet high to the roof to divide the boiler space from the rest. This wall had to be built as part of the renewal of the boiler settings. Now one thing that is almost universally true is that the brick outer casing of a normally flued Lancashire boiler is always moving due to expansion and contraction and they are a problem, always full of cracks.... We spent a lot of time at Bancroft going round with the 'magic wand', a piece of 1/2" pipe with a rope through it. It was always kept stood in a small drum of paraffin and burned well. We passed it over the brickwork while the draught was pulling and the flame was sucked into any leaks. These were plugged with fireclay. Johnny used to say that a hole the size of a cigarette wasted a barrow of coal a day. I'm sure he didn't really know this accurately but the principle was right. So, when we had to build that wall, I had to put my thinking cap on.....

[Stanley]

Here's the answer I came up with. Starting from scratch at the boiler we first put in a wall made of refractory brick and then I think it was five layers of brickwork. The first course of the outside skin included an expansion joint sealed at each side with blocks of ceramic foam which could deform under pressure. Then we completed the outside skin, two bricks thick up to the ceiling. It has never moved since 1987 when we put this in. I think we did a good job! We used slag wool at the back of the boiler where it butted onto the explosion box. Many boilers were put in without this and in consequence the expansion of the boiler when heated moved the whole boiler forwards.... This had another effect, almost all boilers installed like this sank down at the front as well. Boiler settings are not just simple brickwork, they are very complicated. Worth noting that all this brickwork was done by inexperienced Manpower Services personnel who had been written off as unemployable. If you gave them a clear task and expert supervision they did professional standard work. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say they were better than many 'experts'.

[Stanley]

The new back wall at Ellenroad completed in 1988. I gave this job to a local builder in Newhey and told him there was no rush so got a good price. We had lots of free heavy re-bar from Macalpine's and so my lads but a very substantial foundation in. The directors kept querying how long it was taking but I fended them off. When you are putting up a wall sixty feet high the last thing you want to do is rush! It's a lovely job and as good today as it was in 1988.
There was a sequel to this job. When my daughter was employing a brickie in Australia to build her three houses he asked her one day if she came from Barrowford, he was a recent immigrant. She said no, but close, Barnoldswick. He said he knew a bloke from Barlick who had given him and his dad the job of building the highest brick wall they had ever attempted. She said that's right, Ellenroad and it was my dad! It was the lads first job after landing in Oz. Beat that for a coincidence!

[Stanley]

One of the activities essential to running a coal fired boiler is the art of shovelling coal. Due to large wagons and a small bunker, our coal deliveries at Bancroft always left about five tons outside the bunker and I used to help John Plummer to shovel it in. Here's John at work. He was good at it, better than me because he could shovel bang-handed, that is both left and right handed. He said that this was a result of having to work in constricted spaces when he was a stoker on trawlers going up to Bear Island. We didn't favour number twelve shovels but used 10s. Another thing we did was to keep the shovels sharp and straight along the front edge. Some firebeater's shovels had long handles but we never used them.
I asked Johnny Simpson once why he always favoured number 8 shovels for muck shifting and he said that he could shift more with a number 8 than a 12 with less effort. I think he may have had a point. 'Banjo work' as John called it is a skill seldom mentioned but like a lot of other things in life, there is more to it than meets the eye.

[Stanley]

The auger that lifted coal out of the bunker into the hoppers above the stokers on the Bancroft boiler was our best friend. As long as there was enough coal in the bunker it saved us shovelling up into the hoppers. Coal is acidic and abrasive and plays hell with anything made of steel. By 1977 the tube and the top hopper were in bad shape so I took it home and refurbished it using scrap tube and sheet. Not the prettiest job in the world but it worked and gave John and I a smooth ride up to closure!

[Stanley]

In the early days of the steam powered mills the choice of coal origin and size was largely down to the engineer. They soon learned which collieries and seams produced the best coal. The Mountain Mine and Arley seams were very popular in the Burnley coalfield. Many used 'doubles' but by the time I was running Bancroft we had settled on washed Brodsworth singles and it was a good consistent coal. During the three day week I accidentally got a load of Sutton Manor out of Lancashire and it was lovely stuff, burned like candle ends. The driver had confused Bancroft with Bankfield but we were short so didn't enlighten him. I often wonder who paid for that load.....

[Stanley]

Our 'bonus load' of Sutton Manor in 1977. This was the first and only time we had had a delivery by an eight wheeler and it took a bit of manoeuvring to get it squared up for a clean tip. I think the vehicle was a Seddon but I'm not certain.

[Stanley]

You don't often get to see these. The front HP valve taken out for inspection from the Bancroft engine in 1978. This was the year we closed and you might wonder why I was taking this trouble in a dying mill. We were losing looms and as the load was going down I wanted to make sure I had sharp cut off edges on the valve as I knew we were going to be running at normal pressure with very little load. I wanted to make sure that the valves were in top condition so that I could deliver power down the shaft at a constant speed. This was where badly maintained engines fell down badly and the only cure was to reduce the pressure which put up coal usage. I must have got something right because close to closure Newton sat with me watching the engine running on 130psi with only about twenty looms on and he said he'd never seen it run better. Little remarks like that were very welcome in that poisonous situation, nothing worse than weaving a shed out......

[Stanley]

The valve sat in its port on the HP cylinder. Still a good fit after 60 years service.....

[Stanley]

After consulting with Newton, I dressed the edges that actually cut the steam off with a fine stone and after replacing the valve reset it with less than 1/16" of cover. This is far less than the recommended cover, 1/4" and more is usually quoted, but as Newton pointed out the 'stiction' of a valve on the port faces under high pressures is quite serious and it was this that lead to excessive wear on valve gears. The bonnets at the gear end of the valve often showed excessive wear in old engines, largely due to this resistance on opening. It worked, the engine ran like silk.....
The thing to remember is that the engine makers often erred on the conservative side in their recommendations. Having to go back and refurbish worn valve gear was a useful source of income for them!

[Stanley]

In case you are wondering about all the fine measurements needed to set a valve to very small cut-off settings, it's dead easy! Make sure both steam valves are closed but the valve you want to adjust is hooked up to the linkage and the piston at the end of the cylinder ready to accept steam. Open the stop valve so that you have boiler pressure in the steam chest and adjust the valve rod that connects the valve to (in our case) the trip catch in the Dobson Block. Shorten the valve rod until you can hear steam passing through the port. Then lengthen the rod until it stops and you judge you have the right cover. Lock everything off, rotate the engine with the barring engine until you have the same conditions at the other end and repeat the operation. All your linkage, including the governor, has to be in good condition and properly adjusted to get away with close settings like this but given this, you'll be amazed how well your engine runs. The slightest movement on the governor linkage affects the valves immediately. It is this close control that gives such smooth running and steady speed even at full boiler pressure.
By the way, the effort you have to put into shortening the valve rod gives you a good idea of the strain there is on the valve gear in running conditions, it's a lot harder to move than you might have thought.

[Stanley]

No matter how well the engine, particularly the valve settings, are maintained. The heart of steady running is maintenance and quality of the governor. A Lumb governor like the one at Bancroft with a Wilby regulator will maintain sped at plus or minus 1%. The Bancroft engine had a Whitehead spring loaded governor originally but it was replaced by a new Lumb governor in the late 1940s to improve running and was a success. Many other types of governor used damping mechanisms like oil filled dashpots to steady their reaction but these simply slowed down the reaction, they didn't improve the regulation. The Lumb reacts immediately and positively to very slight variations. This sensitivity is achieved by designing the linkage so that the governor is working on a very limited speed range. The Wilby regulator is essential as it constantly reacts to speed and automatically adjusts the governor linkage so that the desired speed is in the centre of the limited range covered by the governor. It was fascinating to watch this mechanism constantly adjusting the length of the governor rod signalling the constantly varying load on the engine.
Of course all this depended on proper maintenance and lubrication of the governor. Newton told a good story about being called to an engine with a Lumb governor which was running so badly that the engineer had been dismissed. He soon diagnosed the problem, stopped the engine and gave all the joints in the governor and its linkage a liberal dose of tackler's spindle oil, a very light grade. When he restarted the engine the governor sprayed out oil and rust mixed all over everything in its vicinity but within 15 minutes the engine was running perfectly steadily. The oil can, used at the right time and sparingly, is one of the engineer's best friends.

[Stanley]

If you look to the right of the governor in the picture you'll see an arrangement of flat rods hung on the wall. This is the parallelogram motion that you fitted on to the engine when indicating to get motion from the crosshead to the indicator on the cylinder.....

[Stanley]

The linkage set up on the engine. You can see the string that drives the drum on the indicator running over the pulley to the drum on the indicator. The parallelogram motion reduced to four foot stroke of the crosshead to the amount of movement needed for the drum, about 6". The standard on the bed for the linkage is a permanent fixture.