STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

One day the fire alarm went off in the mill. Instead of doing what I should have done, stopped the engine and ring the brigade I automatically assumed that someone has accidentally broken a fire alarm glass in the shed. I got a spare glass and the key for the unit and strolled into the shed where there was a lot of smoke! Billy Lambert was stood next to the engine stop with the hammer in his hand and said "Should I stop it Stanley?" I told him no because I had no spare glasses for them! By that time the small dirt down fire under a loom had been put out with a teapot full of water by Ernie the cloth-looker and all was well but looking back I realised that I had done the wrong thing. Funny how habit takes over. Luckily we all got away with it.
The cause was friction from a rocking bar at the bottom of the loom rubbing on the stone flag floor.

[Bodger]

Your for 550 dollars , http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/an ... -a-318227/

[Stanley]

Looks like an early kit engine. I like the con rod..... almost certainly a forging or perhaps even a casting at that size. Cast pedestal bearings with no adjustment beyond bushing and reboring. Could very easily be assembled from pre-machined parts. If I was making them for sale I couldn't make money at that price!
I often smile when I see antique artefacts being sold at auction. The prices bear no relation to what it would cost to make them indeed in some cases it's hardly more than the scrap price of the bronze in them. Have you looked at the prices of castings lately?

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS and note that the prices are for the rough castings and some materials only. I think I am a man of wealth!

[Spinningweb]

Photograph from William Kenyon & Sons, Ltd, Dukinfield, Manchester. shows on display a large coil of their special "Interstranded" cotton driving rope, measuring 8 ft. 6 in. high by 4 ft. 9 in. wide, and weighing about five tons.
The rope itself is 1½ in. diameter, and is not less than 14,116 ft. (Almost 2¾ miles) long.
William Kenyons also did numerous lectures to leading engineering societies throughout the country on The transmission of power by ropes.

[Stanley]

hIS LECTURES, WRITTEN UP AS BOOKLETS ARE STILL THE STANDARD WORK ON DRIVING WITH COTTON ROPES.

[Stanley]

I wasn't shouting, I hate caps lock!
Mention of ropes reminds me of Ross Mill at Bacup. Kenyon's were still splicing ropes during my time and they told me that if a job came up at Ross on the ropes to the top floor the sensible thing to do was to call in sick as it was the longest rope drive on their books. It sticks in my mind that the rope length was about 360ft, not sure whether this was the total or the distance between pulley centres. I suspect the former.

[Stanley]

Kenyon's men splicing and replacing a rope at Spring Vale.....

[Stanley]

The rope splicers were very secretive, they wouldn't tell me what they allowed for stretch in the ropes. However I did note that they wanted the rope to be absolutely dry and the day before they were to make the splice they came and stretched the rope by attaching it to something solid like a pillar and putting it under tension with a block and tackle. The long splice they made was staggered along the length of the rope and when they had finished it was invisible. Very skilled work! If you search the gallery using the term 'splice' you'll find a series of pages from Kenyon's rope lectures which show how a long splice was made.

[Stanley]

I persuaded the management at Bancroft to allow me to get Kenyon's in the renew the three light cotton ropes that drove the governor on the grounds that over the years, due to over lubrication of the eccentrics, the ropes were soaked with oil and not driving the governor efficiently. This caused fluctuations in the speed of the engine which were reflected in reduced output per loom in the weaving shed. It worked and we got a slight improvement in output which soon paid for the job.

[Stanley]

I've never been able to fully understand why some engine tenters were so lax in running their engines. Newton reckoned it was because most were appointed not from ability but because of influence from the retiring engineers. The job was often passed on to the son and if you read the Calf Hall Minute books you will find instances where it went badly wrong. Then there were the men who basically knew very little about the principles governing the engine and who were very often frightened of them. Newton had many stories about this and in some cases had to go and start the engines for the men and reassure them that all was well.
In contrast the qualifications and competence of marine engineers was very strict and once obtained the certificate was a passport to other jobs in industry particularly as Surveyors for the insurance companies. I have posted separately an article I wrote about this, I can't find it on the site, we must have lost it.

[Stanley]

When I went to work at Bancroft I had no experience or qualifications for either looking after the boiler or the engine. I learned it all on the job, by private study and listening to Newton Pickles who was a gem. Can you imagine that being allowed these days when you need to do a course on lifting 'heavy' weights? The opportunities for a major cock-up were obvious and I suspect that self-preservation played a big part in surmounting the learning curve. I think I got there in the end....... I always remember Newton turning to me as we watched the engine running perfectly on full steam with the stop valve wide open and only six looms running as we were weaving out. He said "I've never seen anything run as well as that on no load. If you don't watch out we'll make an engine tenter out of you yet!" I told him that was the nicest thing he had ever said to me......

[Stanley]

If your brain works that way, running a large steam engine was possibly the best job in the world. You had your own kingdom where nobody interfered if everything was running smoothly, they couldn't because they had never taken the trouble to understand engines. Bancroft was like a holiday camp (the weavers often said the same thing), nobody ever queried my visitors or interfered in the way I worked. In return I did my best for them, flagging up ways we could run more efficiently and keeping close relations with Jim Pollard the weaving manager and the weavers themselves. They knew I was doing a good job and appreciated it, it showed in their wage packets!
Jobs like this have vanished now, everything is hemmed in with rules and regulations and we have lost something.....

[Stanley]

What every engineer wanted to see. This is a long exposure of the ropes and they are running rock steady. The ones with the greatest catenary curve are the original ropes, the three that are tighter are replacements. That's smooth power going into the shed, just what the weavers wanted!

[Stanley]

The engineer before me, George Bleasdale, used to put Grippo on the ropes, a very sticky compound often used on flat leather belt drives to lessen slippage. This was totally the wrong thing to do and you can still see the sticky residue on the back wall of the engine house. I used tallow and graphite, sold as 'Rope Grease', I warmed it and at dinnertime once a week at first I set the barring engine on so that the ropes were moving slowly and greased a couple of ropes as they passed overhead as I stood on the bridge under the ropes. After a few weeks I had the ropes nicely covered and after that they only needed an occasional dressing to keep them in good nick. It was counter intuitive but the grease gave a better grip to the flywheel and second motion pulley and we had a far steadier drive.

[Stanley]

Some mills like Queen Street at Briercliffe had direct drive, no gears or ropes were needed and the shaft beyond the flywheel was connected directly to the lineshaft in the shed. Theoretically this was a sensible practice but never became popular because as a consequence of the slower speed of the lineshaft, about 80rpm in the case of Queen Street, the bevels on the shaft which turned the cross shafts had to be much larger in order to get the ideal speed on the shafts of about 150rpm. This meant greater wear on the gears and heavier construction in the shed and was actually more expensive in some cases than the added complications of gears or rope drive.

[Spinningweb]

One of the bevelled gears, at the Queen St Mill

[Stanley]

In practice, the plain flywheel though simpler was not trouble free. Being connected directly to the lineshaft and due to the high gearing, a lot of vibration was transmitted into the flywheel. I was in there one day and pointed out to the engineer that the stakes that held it to the shaft and some of the joints in the wheel were 'bleeding'. A sure sign that some play had developed in these fastenings. I'm afraid he didn't want to know and dismissed it as not being a problem. He was responsible so it was nothing to do with me......

[Spinningweb]

On my travels around Preston, I came across this Lancashire Boiler sat on top of the boiler house, at the Alliance Works of Somic Ltd, if it is original it was a Joseph Clayton boiler manufactured in Preston. I read it was used as an oil tank, similar to the same use as one at the Durban Mill, Hollinwood.

[Stanley]

That looks about right John. A redundant Lancashire boiler is a useful pressure vessel. At Collieries they were often used as receivers for compressed air.

[Stanley]

A bank of redundant boilers used as accumulators for the compressed air supply to the workings at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Staffordshire, in 1986.

[Stanley]

One of the things that always attracts my attention as I learn more about the history of steam engines is how conservative progress was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many new designs of engines and valve gears were invented and tried out but on the whole it was the simple engine with well-tried valve gear that survived. It's quite obvious if you look at the last engines to survive that the large, slow running engines with traditional valve gear were the best and most reliable prime movers. The funny thing is that if you look dispassionately at the economics of these engines, despite their age, they were, and still are, the most efficient way of driving a large factory ever invented. Many mill owners discovered this the hard way when they scrapped their engines and converted to mains electric power and individual electric motors.

[Stanley]

At Ellenroad we did an exercise with Coates Inks to investigate the economics of using the engine to provide 24X7 power for the site. The result was that it was economically feasible but nobody wanted to take on the responsibility of investing in it.

[Stanley]

One of the most economical ways of running steam power was to fire the boiler with the waste products from the process being powered. Prime examples were colonial sugar mills which burned the 'bagasse', the residual crushed cane, in the boilers. Another good example was straw burning boilers powering a threshing drum. Many 'colonial' engines were built specifically for this with larger boiler tubes, usually 3". Annie, John Ingoe's engine was a good example, originally built by Paxman's for Argentina. It performed well on all other fuels.



The Lad running Annie driving a big saw at Harewood in 1993. It played with the load but unfortunately blew a tube. It was the hardest work it had done for many years..... We re-tubed the boiler and that cured it!

[Stanley]

Annie doesn't have a coal bunker. The back was left open because when straw burning a conveyor feed could be fitted to push straw into the firebox. One feature that gives straw burners away besides the size of the fire tubes is the small trapdoor in the side of the firebox used to knock off the 'bird's nests' of carbonised straw that tended to build up on the tube plate and reduce the flow of gas up the tubes. You simply pushed a thin rod in and rattled them off.