OneGuyFromBarlick

Thinking about nervous moments with engines I was reminded of the day in 1985 when Newton and I started the Ellenroad engine for the first time after it had lain derelict. I've told you the story before so unless asked I will not repeat it but I have to admit that there was an element of reasonable trepidation as I opened the steam valve. It all went well and here you see Newton popping some oil into the flywheel pillar bearings, the lubricators were in store....



Joan Smith did this pic of me as I started the Whitelees engine for the opening ceremony in 1992. This was another high stress situation as we had made some last minute alterations to solve a problem with the condenser water. I think the best description is that here you see a bloke who is on a high state of alert! Thankfully it all went well but I'll admit to being very glad when it was all over!

That is one huge flywheel at Ellenroad. What did it weigh?

85 tons China. Everything about Ellenroad was large scale.....

When I look at that picture I reflect yet again that nobody will ever know how much hard work went into Ellenroad. It's a product of old age I think. I don't blame the present custodians for not knowing, it's too big to grasp. I remember in the very early days when I was showing the then manager of the MSC workers we were going to get round the engine and buildings I said to him that I knew what he was thinking. That it was very daunting and where the hell do we start! I told him I felt the same but that if we got stuck in and thought carefully about the order we did things all would eventually start to come together. At that time that was my only defence against panic! As it turned out we did all right and looking at that picture convinces me we did good!

The time when most boiler repairs had to be done was during the annual fortnight we used to call the Wakes. In those days everyone in the town took their holidays and this meant that if you got a local firm in you had to bear the cost of holiday working. The consequence was that if you needed tradesmen you went out of the town. That's why we always had Rochdale Electric Welding for our boiler repairs and a firm from Gisburn for any brickwork repairs in the flues.



This led to me getting to know blokes like Dennis Sterriker and Joe Elston and eventually to all the work they did for me at Ellenroad and later working with them when I went to REW myself and worked for John Ingoe.

Some mill owners regarded an engineering workshop as being part of the essential equipment for the mill but in Barlick we had Brown and Pickles and nobody saw any need for this. However I had a workshop at home and did a lot of small jobs there for the mill. I got quite good at weld repairs on broken castings for the tacklers and at times tackled bigger jobs like installing the big three throw pump in the cellar and repairing the coal auger.



I loved doing jobs like this and always using secondhand or scrap metals. The six inch pipe for the auger which I replaced was a heat exchanger pipe from a large tank and had a very slight curve on it but as the auger itself was worn this was no problem.

Thinking of Brown and Pickles, the long-lost 90 year old dad referred to elsewhere, Kenneth Thompson, used to work there. He's recounted some of his memories to my brother Keith.

He was with a good and useful firm. Steam engines got priority and a call to Wellhouse works brought Newton up immediately. The managing director's car was different, when he broke a spring one day we couldn't get hold of anyone so I had to get a spring and replace it while I was running the engine.....

Walt fisher and Ken Smith of B&P at Embsay waterworks in the 1980s. Wrong Ken David!

Keith may know more about our Ken's time at the firm - or we can quiz the man himself in due course...

Try him with this pic David. Wellhouse flywheel shaft......

Keith thinks Kenneth served his apprenticeship at the firm; he's 90 now, so we're looking 75 years ago? 1940s?

Wellhouse shaft breakage was in 1957. He'll remember the shell lathes they made during the war.....

I was lucky when I was running Bancroft because we were the only steam engine left running and Newton would drop everything to come up if I gave him a shout. We got precedence over everyone else!

Something came to mind after posting that.



This was in November 1977. Newton is talking to Peter White, at that time he was Her Majesty's Inspector of Ancient Monuments for the North West working in what was then the Department of the Environment. He had been listening to a conversation between me and Newton and afterwards he said "I take it you were speaking English?" He was totally baffled by the combination of dialect and technical terms.

The same thing came up in a TV programme that Newton and I appeared in about the Trust taking over the engine. When it was finally screened I found that they had cut a lot of good stuff out, mainly Newton. The reason I was given was "People wouldn't have understood what he was saying". Nonsense! It made it look as though I was doing all the talking and Newton was just a spectator.... Neither of us was pleased.

One of the essential skills Newton taught me was how to "Larn a chimbley to smook". Cold flues have no draught and to get them going you have to light a fire at the bottom of them and persuade them to draw again. Here's Newton doing exactly that at Ellenroad when we were firing the boiler for the first steaming to see if it worked!

Newton Knew about flues because one job he had was to get the old Dobson's Dairy boiler functioning again at Coates Mill. His dad, Johnny, came down as they were struggling and showed them how to larn the chimbley to smook. You can't beat experience!

Bancroft chimney. We did our best to keep it in top condition, we cleaned the flues three times a year.

Charlie Sutton and Jack, my flue chaps from Weldone at Brierfield. Best men in the district, you could eat your dinner of the floor in the flues when they had finished. A horrible job.....

My mate Daniel meadows went in the flues with Charlie and Jack and did a wonderful set of pics



Jack shovelling flue dust over the firebrick bridge in the furnace of the Lancashire boiler. His outside man was waiting to shovel it out and barrow it outside into the yard.

Paul Golding my firebeater sweeping Daniel down when he came out of the flues. It didn't do his camera and flash any good but he got some unique images.

Jack and Charlie Sutton cleaning the flame bed under the Bancroft boiler. The surprising thing about this high temperature zone in the flues is that the deposits are white. At the far end in the economisers they were jet black.
You might wonder what happened to all the clinker from normal ashing out and the flue dust (Which we kept in a separate heap). We never had to pay for it to be taken away, everyone who needed clinker for garden and allotment paths knew they could always come and take some away. In the days of proper flaggers, flue dust was the best thing for bedding stone flags on, being sharp edged it never moved after it was rammed tight and flat. If you look in the CHSC Minute Books on the site you'll see that they sold their ashes on contract to the Council and builders because in those days the standard mortar for house building as ash/lime mortar ground in a mill connected to the end of the main lineshaft of the mill and run by the contractor who had bought the clinker. They ground quick lime and clinker with water. The useful thing about ash/lime mortar was that it could be left in a heap and didn't set hard immediately. The builders took what they wanted and knocked it up with added water.

We regularly got a load of cinders tipped on the lane to our house from Bankfield. It was one of the Saturday jobs to spread it out and fill in the potholes. (Think it'll all be considered contaminated nowadays.)

very common David.



Jack Platt was doing a bit of flagging at home so he popped over the road to the mill...... Life was dead simple in those days.