THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

Around that time there was a paint called 'chassis black' which was notable for it's protective qualities rather than appearance. You can still find it on Google described as a 'chlorinated black paint', Recommended by classic car restorers as a base coat.

[Tizer]

I learnt recently that at one time, probably around WW1, the Royal Navy painted its warships with grey paint containing micaceous haematite from a mine on Dartmoor. This material had been regarded as a low value by-product contaminating more valuable metal ores and had been thrown on the spoil heaps. It wasn't in use for very long because the mine closed down relatively soon. Most haematite is red iron oxide, Fe2O3, found as a red earthy mass and used as a treatment to prevent iron rusting, as most of us know. However it can occur in other crystal habits and micaceous haematite is a grey, flaky form resembling mica (which is a silicate). Among haematite forms it is unusual in being magnetic. Although the use of Dartmoor micaceous haematite in warship paint didn't continue for long it's interesting to think how much later (1980s?) we became addicted to buying cars coated in `metallic' paint' - which contained true silicate mica. I wonder if micaceous haematite paint had that same metallic effect and our WW1 warships might have had a sparkly appearance!

EDIT: After further research I find that the mines continued for longer than I thought. The Open University Geological Society web site has a page on iron which says: "...But when it comes to paint the mines of the Teign Valley excelled. There were as many as 12 mines working the hematite which was deposited as a very soft, flaky ore from which the British Geological Survey adopted the term 'shining ore'. Mixed in paint the overlapping flakes formed a rust proof layer giving the distinctive colours ‘Battleship Grey’ and ‘GWR Green’. The largest mine was at Great Rock near Hennock which only closed in 1969, making it the last working metal mine in Devon. In places in the mine hematite has washed out of the lodes and formed a solid silver floor in the adits and any underground visitor will emerge covered in glitter. Nearby Kelly mine has been partly restored and is maintained by the Kelly Mine Preservation Society."
http://ougs.org/local_geology/article.p ... chcode=swe

An article on Kelly Mine says the anti-corrosive properties were recognised in 1879 and micaceous haematite began to be used in paint for warships and iron bridges and by the GWR. (A 5-page PDF of an article in the Peak District Mining journal is available - put the following into Google: Peter Roberts Kelly Mine the first ten years).

[Stanley]

When I was doing Ellenroad I contacted Dulux for advice on painting a cast iron fire escape that we had sandblasted back to bare metal. The schedule was one coat of heavy red oxide paint, one coat of Micaceous Haematite pint, then the usual undercoat and two coat gloss finish.
Remember the grey paint that the railways used on iron bridges? Thick matt finish that sparkled in direct sunlight. Dulux told me that apart from the anti-corrosive properties of the oxide, the plates laid flat on each other and made a better water seal.
While on the vintage bus on Wednesday a man told me that these old buses didn't have power steering and were almost impossible to steer. I didn't tell him that I had previous experience and he was exaggerating a bit! Actually the worst thing was the incredibly heavy clutches on some of the old AECs and Maudslay's.... Your left leg grew bigger than the right!

[Tizer]

Micaceous Haematite....thanks! There's nothing like a bit of personal experience to enliven the history and the technology (likewise for the bus steering story). When I did my chemistry A Level at Blackburn Tech College the teacher had already worked in a number of chemical industry jobs in `the old days' and his stories raised my interest in organic chemistry.

[Stanley]

Two more paint related items... Peter Tatham would only use one brand of bituminous paint because he said it beat all the others, Wailes-Dove. It's still available.
We had another painting problem, the underside of a flat concrete roof in the boiler house that had been contaminated over the years by coal smoke. They advised a high pressure water wash to remove loose debris and then multiple coats of thin aluminium paint sprayed on. It worked.
Aluminium paint... John Ingoe gave me a job one day, painting a large steel chimney with heat-resistant aluminium paint before we insulated it and fitted the cladding.. Half was laid out in the yard and half in the shop. It was a big bucket and Turk's head brush job, a bit like pylon painting! No problem with the one outside but when I did the one in the shop the fumes got to me and our sheet metal man who was working on the balcony. We had to get outside and have an extended recovery period! It makes you wonder how we survived... By the way, never smoke a cigarette when there is ether vapour in the air, it converts the ether to something very similar to Phosgene gas. I know, we did it!

[Stanley]

Thinking about driving the old wagons... In my day there were still pre-war wagons about and they presented certain challenges! The old Albion at Marton has a Neate handbrake. It was connected to the brakes on the back axle by a wire cable and was, in effect, a ratchet winch. Once on you could release the lever and allow it fall forwards, a good job because when cocked it blocked the way out via the driver's door! To release the brake you hit it with the heel of your hand and it could leave a nasty bruise, that's why some called it a 'knock off' handbrake. Only good thing about it was the fact that you could get the back brakes on really hard with it, useful because the foot brake was virtually ineffective. That was what put the Albion off the road when the 1968 Transport Act came in. Hard to believe but the Act brought in by Barbara Castle was the first time minimum standards had been set for brake efficiency. It makes you wonder how we survived!

[Tizer]

Yesterday I was reading instructions in a 1960s book about how to find the remains of a certain bit of industrial archaeology in Devon and it said to leave the main road, turn down the lane and then the site would be found through a gate opposite the cafe. This set me off thinking what a shame it is that we've lost all those cafes that used to be alongside our roads and lanes until about 1960. There were the small country lane ones with no car park, just a bit of verge to park on and often frequented more by cyclists, and the big ones with a vast area of cinders where lorries could park. All offering a good cup of tea or lemonade for the kids, lolly ices, or something more to eat for the lorry drivers... and a toilet of course. Down to earth, simple, no retail outlets'. Of the larger ones, I remember that whenever we went from Blackburn to the coast via Preston there would be a stop at the one that existed at the Ribble bridge before the Tickled Trout, bottom of H'apenny Brew. If we went to Cleveleys via Ribchester and the country lanes we met the A6 at the junction at Broughton and there was a big cafe just north of that point on the right hand side.

Another memory of the Broughton junction...my dad and my Uncle George had both learnt to drive and maintain vehicles in the RAF and both bought old pre-war cars as soon as they had some money after the war. On Sundays in good weather both families would often go in convoy to either Cleveleys or St Annes and spend the day there, playing games, eating egg butties and drinking tea out of vacuum flasks. Going in two cars together was useful because they often broke down and we could help each other or give a tow home if necessary. Once when we were travelling behind Uncle George we stopped on the way home on the A6 at the Broughton Junction to turn left. An immaculate white-gloved policeman was controlling traffic. When he waved us on Uncle George turned around the corner but as he passed the policeman his rear bumper dropped off. Loud whistling made him stop the car and we watched as the bobby ran after him with the bumper and reprimanded him!

[Tripps]

Am I right in thinking that 'Lolly Ice' is only used by scousers - the rest of the world says 'Ice Lolly'. That's my experience anyway.

I haven't been to the Broughton crossroads for a while, but I remember having a meal in a pub there and seeing various sayings painted on the walls and ceiling. One of them stuck in my memory -

"If it were raining porridge, the poor would have no spoons" dated 17something.

PS - just checked Street View - the pub is now a restaurant called the 'Gates of Bengal'

[Bodger]

In N. Ireland, a lad could be caught out, a lassie could ask him for a "poke", it's actually an ice cream cornet

[Tizer]

I think there's some ambiguity about discussing the size of a `nudger' in Liverpool, it can mean various things including, if I remember correctly, something like the bread roll that we might now call a torpedo.

Well, Tripps, I spent 7 years in Liverpool but I'm definitely not a scouser and I remember both ice lolly and lolly ice from my Blackburn childhood. We used to buy lovely home-made blackcurrant lollies from a little old lady who ran a shop on Pleckgate Raod opposite the playing fields. You could suck the juice out of them and make the ice colourless! (I was always a sucker for ice lollies! ) The pub you mention at the Broughton crossroads might be the old coaching inn. I recall reading how its fortunes rose and fell - the brief period of the stage coaches gave it a big boost but then it lost out when the railways arrived, only to rise again as we took to our motor cars, and probably fell again due to the drink-drive law and the TV, hence the Gates of Bengal (I hope the Gates of Bengal does a decent curry, otherwise it might be known locally as the Gates of Hell!).

[Stanley]

I knew many of the old transport cafés. Perhaps the most famous was the Jungle on Shap. Here's another, Mrs Graham's café in Shap Village.... A regular stop on Monday evening on the way back from Lanark Market, best ham tea for miles! Still there in 1976 when I did this pic.

[Tizer]

Now that's a proper cafe! Mrs Tiz is going to Blencathra soon on a geology trip and will visit Shap Fell so I've asked her to look out for the café if she goes through the village. Perhaps it's now part of the Gates of Bengal empire!

[Stanley]

If Janet goes over the Fell she will see the site of the old Jungle Café. Last time I saw it there were travellers on it, the M6 killed it of course. A life saver when the snow came in!
Going north from the Jungle there used to be a Leyland clock on the side of the road, quite incongruous out there on the fell. You can still see it, they moved it down into Kendal.

[Bodger]

Wasn't there one on the old East Lancs rd. ?

[Stanley]

Yes, and another on the Blackpool Road in Preston. I think there were seven in all at various locations round the country. Here's an interesting LINK for you on Leyland Motors.

[Stanley]

The Jungle Café on Shap Fell as I knew it in the 1950s. You can have little idea how welcoming this place was on a dirty night!

[Stanley]

The Silent Seventh café in Lincolnshire in 1981.

[PanBiker]

The sign on the right reading "Overnight Digs", I assume that digs is inherited from trench warfare? Should be in dialect but...

[Tizer]

It made me wonder if anyone had written a book on the history of the (transport) cafe in Britain but I couldn't find anything on the Web. It's interesting to see how nowadays you can choose your cafe from web sites like this one:
http://www.transportcafe.co.uk/truckstops/uk-motorways

[Stanley]

Red Moss on that list could be the old Mossband café. Some other favourites were the Boot and Shoe at Selby Fork where the A63 met the A1, Lodge Café at Talke on the old A34. Fole café below SOT, Red hut on the way into Doncaster from the A1, Coategate at Beattock and the Sunset at Ingleton. One of the biggest was Hill Top on the A1 where the Gainsborough road turned off but I never used that. One of the most profitable must have been the caravan that was parked in the square at Kendal next to the river because that was a favourite change-over point for the lads running the Glasgow to London trunk. So many cafés and so many stories.... A lot of them are covered in Stanley's Story, volumes one and two.
When the first mways came in they used to have separate transport cafés on the service areas with pint mugs and lower prices but they gradually vanished. Shortly after the M6 opened I called in at Charnock Richard for a cuppa and was served a free full Xmas dinner by the management because I was working on Xmas day. I didn't really want it but had it anyway on principle!

[Stanley]

When the M1 first opened Marley Tiles had some old Leyland Octopus leggers like this well preserved example. After a few months experience they had to ban their drivers of the older wagons from the motorway. The old ladies simply weren't up to running flat out for long distances even though they were limited to about 35mph. A lot of manufacturers faced this problem and had to waken up to the new running conditions. The old Albions and AECs could stand it but were painfully slow by today's standards.

[Wendyf]

Stanley, your mention of the Boot & Shoe at the Selby Junction brought back a flood of memories. For many years that was "our" junction to get off the A1 after long and tiring journeys from the south. Many anxious moments were spent at that junction waiting to turn right onto the A1 to go down to Doncaster when I was at college there in the late '60s and I would turn off again by the Red House Cafe to get into Doncaster.
The road past the Boot & Shoe is no longer the A1 there is a set of photos taken around the junction HERE, and the Red House Cafe is long gone. THIS is the only google link I could find.

[Stanley]

The Boot and Shoe, full breakfast 3/6 and there was a sign on the wall that had written on it 'In case of emergency, lift this flap'. If you did lift it up there was another sign underneath that said 'Not yet you bloody fool!'
When you turned off towards Doncaster at the Red House roundabout there was a small brick built café on the right hand side. I was in there talking to the lady that ran it early one morning when two blokes came in, got a mug of tea and a bacon butty and started on the one armed bandit. One bloke tilted it over to one side while the other fed it. It wasn't long before it coughed the jackpot and the blokes gave 5/- of the winnings to the lady and left. She just winked at me and said I only work here....
There was another café near there, can't remember which one but I remember going in one day at the time when the Post Office were running an advertising campaign, 'Someone somewhere wants a letter'. I went into the gents and noticed that the French letter machine had been ripped off the wall. In its place was written, 'Someone somewhere got a letter'.
As you were coming South down the A1 just before the Boot and Shoe there was a good stretch of downhill, a favourite place for engaging the Aberdeen overdrive. I was coasting along nicely when there was a big bang and a vibration. The damper on the prop-shaft had exploded, I must have been going faster than I thought.

[Stanley]

We don't seem to be bothered with flies like we used to be. My boyhood always had a sticky fly-catcher hanging from the light fitting and carpeted with deaf flies, I don't think I have seen a single fly this summer and no wasps either.

[Wendyf]

The flies are all up at my place enjoying the raspberries I didn't get round to picking. Living so close to a farm we get an awful lot of flies in the house... there was a time when I used fly papers but Colin couldn't bear to see the flies suffering and would try to rescue them.