STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

Have a good new year.....

[plaques]

Waterwheel Colne. Don't know where or when.

[Stanley]

I have that noted as Skyreholme mill near Appletreewick. See this LINK



King Mill wheel at Colne.

[Stanley]

Part of the engine not usually seen. The flywheel at Bancroft looking from the cylinder end of the engine. The ropes are going forward to the second motion pulley.

[Stanley]

Same scene at Ellenroad but on a larger scale of course.

[Stanley]

Amazing what a coat of whitewash could do for a cellar. Bancroft 1977.

[Bodger]

HMS Belfast, Stanley, i bet you wouldn't sleep in this boiler house ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK5SCq1l97k

[Stanley]

You're right Bodge. Different kettle of fish!



The desk in the engine house at Bancroft, 1977. The nerve centre of the operation!

[Stanley]

The view from Bancroft yard in 1976. Not all mills were dark and satanic! Incidentally, this pic was done with my old Praktika camera, the one I gave to Peter Tatham when the lens dropped out of his box brownie.

[Stanley]

This is Alan Andrew's image of Trencherfield Engine at Wigan Pier, Wigan. In 2001 I inspected this engine at the request of John Ingoe of Rochdale Electric Welding in connection with a job they were doing on the barring engine. I noticed that the flywheel was loose, told them they must stop it and to date (March 2002) it has not run since. This was the start of major consultations and when I told them they were being misled by their official 'expert' I was informed that my duty of care was fulfilled and they wanted nothing more to do with me. As far as I know, money was spent and the engine restarted. You can only go so far......

[PanBiker]

Trencherfield Mill Engine Restoration Project

[Stanley]

Yes, I remember well when I was given sight of the proposals for the refurbishment and told them that if they did what was proposed in the original schedule they would regret it. I gave them the reasons why. It was at that point that they declared my duty of care as discharged and dropped me like a hot brick. Their choice, time will tell whether they were right. All water under the bridge now but it's worth remembering that they didn't realise there was a problem until I pointed it out to them.

[Stanley]

The only pic I took the day I pointed out the flywheel was loose. I was too busy spreading alarm and despondency! It's worth noting that, knowing how these things worked, I made my views plain to John Ingoe who had taken me to Wigan because he wanted advice on an engine repair that needed doing and it was while I was doing this I noticed that the wheel had shifted on its stakes. So the proper route was for me to inform John in writing of my misgivings because in law there is the concept of Duty of Care. It is an offence not to raise matters like this particularly when they relate to safety. Despite the possible commercial repercussions to him as the main contractor for the boilers at Wigan Pier, he forwarded the letter and supported my view. There were threats of sanctions on him but in the end thankfully everyone saw sense and he didn't suffer. The point is that despite the danger he did the right thing and it's nice to know your mates have such robust ethics!
Come to think we were whistle blowers and it makes you wonder how seriously the Duty of Care argument is viewed these days, say in the NHS!

[Stanley]

The Siberia engine from Finsley Gate mill at Harle Syke being erected in the Science Museum, South Kensington in 1979. Thereby hangs a long story!

[Stanley]

The Siberia engine finished in 1982. A good job? Only time would tell....

[Stanley]

Jubilee engine at Newhey. This drove Jubilee Mill, Robert Haworth, fullers and finishers. 80hp single cylinder engine by Ebor Engineering Co Ltd. 1891. 18" diameter cylinder X 3ft stroke. Left hand engine, 100psi, 84rpm, 8ft flywheel, 10" drive belt, Slide valve, Pickering governor. Non-condensing, exhaust went for water heating. Double twin guides and runs the wrong way round. (clockwise in this view)

[Stanley]

This pic was given to me as Black Star mill at Trawden but I think it is actually Black Carr. See Mystery Objects, this was the engine the metallic packing was made for in 1922.

[Stanley]

The US Metallic Packing on the RH LP cylinder at Ellenroad in 1985. This was the packing that was leaking and started the hare on the order books.
The story of the packing is worth telling.... I got on to US to ask them to send a fitter to improve our leaking packing, we were losing a lot of vacuum on that side. The fitter came and to my horror brought the page detailing the packing that he had torn out of the original order book! I got him to promise that he would put it back but noted that the order books existed. The fitter took the guts of the packing back to the shop at Bradford and was working at his bench when the manager John ? who had been with the firm forever happened to pass and realised he was working on a big packing from a big engine. It turned out that John had fitted the original packing and he told the fitter that he would replace the packing on the engine. So, one fine day John turned up in his three piece suit and got stuck in. Of course I talked to him and the upshot was that he agreed to let me and Geoff copy the order books. It took us about three years, an enormous amount of photo-copying but the upshot is that we have them. As for the packing, it wasn't much better after the refurb than before but I kept quiet, if you go to watch the engine today you'll still hear it sucking air.
We did three copies of the order books and offered one to the Science Museum. They never did anything about it so in the end I gave the copy to another friend who I knew would take care of it. Amazing what you trip over in the long grass.....

[Stanley]

The condenser and air pump on the engine at Peter Green's Bradley. The front packing on such a condenser was one place where metallic packings were no good. The temperature difference between the steam cylinder and the condenser plus the increased corrosion on the rod because ow water in the condenser meant that the rod was never clean and destroyed the metallic packings. Newton Pickles replaced the front packing on this one with an old fashioned packed gland which performed far better. This is the engine that is being installed at Bancroft Trust.
By the way, I said 'the one place'. This is wrong, they were often fitted to the spindles on Corliss valves but were no good as it was a reciprocating motion instead of a full stroke. They always leaked in the end.

[Stanley]

Found this pic of the metallic packing at Ellenroad in pieces.

[Stanley]

US Metallic Packing on the LP cylinder at Bancroft.

[Stanley]

My Mate Duncan who helped me remove the Whitelees engine from its house at the old Holroyd's Foundry in Rochdale. This was 1989. We only had ten working days to do the job to qualify for a grant from Renolds PLC so we were under pressure. We were ready to detach the valve chest from the cylinder and were having to make it all up as we went along. I wasn't sure how strong the joints between the castings that made up the chest were so we strapped it all together before the lift. All went well!

[Stanley]

January 18989 and the removal is going well but hard work especially the parts like the entablature beam that were bedded in concrete. Lots of people were watching Duncan and I and speculating how we were going to get the parts out of the house.....

[Stanley]

The Whitelees watchers got their answer in January 1989 to the question how were we going to get it out. Simple, take the roof off and hire a big crane. The job was relatively easy because the roof was made of Bison beams and we just knocked a hole on each end with the jack hammer, put the chains on and lifted them out like rotten teeth.

[Stanley]

Getting the Whitelees engine out of the house was a straight lifting job.