STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

The Whitelees engine safe under cover at Ellenroad. There was one last minute hitch, we ran out of time and it was pouring with rain and half the engine still outside. Our lift insurance was for one day only and if the crane went home and came back the next day it was another day's hire so a bit of creative thinking was indicated. I put a fifty pound note in the driver's hand and he rang his wife. Problem solved! By 21:00 it was all under cover. The Directors of the Trust raised their eyebrows slightly because there was no audit trail for the £50 but they saw the sense in it and trusted me. Flexibility is all in circumstances like that!

[Stanley]

Apologies for the camera shake but I was under pressure! Problem, to get this boiler end from Jubilee Mill Padiham (Delivered free at Ellenroad by N&R) into the boiler house and reared on it's end. Probably weighed about six tons and a tight fit.

[Stanley]

I think you can see what our problem was! No headroom and the only way we could get it in was to take as much weight as we could and slide the boiler end over the cill of the boiler house shutter. The driver was good, he wouldn't give up!

[chinatyke]

Suggestion: Let the tyres down and lose another few inches!

Or better still, remove the wheels and just use the outrigger jacks and extend the boom.

Where there's a will there's a way.

[Stanley]

That wouldn't have worked, think about it, the problem was the overall distance between the top of the jib and the bottom of the boiler end due to the fact we couldn't sling it any shorter. Remember we have a block and hook inside it.



Once inside we had a different problem. The boiler end has to go back to the bed and slot you can see behind it. We had about a foot of lift at this point but by then the 25 ton all terrain crane was jibbed out so far that the weight of the boiler end was triggering the overload despite the fact we had moved the crane as near the cill as possible. As I said before, the driver was good and was determined to get the job done. How he did it was to jib out a foot and then lift, the overload kicked in almost immediately but not quick enough to stop the lift before the weight had eased on the concrete floor and the bottom had slid a few inches towards its destination. He kept doing this. gaining less each time and at the last gasp got it in place. You can see the skid mark on the concrete floor. I told you it was tricky!

[chinatyke]

How did he get the hook block so close to the pulley? I thought they had devices on the wire to prevent this?
Looks like a job for a Tirfor winch and those machinery shifting skates/skids, and a steel plate on the floor.
Call in the professionals!

[Stanley]

The overrun switch was set accurately and stopped the lift before the block hit the pulley. That's all that is needed.
How would you make it safe to skid with a Tirfor and skates? It was balanced on only one point. Why bother with those when we could do it safely with the crane?
As for 'call in the professionals', funnily enough we thought we were the professionals. In support of that I will point out that we did the job in the time available under the insurance and at no time broke any H&S rules. No danger to anyone and task accomplished. What's your version of 'professional'? Good thing you weren't in charge of the job! That would have been dangerous. Imagine standing in the dock at the inquest and explaining why you had a six ton weight roll off the skids onto one of the workers... No chance of that the way we did it, the weight was always restrained by the crane and couldn't go anywhere.

[chinatyke]

I've seen 10 to 15 ton chemical reactors eased out of tight spaces in chemical plants making high explosives where you daren't cause skid marks on the concrete. No chance of lifting until before the overload kicked in and no chance of 6 ton weight rolling off the skids. I had to write the permits and method statements and your work method would definitely have landed me in court. Glad you got away with it.

[Stanley]

Nothing explosive at Ellenroad! Nothing wrong with the way we did the job either.



The Jubilee boiler end in place and securely chocked.

[Stanley]

The dummy boiler in place with the original Bennis shovel stokers mounted on it.

[Stanley]

Mill engines always attracted model engineers. This is Johnny Pickles' model of a cross compound mill engine, fully working and possibly one of the finest ever made. He made it to a scale of one inch to one foot and said afterwards that this was a mistake as the valve gear was all watch making! The model was in Cliffe Castle museum for many years but was then transferred to the Moorside Museum at Bradford. The last I heard of it was many years ago when they contacted me to ask me to go and have a look at it as it was seized up and wouldn't turn. I asked them if they had been running it on compressed air and they admitted this so I told them they were on their own, the moisture in the air had condensed in the bores and rusted the pistons fast. Don't know what happened after that. They weren't fit to have it!

[Stanley]

A water wheel rim at Wortley Forge in 1988. Not sure whether this was an old one from the site which was water powered or one that they had made for another location.

[Stanley]

The rim of the large suspension wheel at Glasshouses Mill, Pateley Bridge. Note that this one incorporates a rim gear from which the drive was taken as the wheel wasn't rigid enough to drive from the axle. The Wortley rim above has no rim gear and so was made for a smaller rigid wheel where the drive was taken direct from the axle.

[Stanley]

Some old fashioned rigid wheels also had rim gears. Like this one at Higher Mill Helmshore. This made the drive to the shaft powering the stocks easier because it ran across the back wall.

[Stanley]

The Pateley Bridge wheel being installed at Quarry bank, Styal in 1986. Many new parts had to be made including the rim gear. Here they are being installed and every picture tells a story. I wanted them to fabricate the gears and put them through a gear cutter but it was decided this wouldn't be authentic as the originals were cast. Problem was that the skill of allowing for contraction in the mould hadn't been fully replicated and when the castings were examined some were out of pitch. If you look carefully you'll see the shiny edges on some of the teeth where they had been gear cut to try to rectify the discrepancies. The problem with that is that as Newton always said, "you can't chip to pitch". By this he meant that you can improve the teeth but never get them exactly right. The gear runs but is not as good as it could have been.

[Stanley]

Machine cut second motion gear mounted on a new shaft for Pendle Street Mill at Nelson.

[Stanley]

This gear and jack wheel at Long Ing was cast out of pitch and was never cured properly.

[Stanley]

Charlie Watson with the big Musgrave engine at Butts Mill. Notice the new plain end on the HP cylinder, Charlie wasn't the best engineer in the world and got a slug in the cylinder. Note the big plain CI gear on the flywheel, it was a constant source of trouble all through the engine's life. Cast out of pitch and the vibration was forever trying to destroy the gear. See the Calf Hall Shed Company minutes for the full story.

[Stanley]

Water powered tilt hammers at Wortley Forge in 1978.

[Stanley]

1951 insurance report on the Victoria engine at Earby.

[Stanley]

Part of the Vulcan report on the Victoria engine. They used to be very thorough and indicated the engine as well as visual inspection.

[Stanley]

The Dobbie McInnes indicator on the HP cylinder at Bancroft warming up before connecting the string to the crosshead via the parallel motion to take a reading.

[Stanley]

One of my three indicators..... I used to use two at once on one cylinder to take simultaneous readings.

[Stanley]

How the indicator is coupled up to the crosshead via the parallelogram motion with nothing more complicated than a piece of string.

[Stanley]

The economiser at Bancroft in 1977. Not glamorous but essential for fuel economy as it recovered waste heat from the flue gases and returned it to the boiler feed water. A good conny could save 10% of fuel.