STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

This pic is unusual. I did it in pitch darkness by leaving the lens shutter open and going round painting the light in with a small hand held flash. It worked well and when I show this to my professional mates they all pick up that there is something strange about it but nobody has ever twigged!

[Stanley]

In case anyone is wondering, I didn't go specially to the mill in the night to do the picture. It was midwinter and very cold. The only way we could get the shed up to working temperature was to go in and steam the shed from midnight onwards. John Plummer and I took turns and I was spot ball that morning.
We heated the shed by ranges of two inch pipe at high level with live steam at boiler pressure. You're right, it was a very inefficient way of doing it but experience had taught the management that this method caused less problems with dry warps. When you first put the steam in the temperature at floor level dropped for the first couple of hours because the rising hot air forced the cold air next to the North light roof down. Very dispiriting!

[Stanley]

The engine house at night when steaming the shed was a magical place, always warm and of course when John was on duty he had the same access. Once you had the boiler sorted and steaming quietly all you had to do was sit and wait. We never had a radio in the house, too distracting and it was quite amazing how many noises there were as everything quietly warmed up. It was almost as though the building was alive and wakening up.... Magic!

[Stanley]

The boiler front and stokers at night. When you were on your own steaming the shed you started by checking the water level and wakening the fires up, they had been banked overnight and so you already had at least 120psi pressure. While the banked fires were burning off you went on the boiler top and cracked the valves open to the heating ranges and at the same time opened the by-passes on the steam traps so that the cold condensate which had been sat in the pipes all night could get away quickly as the steam worked its way round. If you went in the shed at this point it could be quite alarming because as the live steam fought the condensate they crackled and thumped and shook about on their flexible hangers as the slugs of water were fired along the pipes. This was why you only cracked the valves open a touch to make this process as gentle as possible. Over time the concussion in the pipes promoted corrosion especially on the bends and this could cause leaks as pin holes formed. Once steam was issuing from the pipes through the by pass (easily ascertained because the pipes got hot!) you closed the by-pass and opened the steam valves up.
By this time (about ten minutes) the banked fires had burned off. You opened the furnace doors, dragged the live coals back onto the coking plate at the front near the door, closed the door and started the auger to fill the hoppers. Then you set the dampers, the feed rate and the speed of the ram and walking bars to give you a slow stoking rate, by experience you could set them so that the initial drop in pressure was slowly overcome and the boiler and its settings could get thoroughly warmed through. Top your hoppers up and check the water level again. If you were satisfied, up into the engine house and brew up! After that you just had to keep your eye on the hoppers and the water level, making any adjustments that you needed. If you were on top of your job this could mean time for half an hour's sleep in the armchair! You could hear the stoker drives moaning away quietly, the bars squeaking on their rollers (no lubrication possible of course) and the gentle ticking through the mill as everything warmed up slowly. A very satisfying job if you were on top of everything. Easy money!

[Stanley]

Looms at night in 1976. When you were steaming the shed you used to walk round to read the thermometers. There were just a few pilot lights running off the mains and it was a haunted place! Funnily enough, never dead quiet.

[Stanley]

The boiler top at Bancroft was always bone dry because of the heat and we swept it frequently to keep it clean. I often reflect on all the asbestos I must have breathed in because that was the insulation used in the covering of the pipes and boiler top.... Best not to dwell on it!

[Stanley]

Joan Smith's picture of the lad oiling the engine at Ellenroad in 1989. The engineer was often to be seen wandering round the engine checking oil feeds on lubricators and putting a drop of oil in the hand oiled bearings. If we tell the truth we all used too much oil but that was better than running bearings dry. It was a way of visiting all parts of the engine frequently and inspecting. The wiping down with a lump of cotton waste served the same purpose. That's one of the reasons why a well cared for engine always shone like a new button! Plenty of oiling and wiping.

[Stanley]

A drop of cylinder oil making its way up the sight glass against 140psi pressure on the HP cylinder at Bancroft in 1977. There are two common mistakes to be seen on engines, using cylinder oil that is too thick and feeding too much to be on the safe side. The only time very thick high temperature oil is needed is under conditions of dry superheated steam and heavy loads. When I first took charge of the Bancroft engine we were using tremendous amounts of ' Core Oil'. At first I thought this was a trade name but then discovered that it was actually thick high temperature oil used in foundries for making cores for the patterns! I knew that the NCB used a lot of cylinder oil and got in touch with them. They put me on to a firm in Stoke on Trent, Walker's Century Oils who supplied all their oils. There weren't many firms using steam engines in 1976 so they sent one of their experts up, a bit of a jolly for him I think. It turned out to be the managing director and he gave me a crash course on oils for steam engines running on saturated steam. I can't tell you all the stuff he taught me here but the upshot was that I ordered a 45 gallon Barrel of cylinder oil and one of straight SAE 40 mineral oil with no additives for the bearings. As you can see from the image above, the cylinder oil was almost transparent and very thin bit did a wonderful job. The management leapt on me and wanted to know why we were ordering such expensive oil and I asked them to hold their fire until they had found out how much less we would use. They never complained again. Oil costs were cut by half, less oil want into the condensate and the dam and the new oil cleaned up the cylinders, rods and seals. Walker's understood the problem.
Years later at Ellenroad I asked Total to formulate an oil for the Ellenroad engine, they did so and gave us a free supply. Later they admitted that they had gone to Walker's for advice and once again they came up with a very technical oil specifically for the conditions we had. Good oil is always cheap!

[Stanley]

The back Universal Metallic Packing on the Bancroft HP cylinder. Notice the lighter patch on the case below the piston rod. The Walker's Century oil was cleaning the baked on residue of the Core Oil off. This is how I knew that it was cleaning the inside of the cylinder up as well.

[Stanley]

John Burlison's pic of Bancroft HP cylinder in 2010.

[Tripps]

And here again is the music to accompany the photo.
James and Mary Jane
Thanks to Heather and Elaine.

[Stanley]

I hate that wire mesh guard!

[plaques]

Here's two more recent photographs.

P9140140AC.jpg

[PanBiker]

I hate that wire mesh guard!

That will be the Elf and Safety police with having Joe Public in the shed I suppose, not an issue when you ran the engine Stanley.

[Stanley]

You are right of course. I remember a young Factory Inspector making his first visit to Bancroft in early 1978 after we had been moved out of the Yorkshire Area and came under Quay Street at Manchester. He saw me feeling the crosshead as the engine was running, just to check the temperature. Then he went in the shed and saw all the unguarded belts. He came back into the engine house visibly shaken and said he would have to report everything to HQ. A week later the boss turned up with a group of young inspectors in tow who had never seen a steam engine or weaving shed. He took me on one side and asked me how long I thought the firm would last, I told him I wasn't sure but that it was a good bet we'd be following all the others out of the trade. He gave his troops a lecture on old standards and the fact that the only sure measure was the Accident Book, which was empty. He told me to tell the management that no further action would be taken and they left us alone. They weren't all Jobsworths.

[Stanley]

I was thinking about this topic and it struck me that the main reason I had such a variety of interesting visitors at Bancroft wasn't solely due to my personal magnetism! It was the engine they wanted to see because they were so rare..... People came from all over the world.



Tom Varley from Todber brought a Japanese visitor to see the engine running in 1978. Tom was a good man and died far too early.

[Stanley]

This visitor to Bancroft in 1977 was a Trinity House employee and the reason he stuck in my mind is that he reminded me of Christie the murderer!

[Stanley]

Budding engineer visiting Bancroft in 1976.

[Stanley]

Plan of Burnley Ironworks made for the sale in 1887.

[Stanley]

I know I'm usually reporting my successes with steam engines so just for a change, here's a failure. One of the last jobs I attempted at Ellenroad before I left was to try to find a way of lifting the delivery plates on the air pumps in order to get at the valves on the bucket to replace the rubber valves. As you can see, I had four large jacking screws firmly supported and was putting a considerable pull on the plate after taking the holding down nuts off ( I was stretching the 1" Whitworth rods). It was a complete failure, never even looked like breaking the rust seal. I doubt if anyone has got in there and this is in 1991 when the valves definitely needed attention. God alone knows how they are now....

[Sue]

Bob says the engine has been completely rebuilt over the last couple of years.

[Stanley]

I doubt if they have cured this one Sue. Last time I enquired the pumps were still chucking out water all over the place. Good for them if they have done it, it beat me.....

[Stanley]

One of the jobs I did when I took over the engine at Bancroft in 1977 was to refurbish the oil pumps and reservoirs for the pedestal bearings on the Flywheel and second motion pulley. They were worn and clogged with sediment that had collected over the years. The pumps are very simple and very little was needed to improve their performance. Interesting to note that at some time an extra groove for another drive rope has been installed by fixing an aluminium wheel to the original single groove pulley.

[Stanley]

The pump supplied the 'aquarium' lubricator that sat on the pedestal bearing. You can see the constant stream of oil dropping down from the three spigots directly into the bearing and also the subsidiary feeds to both the eccentrics. The advantage of having an efficient pump in the reservoir was that it supplied more oil to the aquarium reservoir than was flowing to the bearings, the excess ran off from the top vessel down into the lower chamber and from there back into the reservoir. This was a good safety feature because it meant that if someone forgot to turn the three spigots on which supplied the bearing the overflow saved the day by by[passing the spigots. You'd be surprised how easy it was to turn the spigots off when you were going round the engine to inspect the flow! Notice that the top chamber isn't full. This was before I refurbished the pumps and was what triggered me into doing it. Once the pumps were running well the top chamber was overflowing all the time the engine was running. Much safer. Better to have too much flow through the bearings than too little.

[Sue]

Bob checked, yes all done and the air pump is working magnificently, they say almost too well.