STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

The firebeater and I used to take turns at going in early to fire the shed. At one time I had an unreliable firebeater and I had to check he had come in. If I stood on the toilet seat at Hey Farm and looked through the small window I could see if the boiler house yard lamp was lit so I used to get up early and check it was on. If not, a brief but heartfelt bout of swearing and off down the field to the mill. Nothing worse than having to put up with the ear-bending I got from the weavers if the shed was cold at starting time. All my problems were cured when I got John as my firebeater. He came to work on his bike from Sodom and never missed. A good man.....

[Stanley]

The feed pumps in the cellar at Bancroft. When we were heating the shed the pumps were switched on and feeding at a low rate to compensate for the steam going into the mill. The old Pearn pump on the left had a worn gear and it rang as it was running. When you were sat in the darkened engine house this was the only sound you could hear echoing up from the cellar. Every now and then there was a deep rumble as the big pump started up to empty the hot box and force the water into the boiler. The Pearn, which circulated water from the hot well round the economisers was on all the time. I can hear it as I write... Useful because it let you know that the two pumps were working well. If you went out of the engine house door you could hear the groaning and squeaking of the stokers. Funny how these sounds stick with you.....

[Stanley]

The original Frank Pearn pump at Bancroft when I went there in 1976. Made in Manchester they were a good reliable pump that relied on displacement in the cylinder by a plunger. Simple and very effective but installed in 1945 it was struggling because of various factors. I told the story of this before but we lost it with the old site. I'll do it again as there is a lot of information embedded in it of how we managed feed water to the boiler.

[Stanley]

If we're going to tell the story of the feed water problems at Bancroft we need to start at the beginning.



This is the steam driven Weir pump which was the back up for the Pearn three ram pump. There was also an injector out of shot on the right hand wall but I never attempted to use it. The idea was that if one pump failed there were two back ups. Essential because lack of feed water to a boiler is the most common cause of explosions....

[Stanley]

The situation when I took the engine over was that the original Pearn pump had lost efficiency and was incapable of pumping hot water from the condensation return tank into the boiler at the same rate it was being used. We had to start with a full boiler of water and pump hard all day. By the end of the day the water was down in the bottom of the gauge glass. We were hard pressed and if we put the Weir on to pump cold water in we couldn't keep steam up. Adding it all up we were burning more coal than we needed to. When we shut down for the night I used to put the Weir pump on, go home for my tea and come back about an hour later to make sure I had water into the top of the glass ready for the following day. Inefficient and time wasting so my brain started working!

[Stanley]

The old fashioned way of supplying hot feed water to the boiler was to pump relatively cold water from the 'hot well' up through the economiser and into the boiler. Our economiser was de-pressurised because of age and was essentially a large water heater. In an attempt to improve boiler efficiency all the drains from the condensate returns from the steam traps on the heating system ran back into a hot box in the cellar. The theory was that when it got full a float switch triggered the Pearn Pump and the almost boiling water was sent through the economiser to the boiler. In theory it was a good system but the problem was that ram pumps are not very good pumping very hot water and this was exacerbated by the poor condition of the valves on the Pearn. Pearn pumps had a major fault in that to get to the delivery valves you had to strip the pump down and we couldn't afford to have it off line that long. By the way, if the amount of hot condensate was insufficient we supplemented it by pumping directly form the hot well.
The net result of all these factors was that we were struggling and the key to boiler efficiency is perfect control of the feed water and getting it to the boiler as hot as possible. Every ten degrees you raised the feed water temperature the boiler efficiency went up one percent... What to do?

[Stanley]

I knew that Henry Brown and sons used to make three ram feed pumps designed by Johnny and I had a word with Newton. It turned out that they had bought one of their pumps back from a mill that had been demolished and refurbished it for Hill's Pharmaceuticals at Briercliffe but they had given back word and it was sat doing nothing in Brown and Pickles shop at Wellhouse. It was far bigger than we needed but a big pump running slowly stood a better chance of dealing with almost boiling water. It was complete with a 10hp motor and drive so I got a quotation from a local sparks for wiring it and installing the star delta starter. The total cost was about £450 if John and I put the bed in ourselves. I reckoned it would save us a couple of to9ns of coal a week at £35 so it was obviously a good move. I put it to the management but our Mr Birtles refused to entertain it as he said the firm couldn't afford the outlay. So I said I'd buy it myself, put it in and they could give me half of the coal savings for five years. He saw the light and approved the scheme....



Two things to note about this pump. Johnny knew about the problems with the valves and clack box on the Pearn. He designed this one with a separate clack box on the rear of the pump so it could be easily taken off, taken down to the shop and completely refurbished in a day. The crankshaft at the top was originally a forging but they soon found out that these gave trouble because of breakages so Johnny fitted shafts machined out of one solid billet of 70 ton steel. A big turning job but they never had any problems after that. This crops up again later.....

[Stanley]

Once we got the go ahead John and I set to and poured the concrete base for the pump. We had to carry the concrete into the cellar in buckets and I can tell you that John and I were well pleased when we had it done! B&P brought the pump up to Bancroft and erected it on our base. We got the sparks in and he installed the electrics and I raided the obsolete pipework in the mill for enough large bore pipe for the connections. I had to do some fancy welding on the connections to the original pipework which was not at 90 degrees....
Came the day and we switched the new pump on... Wonderful, it was running slowly but was well on top of its job and hot water didn't bother it. Problem solved....
Next job was to address the Pearn Pump. We isolated it and stripped it down to get at the valves and skimmed them up and ground them in. Newton gave me some valuable advice about valve setting on three ram feed pumps. I noticed that the valves were set with 1/8" lift and would have put them back at this setting but Newton said it was too much, he told me to set them at 1/32" which at first glance looked totally inadequate but he was right. That gap could pass all the water we needed and the valves closed much quicker on the pressure stroke giving us the full benefit of the rams. If you ever have to set valves like this take note, Newton was quite right.
So, we now had two pumps functioning perfectly, it was at this point that John Plummer had a bright idea!

[Stanley]

John pointed out that if we used the refurbished Pearn to pump water from the 'hot well' round the unpressurised economisers back to the hot box and wired the big B&P pump to the float switch in the hot box we could pump from the hot box into the boiler. Installed just like that there was a problem because the temperature of the water in the hot box would be lowered by the volume. However, and this was the brilliant bit about John's idea, he proposed we put a bypass from the outlet of the Pearn to the inlet which would limit the flow through the economisers, raise the temperature and if we left the Pearn running constantly and controlled the big one by the float switch we could control the flow to suit the bailer needs by adjusting the bypass valve. (I hope that's clear!) It worked wonderfully. We had almost boiling water in the hot box and could control the flow very precisely. John could keep has water level bang on the optimum all day long and at night all he had to do was close the bypass to get full flow to the boiler and get the water level up for the night.
That was the end of our feed water problems and coal consumption in winter dropped 3 tons a week, £100 a week savings.... Not a word of thanks from the office but it didn't bother us. We had made our job a lot easier and got a steady water and steam pressure level. This fed back into the shed and gave even more even turning of the shaft and raised production. Jim, the weaving manager noticed it and there's no doubt we saved Nutters a lot of money!



If you look in the left hand corner at the base of the old pump you'll see a branch coming off the inlet and going round the back of the pump. This was the by pass pipe, the control valve is just out of sight.

[Stanley]

Describing the feed pumps brings back the sound of the pumps first thing in the morning when the engine was stopped. The constant sound of the gears ringing on the Pearn and the intermittent slow rumble of the big Brown Brother's pump as the float switch kicked it in. You knew immediately if something was wrong by the sound, very comforting to know that all was well. Being well on top of its job I geared the big pump with the pulley sizes to give it a very slow speed. This helped it to deal with near boiling water as well and it performed perfectly.
I've just remembered the story of the crankshaft on the big pump. When we were installing it Jim Fort said he remembered turning the shaft for it out of a billet of 70 ton steel. He said it took almost a week to chop it out and on this one he made a mistake and forgot to include the locating flange on one end. They cast the bronze bush for the bearing with enough meat on it to incorporate the flange to limit end float in the bearing. No detriment to the pump of course and it was nice to have the connection with Jim. Good men who knew their job!

[Stanley]

After Ian's comment about Bancroft Trust and Facebook I wondered if anybody from Bancroft was reading the history of their engine and plant.....

[Stanley]

The next saga that comes to mind is the story of our smoke problems.... I shall get my act together and tell you all.....

[Stanley]

The boiler at Bancroft was fired by the Proctor Unit Wide Coking stoker on each of the two furnaces. In this pic the stoker is working normally, door closed, no fire visible and fed by the hoppers above which the firebeater ensured were full. The hoppers fed coal on to the cast iron 'coking plates' in the front of the furnace and a moving ram pushed the coal off on to bars which were driven by cams at the front under the curved cover and were so arranged that individual bars were drawn back while their mates kept still and on the end of the stroke all the bars moved forward together. The effect of this was that the bed of live coals moved slowly down the furnace while being agitated and fed with combustion air through the gaps between the bars. By adjusting the draught, speed of the stoker and thickness of the bed the stoker arranged things so that the correct amount of coal was burned for the load and by the time it reached the back of the bars it was totally burned and fell off into the ash pit as ash and clinker. The theory was that when the initial charge landed on the red hot cast iron coking plate it started gassing, driving the volatiles (smoke) off and as they passed over the white hot fore that were ignited and passed into the flue as burning gas.
The Proctor stoker was a good and efficient stoker and burned with almost no smoke but this only applied when the fire bed was white hot and reached to the end of the 6ft bars. Our problem was that in the latter years when the load on the engine dropped due to reductions in loom numbers we hadn't enough load to maintain a long healthy fire. This meant less efficient burning of the volatiles and in addition, the fire had burned out by the time it was three quarters of the way down the furnace and cold air was coming up into the furnace via the ash and clinker and the consequence was that we made smoke. This brought us to the attention of the nuisance man, the council inspector, and we got constant complaints and letters to the office.
I had a problem and had to find a solution......

[Stanley]

The basic problem was that under the reduced load we couldn't run the fires long enough to ensure efficient combustion. We tried running very this fires fast but that shoved coal consumption up. I blanked one tube off and we tried firing hard on one furnace but on the day we tried this my bum firebeater at the time never turned up and I spent the day running back and forwards between the engine and the boiler and watching the steam pressure fall all day. I went back to two flues, sacked the firebeater and found John Plummer so at least one good thing came out of it. During all this time we were very careful to address all possible air leaks into the furnaces and flues but try as we could, we couldn't stop the smoke.
The right solution to my problem was to replace the coking stokers with under-fired stokers where the coal was injected into a pot in the flue and feed and air could be closely controlled so I started to gather information, advice and prices.....

[Stanley]

I did my homework and found that installing two new Bennis under-fired stokers would cost about £10,000. We could get a subsidy of 10% from the government because we would be raising efficiency by over 10%. We had about 200 tons of coal on stock and if we stopped ordering coal and burned the stock the saving of £7,000 would pay for the stokers (plus the subsidy) and once they were in we would be saving at least 10% on fuel and eliminating the smoke problem. Maintenance costs would be lower as well. If we then continued ordering coal at the same rate as before the coal stock would build again and in less than two years we would be back up at 200 tons, a safe level of stock. During all this the cost to the firm would be no more than the usual spend on coal.
I did a paper explaining all this and presented it to the management. There was no reaction for about three weeks and then guess what happened next.....

[David Whipp]

Miner's strike?

[Stanley]

No David. Much more sad....

[Stanley]

After a decent interval our Mr Birtles came down to the engine house and told me to burn the stock off. I asked him about the stokers and he said that decision would come later.
At the time John Plummer and I were having our morning break in the engine house and when Birtles had retreated I said to John, "You're looking at the biggest bloody fool in Barlick", he asked me why, "Because I've just closed the mill!" The brains in the office hadn't realised they had almost £8,000 in coal up the yard. I was right, shortly afterwards we got the statutory three months notice of closure and redundancy and started the dreadful process of weaving out. So much for efficiency and economic running. Jim Pollard agreed with me when I told him what had happened and he told me that even though we were struggling the mill was still making a small profit.
Here was the excuse given by the management.





I told you it was sad.....

[Stanley]

It got much sadder as the notice was served out. One bloke with over 40 years service lost his redundancy because his retirement date came up during the term of the notice. I had to go into dispute with the management because they were basing the redundancy pay out on flat wage instead of average wage over the preceding year. That made a big difference to John Plummer and me because we worked a lot of overtime.
In terms of running the plant, everything changed as we wove out. Many a time as I did an occasional maintenance task the thought popped up, "Last time I will have to do this". Years of tuning the engine brought dividends as the load came off when processes and looms were shut down. The engine ran steadily on full boiler pressure right up to the last day when only five looms were running. Newton said it was running better than at any time since it was built and installed... It was a depressing time... I wrote it up fully in my book Bancroft Shed (get it on Lulu.com)

[Stanley]

Newton stopping Bancroft engine. Not unusual, if he was with me he often did it but this was rather special. By mid December we had gone through the trauma of weaving the shed out and were scheduled to close on Friday December 22 1978. The last pay day was on Wednesday the 20th and Jim Pollard and I agreed that there was no chance of anyone staying until closing time that day or coming in for the extra two days. I called in on Newton and told him to be up at Bancroft ready for the dinner time stop as I thought that would be the end, he took notice and was there. By coincidence we had a visitor that day, Professor Owen Ashmore from MU who was a major textile historian. He was due to be in Clitheroe for lunch but I told him that if he stayed he could be in on the death of the mill. By late morning all the looms were stopped and the weavers were in the warehouse waiting for their last wage.



Jim and his weavers in the warehouse.

When it got to 12:30, the normal stopping time I told Newton to stop the engine. He argued that I should do it but I told him that he had a far longer association with weaving in Barlick and it was right that he should stop the last engine. That's what is special about that pic. Newton killing the last of his old friends....
[What a good job someone took the pics!]

[Stanley]

We kept steam up in the boiler overnight and the following morning we ran the engine while we swamped everything with oil. We also tipped anti freeze in the air pump. Both Newton and I were assuming that somehow the engine would be saved. Good job we did! A couple of years later when Newton supervised the restart he said the rods came out of the bores as good as the day we stopped it. That day I stopped it for the last time before we went out of the doors and locked the mill up after blowing down the boiler and leaving it open and ventilating.



Newton watching John Plummer as we oiled the engine up after stopping after the last run.

[Stanley]

Friday 22 December 1978. The final act. Water board men shutting the mains supply down to the mill. That was it, we were all redundant....

[Stanley]

I may have [posted this before. Does anyone recognise the engine? It looks like a George Watkins pic to me....

[Stanley]

There's a connection between this picture and steam engines (apart from the locomotive). When the Calf Hall Shed Company bought Wellhouse Mill they found one boiler still lit supplying steam for a pump that was sending water from Wellhouse up to the station. Billycock Bracewell who built Wellhouse was also one of the founders of the Barlick railway and this ad hoc solution to the need for water at the station in the days before mains water was evidently a hang over from the early days. The Craven Bank owned the mill at the time and as there was still coal in stock at Wellhouse continuing the free supply while they negotiated the sale of the mill was evidently the easiest option. See the CHSC minutes on the site for the dispute that ensued.... Funny thing is that by then there was mains water but the Midland Railway evidently judged that fighting the case was cheaper than making new arrangements which of course they were eventually forced into.

[Stanley]

Wellhouse Mill in about 1900 at the time of the sale to the CHSC. The evidence of demolition at the base of the chimney is where the Craven Bank removed the main beam engine and demolished the engine house. A condition of any sale was that a new modern engine had to be built to ensure that if the mill reverted to the bank it would be easier to sell.