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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
28/05/2004
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16:34
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LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AI/02
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON SEPTEMBER 21ST 1978IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT SHED WHILE THE ENGINE IS RUNNING ON A NORMAL WORKING DAY. THE INFORMANT IS STANLEY GRAHAM, THE INFORMANT IS STANLEY GRAHAM WHO IS THE ENGINEER AT THE MILL.
It seems logical to start at the beginning where the power came from. In the background of course you'll be able to hear the engine running away, well not running away, that is a dirty word in an engine house. Running away is when an engine runs out of control. I hasten to add that we are completely in control. I’m standing in front of the big window at the end of the engine house looking down towards the flywheel and the engine. The engine house is approximately 25 ft wide and 80ft long, with a high building, the windows themselves are probably 18 ft, 15 to 18 ft
(50)
to the top of the windows, and then of course the ceiling beyond that. The actual roof of the building is supported on steel trusses and is grey slates boarded underneath, and actually I think this roof will be double boarded, and the inside skin of boards is varnished. It’s almost like a chapel or church roof. The idea of course was to prevent condensation in the roof from the moist atmosphere in the engine house. Looking down the engine house, directly in front of you is the gauges, pressure, vacuum and compound gauges and the flywheel. On the right hand side of the flywheel is the high pressure side, on the left the low pressure side. The two cylinders stand one on either side, obviously, about 10 ft from me, James the high pressure and Mary Jane the low pressure. Two tail slides support the ends of the piston rods, the right-hand one is plain on the high pressure side, the left-hand one carries the linkage which drives the bell crank which drives, in turn the condenser pump in the cellar, which we have
(100)
been down to have a look at. The lubricators that you can see by the railings of the low pressure slide, four on this side and of course four on the other side, are the drip free lubricators which supply oil to the joints in the bell crank linkage and the bearings on the air pump. On the inside face of both cylinders is a complicated arrangement of levers, linkages and rods, this is the valve gear, Dobson block motion operating cylindrical valves with Corliss gear on them. A lot of people talk about Corliss valves, in point of fact there is really no such thing as a Corliss valve. A Corliss engine is an engine with cylindrical valves, and the valves are controlled by Corliss gear which is a method of closing the valve quickly and accurately. This is
effected by a large spring which in held in a dashpot, when the valve opens it puts tension on the spring, when the valve gear reaches a certain point the catch is lifted which leaves go of the rod and allows the spring to snap the valve shut. That is the beauty of Corliss valves, they have
(150)(5 min)
a very quick and positive action. In fact on this engine at Bancroft we have got the original valve springs in which have been in since 1921 and it's doubtful whether the low pressure in particular, is much more efficient than a slide valve now because the springs are weakened and they don't snap the valve shut very quickly. The valve gear on the right hand side, the high pressure, is controlled by the governor which stands in between the high pressure cylinder and the flywheel. The governor is driven by three ropes down the right hand side of the flywheel from a pulley on the fly shaft to a pulley at the bottom of the governor. From there the motion is transmitted by a system of gears to the column through the middle and the governor, bob weights and shaft turn in exactly the same proportion to the speed of the flywheel shaft. We might as well get it over with, the old joke about the governor in that as the speed rises the governor's balls fly outwards. For some reason this always seems to amuse the ladies. The action of the governor is self evident, that as the speed rises the balls are pulled outwards by centrifugal or rather centripetal force. As I understand it centripetal is the force which pulls
(200)
them out and centrifugal is the force which tends to hold them in - and there again I might be wrong. Anyway they are thrown out by the force and as they throw, as they try to fly out, they lift a linkage up which raises a bob weight in the middle which is just a way of counterbalancing the power in the balls, and as the bob weight moves up and down it moves the linkage which connects the governor to the valves. The net result is that as the engine speeds up the governor closes the valves down and as the engine slows down the governor opens the valves up thus keeping it at a constant speed. There is also the Lumb speed regulator which takes care of any large drop in load, but that’s really wrong. The Lumb speed regulator is a way of improving the action of the governor. If there was no Lumb speed regulator on, the governor would have to control the valves over the full extent of the travel which would mean that a very small movement on the governor would mean a proportionally large movement on the valves. This would mean that the governor was very sensitive and this is a bad thing in a governor as it leads to what we call hunting. In other words the governor overcorrecting one way or the other all the time, it can't settle down to a steady level.
(250)
The Lumb speed regulator gets over this difficulty by allowing you to build the governor in such a way that it only controls a very narrow range of the actual valve travel, thus making that governor very steady. Of course this means that if the fluctuation of load on the engine extends beyond the range which the governor can cope with, the governor just can't manage it. Now this is catered for by the speed regulator. In effect the speed regulator alters the length of the linkage rods between the governor and the valve gear. Now this means that the governor controls a fairly narrow range of the engine speed, of the valve openings, and the speed regulator moves that range up and down the total power range of the engine. The total load range of the engine. So that what you have is a very steady governor working on a small range of the valve travel and the speed regulator alters the position of that range in relation to the overall range of the engine power as and when it’s needed during the day. This means that in the case of any sudden load on the engine or sudden cessation of load due to a shaft breaking or perhaps the governor ropes breaking, something like that, it means that the governor can't cope, so there is a safety gear fitted. The safety gear consists of a peg which, if there is a sudden violent fluctuation
(300)(10 min)
of the governor one way or the other, up or down, it breaks the linkage in the actual governor linkage. Which means in effect that the governor rods drop to the bottom, no matter what the governor's doing the rod drops to the bottom and both steam valves on the high pressure are shut or to be more accurate they shut and they are not opened again. This means that no steam is going to the engine, the engine slows down obviously because there is no power. This safety gear is controlled by a system of buttons in the mill and in the shed similar to a fire alarm but all you do is break the glass and the switch flies open, breaks the circuit and a hammer drops and knocks out the safety peg. This is a fail safe device because the solenoid which holds the hammer up is powered by the supply of electricity that comes through these buttons from the mill. If the supply of electricity to these, this safety gear ever failed, the hammer would automatically drop and the engine would stop so it's a fail safe mechanism. If there is any malfunction in the safety gear itself the engine will stop. In fact it isn’t a very efficient way of stopping an engine. An engine is like a train, it's a large mass of weight moving. The flywheel will probably weigh something in the order of 30 tons and it's moving at 68 revolutions a minute. There is something like 300 tons of shafting in the shed
(350)
all moving. It's impossible to stop it immediately. And so, even if somebody presses a button in the mill it'll be at least three or four minutes before the engine stops which would be a long time if you were caught up in a shaft and being dragged round by it. There is one other way of speeding up the stopping of the engine and that is by having a vacuum breaker as well. In other words, when the safety gear itself is tripped, it opens a large valve on the engine which allows air to rush in and break the vacuum on the low pressure cylinder. Because even when the steam's turned off, for a minute or so there is enough vacuum in the system to keep this engine running. And, in point of fact this engine has not got a vacuum breaker on and never has had. I can’t really understand why, I should have thought that every engine would have had one on. But anyway this one hasn't got one and we have never felt the need for it thank God.
We'll have a walk down the side of the high pressure cylinder now, that’s the engine house door, back side of the cylinder and alongside the high pressure crosshead and connecting rod, the high pressure crank turning the flywheel. One interesting thing about the lubrication of the crankpin, this is lubricated by what we call a banjo oiler. It’s one of these ideas which is so bloody simple that you wonder why it wasn’t thought of hundreds of years since. A pipe is fixed to the crankpin and runs down the centre line of the crank until it reaches the centre line of the shaft. On the end of this
pipe is mounted what can best be described as a shallow cup lay on its side.
(400)
Any oil dropped into this cup can run down the pipe into the crankpin. Now we have a drip feed lubricator mounted on the rail at the side dropping oil through a pipe into this cup. Now remember that the crankpin is revolving at 68 revs a minute, the shallow cup is on the centre line of the shaft, and so it doesn't actually move, it just rotates and any oil that's dropped into that cup is thrown outwards by centrifugal force up to the crankpin. It works its way through the bearing, out on to the drip trays and runs down into the cellar and we collect it there and use it again. So simple, so
Efficient and trouble free. Having said that, one of the bloody lubricators will bung up and we'll have a hot pin! Just to the right of the high pressure crank is the distribution board which is controlling the electricity which is being generated by the alternator which is the roaring noise you can hear in the background now (sound of the alternator working)
(15 min)
This is a highly important and most uninteresting piece of machinery. All the
alternator is, it just looks like a very large electric motor and the only noise it makes is a roaring noise by virtue of the cooling air which is being blown round it. Nothing dramatic happening but it’s actually one of the most important pieces of machinery in the mill
(450)
because that is providing all the electric power that we use. In other words anything that isn’t driven directly off the shaft in this mill is driven by electricity generated by that alternator. It’s a 125 KvA alternator making electricity at exactly the same standard as towns electricity, mains electricity, 440 volts, 3 phase, 50 cycles. Once we start the engine in the morning we switch that alternator in and run on that for the rest of the day, we don’t take any power in from the mains. The flywheel itself has 13 grooves turned in the outside of it. In these grooves run 13 ropes, that's actually a lie because we have only got 11 on, two of the ropes broke sometime ago. These ropes are cotton ropes, they look black because they are covered with tallow and graphite which lubricates them. Good cotton rope drives will last, well it won’t last forever but some of these ropes could have been on 40 and 50 years. The ropes are driven off the flywheel itself, which is about 16 ft in diameter, up to the second motion shaft. The second motion pulley is about 10 ft in diameter. Now this has the effect of raising the revolutions on the actual line shaft itself which runs from the second motion shaft right the way up the mill and powers everything in the mill. The engine is running at 68 revolutions a minute, the second motion shaft runs at about 150 revolutions a minute. Now it's important to remember that everything is driven off that shaft. The first thing which is driven off it is the alternator by means of a large pulley and a counter drive and then after that everything is driven off by gearing, cross shafts and leather belts. If we walk up to the top of the engine house and just put our head through the door we find that we are stood at the end of the warehouse.
(500)
The sound you hear in the background here is the sound of the gearing because on the other side of the wall that we are stood beside, is the boiler house and the weaving shed lies behind the warehouse wall which I face indirectly opposite to the engine house door. The warehouse is a fairly quiet place because there is no heavy machinery in here apart from the shaft running across this end and of course the clothlooking machines at the top end. The warehouse at Bancroft is, to put it bluntly, a bloody mess. There are weft boxes and skips stacked in here which belong to firms which went defunct 20 years since and there is no possibility of them ever going back to their owners. We have wanted to have a clear out for a long while but I don't know, the management doesn't seem to like the idea of burning weft boxes. The construction of the warehouse is cast iron pillars, cast iron cross girders and a wooden floor, all highly flammable. The warehouse in a cotton weaving shed is probably one of the most flammable places in the world apart from an actual oil refinery. We shall walk up now, through the warehouse and through the shed door and have a look at the weaving shed and the line shaft.
(20 min) (550)
(Noise in the weaving shed)
As you probably realise, we are now in the weaving shed. The noise level is very high and I’m going to walk across now and stand underneath the line shaft, then I'll walk slowly up it and you'll hear the shafting (sound of shafting at work). We are up at the top end of the shed now and I'm walking away from the line shaft. I don't think there is a lot of point doing a lot of talking in here because nobody will be able to tell what I'm saying anyway but the sort of noise you are listening to, and you’ll hear in the background now, is nothing compared with what it was like when this shed was full up with looms. Remember there are probably about 200 looms running, in those days there was over 1000. So what I’ll do, I’ll walk out now down past where the looms are running and you’ll be able to hear the sound of looms running which is a different noise entirely from the line shaft. Where the line shaft's more of a roar, looms are a continuous clatter.
(600)
And most of the noise comes from the fact that the picking stick is knocking the shuttle backwards and forwards. We'll walk out of the shed now, and I'll talk more about the construction of the shed outside, but we'll go down through the looms which are running (sound of the looms at work).
Well, there you are, that's what a weaving shed sounds like. Well we are back in a sensible place now, out on the engine house steps. You probably wonder from listening to that noise in there how anybody could work in conditions like that. Well I’ll make you wonder even more for a bit. What you can’t realise from the sound recording is that the floor is stone, stone flags, they are sunk, they are pitted, broken, uneven, terrible conditions. It's almost impossible to wheel a truck over them.
(650)(25 min)
Everything's covered with a white dust from the size and the yarn from the weaving operation, the lights, all the pillars, the disused looms, it looks like snow. There*s rubbish all over the bloody place. In a well kept shed this rubbish would be swept up but, as you probably gathered, we are not a well kept shed, these things have been neglected for years and years and the accumulation of fly as we call it, this white dust, is just amazing. In places it's like, oh on some looms there is easily an inch, an inch and a half of what looks like snow from a distance, on top of the looms. One would think that this would probably be an unhealthy thing, I don’t know but I don’t really think that fly is, in the quantities that it’s about in a weaving shed - is all that unhealthy actually. Because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of bronchial ailments. Of course I'm probably not the person to comment on that. It's amazing how people can get used to that noise. The weavers themselves over the years have developed a system that they call ‘mee-mawing’ and it's lip-reading really, they talk to each other with exaggerated lip movements. And I don't know whether you heard as I was walking down the looms there was one noise, it sounded like an owl hooting, and a sort of a ‘yoo-hoo’. Well that's the way the weavers shout to each other to attract each other's attention. They either wave or they make a sort of a hooting noise and that seems to carry above the noise of the looms. Once they have established eye contact they'll start talking to each other across a space of probably, oh, 25 ft, 30 ft, something like that, no bother at all, and they can understand what each other's saying. As I say, that's usually called mee-mawing. You can generally tell somebody that's worked in the mill a long while because the exaggerated lip movements are carried on in normal speech and you’ll find people who talk, and you’ll notice that their lips seem to move far more than other people's. Well, if you meet somebody like that you can bet a bloody pound that they worked in a weaving shed.
(700)
I have been heard to say that weaving is probably the second oldest profession. Originally meant as a bit of a joke, I have come to realise that there is probably a lot more truth in that than meets the eye. The weaving industry was founded on the fact that the weavers were there before the industry was. In other words, there was a tradition of hand-loom weaving in the valleys of north-east Lancashire long before the power-loom was even invented. In some families this can go back, well I don’t know how many generations, you can pick your own figure nearly, because I mean, people have been weaving for literally hundreds and hundreds of years. And there does seem to be a very deeply ingrained tradition and this leads to the fact that people can be very happy in a weaving shed. It's amazing when you stop to consider the conditions. I don’t think I have ever seen a happier work-place than the weaving shed at Bancroft Shed, and I mean that quite sincerely. I have thought a lot about this and I can't ever remember anywhere where it has been happier. I've seen places that were probably as happy but never better. There is a very good atmosphere in there and I often think that one of the things is probably that the workers can see an end product for their work, they can see the cloth rolling off the loom. It’s a satisfying thing somehow to actually make something yourself. This doesn't mean to say that the weavers never have any complaints. I mean, the weavers, like any other body of workers, are noted for the fact that they do complain and quite often justifiably. For people in the future who are listening to this, just think about this, it's possible in September 1978 for a person to work 40 hours in that shed and come out with a take home wage of less than £40. And this is something which people even nowadays, many people particularly from the south of England or from the Midlands find very hard to understand. It's even harder to understand when you realize that a mile down the road Rolls Royce'll pay a woman £55 for sweeping up. It makes you wonder why people stick to the shed. As I say, the only explanation that I can give
(750)(30 min)
is the tradition of weaving, the fact that they have the skill, the fact that they like weaving, the fact that probably their friends are weaving as well. And I mean, people do like to congregate together, and just the fact that it is a satisfying job. Another thing which probably has a bearing on it is that a lot of the people that weave here live within 300 yards of the mill, which I should think anybody that's commuting into London and spending three hours on the train every day would say it was a great advantage. The looms themselves are probably nearly all over 100 years old. It’s doubtful whether many would be bought new when Bancroft was built, remember that Bancroft was first built and commissioned in 1921, and this was after the big boom which followed the first world war cracked. Apart from the fact that Nutters, who moved into this shed, were already weaving in other sheds in the town and would shift their own looms up here, there would be plenty of second-hand looms about in good order in those days. So it's doubtful if many new looms came into here. So in effect you can say that most of the machinery in that shed is probably antique, a hundred years old. All the looms are driven from the cross shafts by leather belting. There is a fast and loose pulley on each loom, and power is delivered from the engine through the transmission shafting to the loom by leather belts. The weaver's main job is what we call ‘shuttling’. That’s keeping the shuttle full and running and taking ends up. Now taking an end up is repairing an end in the warp when it goes down. It is said to have gone down when it breaks. So if you have an end down in a warp, meaning you have got a broken end and that has to be repaired or there is a mark in the cloth and basically, that’s a weaver's job. Of course, there is a tremendous lot of skill to it, and one of the big troubles about weaving is that it has never been recognized as the skilled job which it undoubtedly is.
(800)
Up to 1939, the outbreak of the second world war there were plenty of weavers about and there was no need for anybody to pamper them, or even pay them a decent wage to get them to work. It was the only job there was, there were plenty of them about and nobody had any trouble. During the war they were very scarce and manufacturers began to realise how valuable weavers were. But after the war - as you'll have gathered from the other tapes - the consensus of opinion among the people that should know, people like Jim Pollard and men like that, is that that was where the big mistake was made and the weavers weren't retrained. When 1 say retrained, new weavers weren't trained properly, they were put on to looms in three weeks in some cases and a lot of the old skills gradually died out as the old people died. Anyway, I'm not going to encroach an Jim’s subject , about weaving. I’ll talk now about the construction of the shed. Bancroft Shed is what is known as a girder shed. The main components of the structure are the walls, cast iron pillars and continuous cast iron girder gutters. Now in other words the gutter between the typical saw tooth north lights. The valley gutters are the structural members which support the roof of the shed. They in turn are supported by cast iron pillars which stand about 10 ft apart one way and 15 ft down the run of the gutter. It's a very good construction, very sound construction, the roof is slated on the south light, and glass on the north light and Bancroft Shed is one of the few sheds which is a true north light shed. In other words the sun never shines into it except during the very middle of summer, perhaps about 8 o'clock at night some sun comes in through the glass. But otherwise, the sun never shines in, you get a good diffused north light all day. It's actually a perfect artist's studio and this of course is what you want for weaving, good even light. The shed can get very hot during summer for this reason so at the beginning of June each year we whitewash the roof. When I say we white-wash the roof, we should actually white-wash the slates and the glass but being Bancroft we can't afford that, all we do is white-wash the glass. The
(850)(35 min)
idea is to stop some of the heat being transmitted in from the sun and by reflection off the slates. The sun doesn’t actually shine straight in but a tremendous lot of heat is reflected in through the glass off the slates of the shed roof. I can vouch from personal experience that the slates on the shed roof can get that hot you daren’t bear your hand on them during summer. A grey matt surface will absorb heat very well. One of the main features, which strikes everybody when they go into the shed, apart from the noise, even if the shed is stopped, is the fact that it is very nearly monochrome, there is very little colour in a weaving shed. Whitewashed walls, grey iron, black cast iron, white cotton, white dust. Virtually the only colour is the brown of the healds and occasional splashes of colour where a weaver's left a cardigan hung over the back of a chair or over a box. That is in passing another feature of a weaving shed in that each weaver has a chair or a stool or a buffet or a box at the end of the alley. And in the infrequent periods when all the looms are running and they have got two minutes they'll sit down on there, and they sit down on there for their meals as well. The canteen, or what is nominally known as the canteen at Bancroft, is actually just a room with a steam-oven in it and nobody really likes sitting in there. About the only thing it's used for is going and having a smoke during the day. Most of the weavers either pop home for their dinner or sit at the loom. One thing about sitting at the loom, you always have a clean tablecloth, because obviously they use the cloth on the loom. It is a truism that a weaving manager likes to go into the shed and see the weavers sat down because that is when they are making money. Because a good weaver isn't sat there if there is any shuttling to do or any ends down. So if the weaver's sat at the end of the alley it means that everything's weaving all right and there is cloth rolling off. In other words, as long as they are sat down it's 100% production. When you come to think, this is true of a lot of other trades as well. I know if I was employing a man and he was for ever rushing around in small circles I’d start worrying about him. I like the men that always seem to have plenty of time. And that's one of the things about weaving, a good weaver is a joy to watch, there isn't a movement wasted and every chance they get they’ll sit down and take a rest. And they seem to work round in a rotation, even on different weights of twist and different weights of weft, where shuttles aren’t lasting the same length of time, they seem to be able to
(900)
keep up a routine and a rotation round the looms. This means that they never have to run from one end of the alley to the other. Just one of the little skills that goes to make up a good weaver and we have got some good weavers here, we have some bad ones but we have some good ones. But I’m afraid they are dying out, nobody's training them now. Apart from anything else, in order to train a weaver, the weaver has to have an incentive to work, and probably that's one of the great things that’s missing now, there isn't the same incentive to work as there was. Take our position now, we are going to be redundant on the 22nd of December. We are told that we'll get redundancy money, earnings related supplement, the dole, tax back, I don't think there’s, most of us in this shed, we actually will be earning more money on the dole for six months than we would if we were working. Which in many ways is a fine thing, I'd rather have that than the hungry old days, but in other ways it's wrong, people should have to work for their living. Well, I am sat back here in the engine house, I think that's about it for the sound effects of Bancroft. It’d be very easy to go on and talk for hours and hours and hours, there are different aspects of the job and different ways we have been affected by this week's news. If 1 sound a bit depressed this morning that’s probably the reason why, the news that we we’re to close down on December 22nd didn't actually shock anybody I don't think but it's sad. I mean I sit here now and look at this engine, installed in 1921, just about run in and good for at least another 100 years. And on the balance of probabilities it'll most likely be scrapped inside 6 months. Scrapping an engine is murder, especially when you have had something to do with it. Because a steam engine like this is very nearly alive. I don’t know what it is about it, I've often puzzled. I think part of it's gentle giants, everybody likes elephants and big blokes, big ships, steam locos, gentle giants that's something to do with it. They are warm,
(950)(40 min)
they keep you warm in winter. Lovely things to work on, plenty of room, plenty of stuff to polish up - not that I have ever been noted for going crackers with the Brasso! I'd rather keep them running nice. You can hear this engine running quietly in the background, it's running beautifully. A little point there, no doubt the more technically minded amongst the people who listen to this tape will have heard about indicating steam engines. There's probably been more written about the indication of steam engines, which for the uninitiated is a way of finding out exactly what's going on inside the cylinder as an aid to valve settings and diagnosis and all the rest of it. There's probably more been written about indication than any other single subject concerned with steam engines. I'm afraid that I am here today to tell you that the biggest part of it is all a load of tripe. There’s a lot of difference between the theory of running a steam engine and the practice, and I should think this is the same in every other walk of life. It’s possible to adjust the valves on this engine to give a perfect indicator diagram and the engine will run like a basket full of bloody pots. There is only one thing that counts, how evenly the flywheel is being turned. And really that’s basically all you need to know about whether an engine is running right or not. It's easy to tell with a rope drive engine, when you go into an engine house if there is a rope drive just look at the ropes. If they are swinging across to the second motion pulley in a big smooth curve and hardly kicking at all, just gently rising and falling, that engine's all right. But if you go into an engine house and you see those ropes flogging about and jumping up and down, either they have been very unfortunate and they have got a very bad rope drive, in other words the harmonic frequencies in the drive are wrong, or they have got a badly adjusted engine, most likely the latter. So, the rule about indicating is that it's a good thing to do every couple of months just to give you an idea of any faults that are developing but it certainly is not the ultimate guide to valve setting. There are so many things which can affect the running of a steam engine and really the only way to get to know is to sit with them and live with them as I have with this engine for the last five years.
(1000)
As I say, in three months all this'll be over and it's very sad. You have got to make a conscious effort not to actually, I wouldn't say go into a decline, but you have got to harden yourself against the knowledge that everything that you have looked after and cared for is going to be smashed up. It killed people in the old days, some of the old engine tenters just went into a decline and quietly died when they smashed their engines up. I can understand it. I must admit to being depressed myself this morning, it’s a couple of days now since we got the word and it's just about sunk in. So now what we have to look forward to is decline. It'll finish up that there'll just be Jim Pollard, Ernie Roberts on the last set of looms and me running the engine, and John Plummer on the boiler. There'll be four of us. And, we'll have the job of killing it. I say we'll have the job of killing it, we won't actually, I shan't because I have already told Newton Pickles from Brown and Pickles that he can stop this engine. It's the last one he worked on, all the others have gone so I think it's only fair that he should stop it. When this engine stops it'll be the end of an era for Barnoldswick anyway, the last engine in Pendle and the last of the big weaving mills in Barnoldswick. This town used to have 25,000 looms to 11,000 people and when Bancroft stops that's it, there'll just be two little units, one with about 80 loom and the other with 98. Really, what we are seeing is the end of the first stage of the industrial revolution. In some ways 1 am glad
(45 min)
I've been here to see it. In fact I am very grateful for the chance that I have had to record the finishing up but in other ways I am very sorry because what started off as just an interesting job and a pleasant exercise has become for me, the same as a lot of other people in the industry, a way of life and there is going to be a big change in my life when this engine stops. Anyway, I suppose we'd better look to the future and remember those famous words of Walt Fisher, “When they did away with the engines, they did away with a lot of bloody hard work.”
(1052)
SCG/04 September 2003
6,334 words.
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Stanley Graham (Engineer & Researcher) Tape 02
