R-It were a Burnley Ironworks, a pair of tandems.  We’d had a new engine at one side, it were put in in 1926, one side were modern and one side were corliss valves on the high pressure but a slide valve on the low.  Anyhow, this afternoon, usual time, three o’clock and it were time to fill your crank pin lubricators with grease.  You screwed them off and you had a grease tub and a spoon.  Fill the lubricator, like butter, pat it on till it were full and then wound it back on with your hands, then you put your worm drive in which were a click and then you put your catch down which were worked with a ratchet to drive the grease through.  I did the new side and went round to do the other side.  All force of habit.  I went down into the boiler house or else out into the yard and I thought That engine’s running slow.  So I dash back upstairs and I had the New Side crank pin stinking red hot, not warm, stinking red hot, it were fizzling like a chip shop.  So I stopped the engine and thought I’m in trouble now.  I thought well, I’ve watched the others and what they generally do is get a hose pipe and couple it on to a tap and lucky enough there was already some hose pipe coupled on a tap next to the main bearing.  So I got one of them squirting away on to it and it was sizzling and cracking and banging and I was scared.  In a minute or two I hear the engine hose door open at the bottom of the steps and footsteps came up towards the crankpin from the bottom.  I’m frigging away squirting away and I look round and see this hard hat come above the railings [Johnny always wore a bowler hat], I thought hello, me father’s here, I’ll get a bit of help now.  He just looked round and said what’s up?  I said I’ve a crank pin hot.  Oh it is hot and all he said.  I said It’s bleeding hot!  Ah well he said, tha’s getten thiself into trouble, tha mun get thiself out of it.  And that was all the help I got off Johnny.  Well I thought, I’m in a right mess now aren’t I!  I’d 200 weavers or more out in the yard waiting of the engine starting.  But in a minute or two there’s another chap comes upstairs, it were Leonard Parkinson, I could hear him coming.  Now then Newton, what’s to do?  It’s crank pin hot Leonard.  Well then, let’s slack it back a bit and get going.

Who was Leonard?

R-Leonard Parkinson were our foreman fitter after Stanley Fisher left.  He were a nice chap were Leonard.

That was one of your own men?

R-Yes, one of us own men, he’d worked for me father since 1914.

Do you think Johnny had sent him across?

R-Of course he’d sent him, aye of course he’d sent him Stanley, he wouldn’t leave me like that with the blinking mill stopped.  So we found some spanners and Len slackened it back about…

How old were you then Newton?

R-Sixteen.

And the engine stopped and all the weavers out in the yard…

R-The engine stopped and all the weavers out in the yard shouting to know whether we were stopped for the week.  They loved to be stopped for the week.

I know the feeling well.  [SG was engineer at Bancroft in 1978]

R-Well anyway, it’s a rotten feeling.  We slackened it back a bit and then Len said “keep that water going Newton.”  He stood over it while I got going, he were no engine driver, he could work on them.  So I got started up and he stood over the crank pin and we worked through till closing.

What had actually caused it Newton?

R-Wait a minute, we ran through while half past five and then Leonard says we’d better come back tonight and we’ll take those brasses out and refit them.  So we came back after tea and we refitted the brasses.  Len said he’d be in at seven o’clock in the morning.  I started up at seven o’clock the morning after and it were stone cold, it were all right, we was on us way.  I’d had me breakfast, I’d stopped from half past eight while nine and I’d got going again, I was stood over that crank pin, I never left it you know besides doing me other work.  Me father landed in and said Now then Newton, what happened yesterday?  I said I didn’t know.  He asked whether I’d left the catch out.  I said I hadn’t, I knew I’d put it back in and the only thing I could think, they were big heavy catches, was that I’d flipped it over with me finger and it had hit the top of a ratchet wheel tooth, they were brass wheels about six inches in diameter, and it bounced off the corner of a tooth, acting as a spring.  You know how a ratchet wheel goes to a feather edge, it must have hit the feather edge and bounced back and that’s all I could think.  I knew jolly well I’d put it back in.  Johnny told me to lift it out and try it now.  I did it and it bounced right out and dropped over again out of drive.  That’s it says me dad, we’ll cure that this weekend.  He got out his ruler and put his hat to the back of his head and measured the wheel.  Just count the teeth, I don’t know how many there were, about 57 or 60 it doesn’t matter and off he went, a little pencil out and his book and he drew a catch and a wheel and off he went.  We’ll remedy this at the weekend.  On Saturday morning, down comes Dennis [Pickles] at half past nine to stop with me.  Newton, get your breakfast and then come back.  He were a good turner were Dennis, he were no relation, he were a lad that me father had started as an apprentice straight from school.  He says we’re going to alter this, you’ll have no more bother with these catches.  What they’d done they’d made two new catches, the wheels were half an inch wide and they’d made two catches a quarter of an inch wide, one were shorter by half a tooth pitch.  Now when you filled your lubricator you put them both back and when you tripped them in you put them both in and if one caught the edge of a tooth the other one didn’t.

So you..

R-We never had any moiré trouble with them up to taking them off and fitting oilers.

(300)

Those greasers would feed up a pipe that comes right up the crank…

R-Up a pipe straight into the crank pin.

So that greaser was up at the crank pin end?

R-Just to the crank pin.

The only greasers I’ve ever seen were the one that fed up a pipe along the connecting rod.

R-Roberts always put them on, Calf Hall had them on and they’d a big central pillar with the lubricator on you know.  And what happened at Calf Hall one day, It got hold did that quadrant pipe.  Noel went to lubricate it and it seized one Monday morning.  It picked the lubricator up and threw it round.  Edwin rang up and said you’d better come down here, there’s a hole in the roof!  It had broken the pillar off at the bottom, it would be about four and a half inches in diameter, a cast iron pillar, and the engine picked it up, whizzed it and threw it through the roof of the engine house.

So there’d be a big modification?

R-We bored em out and put em on oil.  The original greasers went up the outside, up the connecting rod, not through a hole in the crank pin.

That’s it, yes.

R-They used to pipe up the grease from the cross-head to the crank pin but if the cross head got a bit slack it got all the fat and the crank, the poor old crank didn’t get anything.

I think I’ve heard you say it was a bit of a mess fitting the pipes over the swelling in the connecting rod.

R-Oh it were, oh Christ it were on a Roberts engine.  Well we did away with them at Calf Hall, we bored the crank pins and fitted oilers.  At Wellhouse, things got better after that, I were in about six or seven weeks on me own there.  Then I went back to me work with me father.    


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk