Henry Brown, Son and Pickles. Engineers - Part 12

We're still down at Victoria Mill looking for the problem on the engine.  By the time both bearing caps were off and nothing had been found Newton was getting a bit worried.  They had stopped 2,400 looms and found nothing.  He told Tommy Almond to bar it round again and as he did Charlie Bateman who was stood at the other side told Newton that he was sure one crank moved before the other.  This cheered Newton up no end and he set the men on taking the big 3ft 6inches diameter eccentrics off at the low pressure side.  About half an hour later Harry Crabtree shouted to Newton, "Hey, should it do this?"  and with that he shoved his two foot rule right through the 14" shaft!

Newton said he'd never been as happy in his life.  He really thought he had got it wrong, worst of all, Johnny and Tommy Almond might have been right!  They set to then to do a full strip down to get the broken shaft out.  Johnny came down with Teddy Woods from Proctors and they started to plan how to get the shaft out.  A weaving shed had been built behind the engine house since it was installed.  In the end they had to move some looms, take a bay of the shed roof off and lower the broken shaft through the hole.  

They measured the shaft and ordered a forging from Webb's at Bury.  Newton set up to bore the shaft out of the cranks because they would use them again.  The forging arrived from Bury on Saturday morning.  Newton said it was drizzling with rain and there was steam coming off it, it was still red hot from the forge.  They had to wait until Sunday before they could start working it.  The flywheel at Victoria was a plug fit with six keys on each side.  Newton made a plug gauge for the flywheel to make sure they got a good fit and they planed six flats on the shaft centre.  The ends of the shaft had to be turned so that the cranks would be a good shrink fit.  The shaft was 15" diameter so Newton made the shaft 15 thousandths of an inch bigger than to holes in the two ton cranks.  They had to be fitted by heating them to almost white heat until they expanded and then sliding them on the shaft.  As the crank cooled, the shrinkage of the metal gripped the shaft and they'd never move again.

In order to make sure the crank was hot enough and the hole had expanded enough Newton had made a gauge to try the bore.  This was a piece of steel rod with a point on either end made to exactly the same length as the diameter of the shaft.  The way it worked was that you put the gauge in the hole in the crank and as soon as it would fall an inch either way before it touched the bore the crank was hot enough.  Just to make sure, Newton gave it another half hours heat and wire brushed the bore before they slipped it on.  There was a key way cut in the shaft and the crank which was used with a dummy key to make sure the crank was at the right angle.  When you see a key in a shrunk crank it is only a dummy to fill the hole.  Newton said the crank shrank on to the shaft in less than three minutes.

They put both cranks on that night, they'd worked 48 hours non-stop.  Then all the rest of the engine had to be built up again.  The mill was running again the following Monday and had been stopped for a fortnight.  There will still be readers in Earby who can remember being laid off while it was done.

A year later the same thing happened at Wellhouse.  The double tandem engine had been designed to give 850hp but in 1926 the boilers were put on superheat, new cylinders fitted and the output at peak was about 1200hp.  Johnny told Newton that he should keep away from the engine while it was loaded, he said the shaft would break.  

One morning Newton and Johnny had an appointment at Penrith to see a tower clock that Hindleys at Gisburn Park had bought.  Just before they set off Tom Marshall who was the engineer at Wellhouse sent for Newton and when he got there the shaft neck on the flyshaft on the new side (away from the windows) was smoking hot.  They got water on it, cooled it down and Newton set off for Penrith leaving Harry Crabtree on guard.

When they arrived back just before five o'clock Newton noticed that the engine was stopped.  He went into the engine house and Harry was there with a couple of the lads and they had started stripping the engine down.  The bearing had heated again and when they stopped at breakfast time Harry had taken the cap off the bearing and the shaft was broken.  Being a good fitter he had marked the position of all the eccentrics before he started.  

The procedure was exactly the same as the repair at Victoria Mill the year before.  A forging was ordered from Webb's at Bury and machined before fitting.  The only difference was that the flywheel at Wellhouse wasn't plug fit, it was the normal design, the bore in the boss was about 3" bigger than the shaft and the stakes or keys were used to true it up.  The biggest problem they had was the ropes hung all round the wheel while they fitted the shaft.  They had to be taken off to get the tension off the flywheel.  I think the mill was stopped for ten days.

Right, you've been very patient but we had to look at at least two big jobs in detail.  Henry Brown Sons and Pickles were skilled engineers doing big jobs and it's as well to record them.

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© Stanley Challenger Graham 2003

Page updated: 13 OCT 2003