Terry asked, "how did they move some of the heavy components into place?"-- Answer with great difficulty! In large machine making firms, heavy foundries, and boilermaking concerns etc, the companies had overhead cranes and usually massive yard cranes to lift large machine components onto the railway wagons, or lorries etc, But out on site,or down in the bowels of a ship or in a coalmine, the art of the rigger and the erector came into their own, If you can get a copy of The International Correspondence Schools fitting & erecting, (One of a series of mechanical engineering textbooks) In this volume is a most amazing series of illustrations of various rigging set ups, gin poles use of rollers etc Most of the instinctive knowledge gained by these old boys, has now vanished, in this age where we have every aid to inconvenience available, and still a great hullabaloo, is set up on the execution of the simplest tasks.
In some cases when a heavy engine bedplate, or other component, was winched of a railway wagon, frequently, the worry was just starting, a set of roads had often to be completed with old railway sleepers, lengths of greasy plate, and /or old lengths of railway rail, to get the component from the wagon, and in to the half constructed engine house,
When i was about 15 years of age, i was rather one for noseying about, at the site of a big drift mine near where i lived at the time, This was one of the National Coal Boards new undertakings in the Doon Valley, and the fitters from the Coal Boards central workshop were engaged in the erecting of a very large haulage engine built by John Woods & Co of Wigan, The big castings for this engine were lifted from the wagons, by the boards powefull Marshall Fleming portable steam crane, and then the components had to be skidded along on rails, by using powerful hand windlasses, and a track arranged with wood to get the large components up into the engine house, at that time i noticed the great dependancy on the use of the ratchet toe jack,, what a useful item that can be for budging the end of a big casting up to get skid plates or rollers under it, Even to the present day i have found the use of my trusty "Duff Norton" ratchet toe jack and the use of my other most useful tool my Yale hoist, (to our American friends a come along), before i forget another brill item is the jolly old pinch bar! In the use of which if you are hurting your back or stomach you are not using it correctly! However time has stopped my heavy millwright activities, how youth has vanished
However back to the machine erecting in those halcyon days, of the 1950/s when Bill Haley & the Comets , along with Matt Munro,were belting out excellent pop tunes a lot of interesting things were to be seen,in the machine world Messrs Cowan Sheldon of Carlisle, were building a big 30 ton coaling crane at Ayr harbour, that was a situation your nosy servant could not keep away from, on a Saturday morning, when i was not working. In this instance what i was amazed at was another type of fitter at work, doing the trapese act, and to me daredevil escapades, At this period the prevelence of the heavy mobile road crane was not as advanced as now, and many of the heavy components were lifted by a gin pole.
Around this time some of the old guys in the foundry i worked in related the story of another feat of pure skill, The Hollins family, had in the early 1920/s came north from the midlands of England, and established their firm in the town, Scottish Stamping & Engineering Neptune Stampworks, over at Newton on Ayr, During the 1939-45 war, a large Chambersburg drop stamp steam hammer, was en route from America to France when France fell to the axis forces, and this huge hammer was redirected to Scotland, The then chif engineer in this concern was one William Collington, An ex motor engineer in the town, but an absolute mechanical genius, who superintended the erection of this huge machine,
on a visit to this firm, some twenty years ago, a spare anvil block for the hammer was still awaiting use Weight 250 tons I often wonder how Collington and his men got that brute plus all the other vast parts of that huge machine into place considering the anvil block is 75% into the floor & how did the guys in Chambersburg handle the vast amounts of cast iron, One thing for sure when she was working, all over Ayr , one could on a good day hear her pounding away, and all the wee wifies who lived along Somerset Avenue, could not keep ornaments on their shelves for the vibration.
However fast forward to the present day, Some twenty odd years ago, i gave a man the task of moving a nice old box bed radial drill about thirty feet and reposition same Next thing he was about to position four machine skates at each corner of the machine on a not wonderfully even concrete floor. I said no way!, use some lengths of 1/4"x 4" steel plate, rig up your pull lift to the shop beams, you will have it moved by mid morning, & observe your safety, simple job for the modern man? However as soon as my back was turned back to the skates -combination of uneven floor & very unstable top heavy unbalanced item, Crash another radial bites the dust, fortunately he was not hurt Wish we had the old boys back, No wonder i partake of a small sherry at Christmas!