Bellindustries
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2008
- Location
- Thomaston Ct. USA
Hendeyman asked if I could get some pictures up of the old Hendey plant and give a little commentary on the state of things now. I am only to happy to do so, pictures will be a day or 2 as the weather here is not nice right now. As for the comment, you asked for it! The main buildings housed Stone container Corp for as far as I know since Hendey left, Stone left several years ago and that portion of the property is for sale or lease. I would love to move in there but they only fixed it well after it broke. Years ago my boss and I kind of obsessed about the whole rise and fall and did a ton of research, and were able to talk to several gentlemen who worked there. Amazing is all I can say! The Torrington Company owned or leased the "planer shed" and we used to do a ton of work for them so we got our buddy to snag the keys and let us in. There were no machines left except for the way cool overhead gantry crane, complete with jump seat for the operator (no seat belts hee hee) it is about 35 to 40 feet to the seat. If you look at the 1940 ish book they show several awsome shots of this area and there is a sort of balcony around three sides, not sure what they kept up there jigs,fixtures,gages I would guess. We also got into the shipping barn with the railroad tracks still intact, with the switch gears and splitter for the narrow gage to run through the rest of the factory. Sadly the power house and foundry are now a JC Penny and a super Stop&Shop. During WWII they had enough generator capacity to run the entire city ( 10 box cars of coal a day). CL&P didn't have enough coal due to the war effort. Thats the story for now, I will update more and add pictures when I can, and when something pops into my head.
Terry
Terry