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Niles Tool Works 30 x 126 Lathe

Plenty on the old days (like 1891) but very slim pickings for later - maybe because after 1901 they were just part of a conglomerate named Niles Bement Pond . I have seen nothing on later Niles and one half of a magazine page on Pond
 
I had someone look up the serial number. The book only gives a 5 digit number. The machine has an alphanumeric serial number on the bed, none of which has 5 consecutive numbers. What's up with that?
 
Try contacting Simmonds Machine Tool Company in Watervliet, NY. Simmonds took over a lot of the Niles lines of machine tools, primarily those dealing with railroad shop machine tools. They may have some information on the lathe you posted here, as it appears a fairly late model (for Niles).

My employer, the NY Power Authority, had a Niles engine lathe in the maintenance machine shop at their Niagara hydroelectric plant. I never saw that Niles lathe, as it had been replaced by a Poreba (Polish built) lathe. The story was the Niles was too worn for the work they were doing (or so they said), so it was surplussed. The Niagara hydroelectric plant dated to the early 1950's, so the Niles was probably original equipment then. The Niles in this thread may well date to the late 40's or early 50's given its design. I've seen some really old Niles geared head engine lathes and they were quite different in appearance, having a 'squared off' headstock with lots of gear change levers and a much cruder design- almost an 'open' headstock with openings for gear change levers so you could actually see the gearing.

Niles was building machine tools for railroad shops at least into the late 1940's, as I posted in the thread about the Niles-Bement hydraulic wheel press.
 
Plenty on the old days (like 1891) but very slim pickings for later - maybe because after 1901 they were just part of a conglomerate named Niles Bement Pond . I have seen nothing on later Niles and one half of a magazine page on Pond

What sort of "broke the chain" is that - big as they HAD been - N-B-P as a body-corporate had failed financially around the crash of '29 or so .. and were taken-over by a new entity. N-B-P had been one of the world's early "conglomerate" outfits, with a short-ton of diverse acquisitions. Not all were that well integrated. Not all of the "remains" were kept running for very long.

Former "Jewel in the crown", Pratt & Whitney, OTOH, arguably reaped significant BENEFIT off even greater separation than they had preserved from Big Bang onward.

Niles machine-tools had done one Helluva lot of work, steam age, onward.

But they were too slow to modernize at all, let alone do it "well". Ergo came to be regarded as closer in desireability to J.C. Whitney than Pratt & Whitney.

Heavy, clumsy, soft-bedded, sweat-raising off being MANY years behind the times in implementation, let alone innovation or ease of use.

Ran right about a dozen different Niles Tool Works and N-B-P critters for a few years, Nary a one was a NEW as this puppy. Many were converted cone-heads, War One into the early 1920's. A few predated 1900. Hard to TOTALLY destroy a Niles Iron pile, but that's about all the good news I have.

Galis had shifted upscale, grabbing-up used 1930's Lodge & Shipley, plus ONE Cincinatti instead of any more old wore to flinders Niles dinosaurians.
 
One of its brethren here - the very long Pond / NBP that likely went to scrap with the bulk of this stuff and fairly recently

Price Filler Machine Shop, Roanoke, VA | Flickr

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I guess there's no such thing as dead threads about 100 year old machines, so on that note, I reawaken this thread to note that Lift Arc Studios published a four hour compilation of all their Price Filler machine shop reno videos. It looks like all the machines including the long Pond lathe went to good homes. Which is great. What a crazy shop, considering they were running line shaft machines but making surgical plates, and doing so clearly up until quite recenlty.

 
I watched part of that last night . Some real interesting unit's there . The kid Tay that they show as I guess the master of ceremonies Is from Black Dog Salvage . His Dad is one of the owners of BDS . They had a TV show " Salvage Dogs " . Just the stuff sitting on the benches & floor is overwhelming . Man if that stuff could only talk ...
animal
 








 
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