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Boyhood
dreams were conceived by the Black
Brook, Bradford Road Gasworks, Pin
Mill Brow, names perhaps more familiar
to Mancunians from the Ancoats and
Ardwick areas of the "Cottonopolis";
the sights, sounds and smells of
old, crumbling Victorian mills and
factories, huge Lancashire boilers,
dominating mill chimneys, clanking,
hissing steam locomotives, massive
railway viaducts are acid-etched,
to form a lasting memory in our
authors mind.
In
the early 1950's after moving to
the small hamlet of Top o'Yebers
betwixt Middleton and Heywood -
(the flitting was carried out by
a railway Scammell Mechanical Horse!)
- the author, now an adventurous
ten year old, spent his formative
years exploring the scores of massive
cotton mills, steam engine houses,
fireholes, engine sheds, railway
yards and canals that was the everyday
industrial landscape of the old
cotton towns of south east Lancashire.
It was in this smoke-blackened world
of steam engines and mill boilers,
where the author met Carrot Crampthorn
who got him into the Phoenix Boilerworks
as an apprentice Boilermaker. Eventually,
after serving his time building
and repairing Lancashire boilers,
papermill pressure vessels, industrial
steam locomotives and rolling stock,
bridges etc., Alan McEwen elevated
himself by dogged determination
and hard graft to become Master
Boilermaker of his own company -
H.A McEwen (Boiler Repairs) LTD.
of Cowling, Keighley, West Yorkshire.
Owd
Jemmy Shuttleworth, Len 'Lead-Arse'
Lees, Dog Pit Dyeworks, Dandelion
Colliery Piggeries, evocative names
from the past, characters and workplaces
from traditional industries, which
alas, have long gone, brutally swept
away by the "need" for
change. The clamour and bustle of
heavy engineering workshops, once
Britain's lifeblood, was an everyday
way of life for countless thousands
until the early 1970's throughout
the industrial North.
CHRONICLES
OF A LANCASTRIAN BOILERMAKER
delves into the history of Boilermaking
as never before: Lancashire, Cornish,
the two best known types are fully
described; Egg-Ended, Cochran Vertical,
Waggon and Haystack boilers are
not forgotten. Neither does the
author allow the wonderful, often
architecturally unique buildings
which housed the boilers and mill
steam engines to escape attention.
The huge textile mills are identified,
some with descriptions of mill steam
engines, magnificent gleaming leviathans
which were christened names: Nellie,
Sarah, Victoria, Alice etc.
Throughout,
the various chapters are colourful
and elaborate detailed descriptions
of boilermaking practice: the manufacture
of Adamson Furnace Rings and the
renewal of a front plate for a Lancashire
boiler; handflanging, rivet heating,
pneumatic riveting; making and fitting
a locomotive firebox, boilershop
accidents; the whole book is brim
full of lusty, larger-than-life
characters, many the author's workmates,
and there are many appropriate illustrations,
never before published.
Alan
McEwen gives us a profoundly entertaining,
atmospheric insight into the vanished
world that was heavy engineering;
a world vividly portrayed in CHRONICLES
OF A LANCASTRIAN BOILERMAKER.
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