ENGINEERING APPRENTICE DAYS 1




I commenced serving an apprenticeship in the engineering trade in 1935. The works repaired factory steam boilers, serviced the few of the remaining steam engines and repaired some local council road roller boilers. Gas and electric welding and turning and fitting were the main stays of the business. Dairy factory and freezing works machinery installation and maintenance were ongoing services.

My first introduction to steam action in the plant was to dismantle and smash up two in stock “Shand” single cylinder horizontal engines that had never turned a flywheel. Electricity reticulation had taken over and the scrap metal dealers collected.

Some months later the next meeting with steam was with one of the city council road rollers that had been the object of my schoolboy interest as it ploughed up old street gravel and tar bases in preparation for reforming and resurfacing. The execution of this process was about the ultimate in graunching. The steam roller, no light weight puffed and jerked mightily. A wondrous sight for a small boy! But as I was to learn the operation repeated over time found relatively weak points in the boiler structure, namely the firebox wrapper front corners which developed cracks where the side sheets formed into the throat plate. Thus, the machine was steamed into the blacksmith’s shop and the trouble spots exposed and the cracks chiselled out and electric welded. Some water-leg stays in the regions also had to be replaced. For this memorable piece of work I had to crouch inside the fire-box and hold a steel dolly against the stays that were being hammered and headed from the outside. I now wear hearing aids, I wonder if that was the start of the defect.

My home town had a wool processing, dying, spinning and knitting mill. In its wool dying section was a large steam driven centrifuge dryer. It was mounted on a short vertical shaft with a crank beneath that rotated in a horizontal plain. The single double acting cylinder with its crosshead and connecting rod and valve eccentric rod were normally covered by a checker plate floor. The slide valve and seating had worn, so it was our job to remove the steam chest cover, remove the valve for refacing and lap the port surface. I worked with the works foreman on this job which finally finished and assembled he cautiously opened up the steam supply and spun the bowl up to what we thought to be its operating speed. The dye-works foreman came on the scene to observe progress and spun the stop valve wide open whereon the whole thing tore into life with the giant bowl howling and the crankshaft vanishing into a blur. We took a quick look for an escape route, but that was the norm and all was well.

Being the new apprentice part of my regular job on Monday mornings was to oil the overhead main and counter-shaft bearings. There were wooden plank cat-walks with no hand rails above the shafts and bearings and because of the height above the floor and the whirling pulleys beneath me I would gingerly crawl from point to point much to the amusement of the old hands. But I became accustomed to the height and underfoot action to eventually sprint through the maze with the best of them.

Friday afternoons were sweep-up days and of course this was again my regular job. This involved tools of the trade, bristle broom, shovel and wheelbarrow. This latter is the point of this diversion away from steam engines. The only part of the barrow that was genuine barrow was the iron wheel. The rest was made from old ¾” inch pipe and the body consisted of a 44 gallon drum cut in half along its length and the resulting semi-cylinder mounted on the frame with much of its length ahead of the wheel. Thus, the wheel carried most of the load and the centre of gravity of the whole assembly was very high. Rare were the times when I made it to the out-door dump site without the outfit taking charge and doing a preview dump. Rather later in a works where I was employed they had created their wheelbarrow a little differently. In this mark 2 version a 44 gallon drum was cut about a third of its height around its circumference and secured on a frame well back from the wheel, in fact so far back that one felt that one was doing all of the work and personally carrying everything except the wheel.

TANGARAKAU STEAM 8




Many individual skills were brought into play on railway construction and coal mining projects and the associated communities. Men were identified for their judgement and expertise in rock drilling and placing explosives, tree felling, handling timber jacks, working with axes, adzes and hot metal forging. Rigging lifting tackle, locating coal seams and anticipating weakness in tunnel bores were other highly regarded skills. The village at Tangarakau maintained a resident policeman, a doctor, an Anglican curate, a small hospital and maternity home, a hair-dresser and tobacconist, two general stores, two dairies, a butcher’s shop, a post-office and a dance hall and picture theatre. One family from its premises conducted a fruit and vegetable shop, billiard saloon, household coal sales and delivery, general carrying and rubbish collection and disposal. In wet slushy conditions the means of transport was by horse and dray and when the roads were firm a model T Ford truck was used. The proprietor of this multi-functional business dispensed much goodwill and addressed every woman as “Mother”.

There was an excellent school headed by Mr Fairbrother. MA. (And don’t forget it). My most outstanding memories are my first lessons in French language and grammar, learning to play the flute and read music and exploring the riches to be found in reading. The school maintained an excellent library.

Some forty years later I journeyed through from Stratford to Taumarunui and stopped off in the area for a day. Gone was the abandoned orchard, the railway houses at Tahora now reduced to three, the one that we had lived in destroyed by fire. Our old school building moved to the opposite side of the road to serve as a contractor’s workshop. New classrooms and amenities had replaced the old one and its country toilets. The railway yards, station and goods shed with its close-by creek all there standing still in time. I followed the Tangarakau road to its junction with the Moki Saddle and Ohura road, past the clearing where the rail bending rollers had been, travelled the road that had once been the temporary rail bed, now widened with a good base of metal. I remembered the busy little 0-4-0 steamers puffing their urgent rhythms. Looked up at the well-established main line and the two tunnels and arrived at the Tangarakau railway yard, all quiet now except for the few daily trains rumbling through. The bush was cleared a little further back on the scarred hills. The dwellings, school, shops, hall, coal screening plant, engineering shops, loco sheds, construction railway yards all gone. I crossed the Raekohua stream bridge that carried the roadway to my old home, just an open field now. The main part of the old school building was now a farm store-shed with a more recent homestead close by. I crossed the timber truss bridge that lay alongside the railway bridge over the Tangarakau River and wondered over the site where the powerhouse had stood. The concrete floors of the coal bunkers, boiler and engine rooms still there as were the boiler and chimney foundations and the two concrete foundations on which the two Worthington boiler feed-water pumps had hissed and clicked. There too were the concrete beds and flywheel pits of the four engines that generated electricity and supplied compressed air. I saw that the area over which one of the engines discharged its exhaust was still stained with oil although nature was healing the scar. Sheep and fat cattle grazed over my old playground, I listened for the sounds of the past and was rewarded with a fitting sound of the present, a skylark trilling from aloft its song of life. On the way from Tangarakau to Ohura I drove over the Moki Saddle road, now a good metal surface that no longer climbs over the crest of the ridge but passes through a high arched tunnel. I stopped at the bottom of the saddle hill road where it enters the Tangarakau gorge and meets the river opposite the site where the coal mine workings had been. The backdrop of bush-clad hills was the same, but the vision of the entranceway to the mine, the powerhouse and the train marshalling yards all held in memory only. The bush had taken it back and the melodic calls of the resident tuis confirmed its tranquil isolation.

TANGARAKAU STEAM 7




By the time the coal mine had been working about a year it was decided to declare an official opening. A special excursion train of about twenty carriages was run from Stratford to Tahora; the locomotive being the usual “Ww”. At Tahora the engine and guard’s van were transferred to opposite ends of the train and the PWD Barclay number 514 was coupled on to lead the way for the journey to Tangarakau. This was a down-grade run and there was much conferring between the crews of the two engines before departure from Tahora. The arrangement was that the leading engine crew acted as pilots and gave hand and whistle signals back to the NZR engine crew who had control of the Westinghouse brakes. The journey accompanied by much hand signalling and whistles blowing was successfully completed. I did notice the smaller driving wheels of the PWD engine flashing around faster than was usual. What was a quiet lope for the bigger engine was a gallop for the smaller one.

At Tangarakau the day trippers inspected the coal screening plant and associated works, then those who had the fortitude boarded the coal trucks of a forty truck train for the four mile (6.5 km) journey to the mine workings. I too made this journey and noted some summer frocks and hats ruined by sparks from the hard-working little locomotive. After inspecting the first 15 chains (300 metres) of the mine that left its mark on summer footwear we travelled back to Tangarakau where those outward bound rejoined the NZR train which already having its engine at the business end departed for Stratford.

All of the PWD locos had their regular drivers thus throughout the weeks the two little 0-4-0s Numbers 531 and 534 took turns to work the passenger cars to Tahora to meet the morning and evening NZR trains and the Saturday night picture trains. They also worked special trains laid on to enable patrons to attend local sports functions. One Saturday a rugby match between Tahora and Tangarakau teams had been arranged to play at Tahora. The two carriage train headed by Fowler number 534 was set up to convey the Tangarakau team and supporters. There was no one on the train or indeed in the engine cab who was less than jubilant, this being aided and sustained by generous quantities of the good brown beverage of the day. With an excited squeal from the whistle the little loco frantically puffing bounded out of Tangarakau and just inside the first tunnel the leading wheels derailed causing the engine to slew across the track so that its buffers jammed against the sidewalls of the tunnel. The first carriage coming unhooked nudged into the side of the engine cab. Little damage was done and many willing hands well experienced in re-railing soon restored order and the journey continued in a more sedate manner.

The larger Barclay number 514 worked for several months on the ballast job and whilst it looked good to the casual observer it must have been feeling its age for it was dismantled at Tangarakau and the boiler railed out for repairs. A few weeks later it was returned all freshly coated with red-lead paint. The opportunity was also taken to fit new axle bearings and carry out other repairs. While it was out of service its duties were taken over by an ex NZR 0-6-0 “F” class locomotive.

While steam engines of all sorts were to be watched I did not take much notice of horses but there was one chaff burner that I enjoyed watching. He spent his days in company with a four-wheeled end tipping truck working in a cutting. He hauled a lot of spoil for a short length of fill for the approach to the north end of the Tangarakau River railway bridge. His beat was a well-worn track between the rails up a slight grade to the working face of the cutting. He wore a collar and harness but no reins. He would without guidance walk himself around and back up to the appropriate end of the truck to be hooked on. His signal to start was the clang of a shovel against the ironwork of the truck. At this he would start off and gain speed to a lumbering trot. Another clang of the shovel and he would ease up, the hook detached whereon he moved to the side of the track allowing the truck to trundle past to the end of the rails to dump its load. By the time the truck had emptied and the tipping body restored Dobbin would arrive turn himself around and back up to be hooked on and return for another load. His pay was a nosebag of chaff four or five times a day.