The Night Mail

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

Ferrybridge power station had a couple of RR olympus engines for emergency back up but they would cost a fortune to run.

 

 

Hh i think you need to get Douglas to sign the official cake secret stash act

A friend who was an engineer there told me that the Gas Turbines were there for what they called a cold start with no power available from the grid at all.  The GT's started on batteries then produced enough power to fire up the coal crushers and then the boilers for the main turbo generators.  They had to practice the procedure every so often.  The crushers took a lot of power, turning 2'diameter steel balls as the pulverised fuel was only produced at the point of combustion and blown straight into the furnace.

 

Jamie

[Happy Hippo]

55 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Mmm i have seen reports of British armoured vehicles massing at Sennelager is this the jump off point for where hippo and bear dare

 

Which one is Broadsword and Danny Boy

 

No our jumping off point was a bit higher up

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Happy Hippo

[PhilJ W]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The Meteor was a Merlin sans supercharger, as it was felt that ground ops didn't require the extra power. 

 

Another user of the Merlin/Meteor was the Royal Navy  for some of it's MTB and MGB  as well as the boats for RAF air sea rescue

 

The big Fairmile D MTB  required four engines, all of which came from Packard.

Then they went over to diesels, including the Napier Deltic (which was a marine engine). The Deltic also powered this, although its not credited:-

 

 

[J. S. Bach]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Your cake is in the post...

And will arrive sometime in 2023!

[figworthy]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I can categorically deny that I keep any cake under landfill sites.

 

Never believe anything until it is officially denied !

 

Adrian

[simontaylor484]

Back in 2000 i hitched a ride from Abingdon to Ferrybridge as second man with a part from the coal pulverizing plant tranferred from Didcot to Ferrybridge c it was circular 10' wide and thick and weighed a couple of tonnes. Iuckily this was a friday afternoon i had the weekend at home i then had to go to Drax Power station and hitch a ride with one of the tankers we ran of Pfa to thermalite at Thatcham. That was interesting especially until the ash settled it was like liquid.

[Dave Hunt]

14 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I'm now looking forward to a complete breakdown of post war jets by our resident jet jockey................

 

That ought to keep him going until the new year.

 

The Hunter - lovely to fly but the cockpit was an ergonomic slum.

The Lightning - great performance but you were short of fuel when you climbed in.

The Phantom - a brute with some tricky handling characteristics but for its time a great piece of kit.

The Tornado F3 - we should have had the F15.

 

Here endeth Chapter 1.

 

Dave 

[Happy Hippo]

11 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

Back in 2000 i hitched a ride from Abingdon to Ferrybridge as second man with a part from the coal pulverizing plant tranferred from Didcot to Ferrybridge c it was circular 10' wide and thick and weighed a couple of tonnes. Iuckily this was a friday afternoon i had the weekend at home i then had to go to Drax Power station and hitch a ride with one of the tankers we ran of Pfa to thermalite at Thatcham. That was interesting especially until the ash settled it was like liquid.

I once had the opportunity to go around the Ironbridge Gorge power station (now demolished) and was fascinated by the ash extraction system which was a series of long metal rods hanging in the chimney. (It was more scientific than just that).  The rods caused the ash to fall into a storage area where it was then taken away for use in the production of thermalite blocks.

 

As well as being a useful by product of the time, the system was also very effective in limiting the pollution the huge amounts of ash would have caused.

 

However, the bit I really wanted to see which was the rail transfer operation, was not possible as there was no train in that day.

[New Haven Neil]

When I was being edumocated to be an engineer we had a behind the scenes tour of Fiddler's Ferry 2,000MW base load power station, it was incredibly interesting.  Yes, those pulverisers were quite something (a dirty part of the operation!) and the ash precipitators in that plant worked by electrostatically charged plates.  The boilers are 200 feet tall (were I should say) and the alternators cooled by hydrogen! 

 

It always amazes me how relatively small the turbines are, considering their output, there were 4 generators so that is something like 670,000 horsepower each.  There was also 4 gas turbine sets, the main purpose of which was to 'peak lop' at times of high demand, the could be on line in 2 minutes, I don't recall their output now, this was 40 years ago.  I presume they could also be used for a cold start of the whole plant as described earlier, didn't think to ask that at the time!

 

As a base load station it ran flat out all the time, and was actually in overload when I was in the control room, the gas turbine sets were being brought in to use.  We didn't get to see the rail operation either  other than at a distance.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by New Haven Neil

[jamie92208]

I got a conducted tourvof Ferrybridge C and saw all the operations.  At that time they still got a lot of coal by barge from Kellingley and the barge lift was incredible, like a large version of the old loco coaling plants, hauling 200 ton pans up, then inverting them, with a huge counterweight to keep the pans in place when inverted.  The coal crushers, 2 per boiler, each with 4 of the big steel balls, rotating to produce coal dust as fine as flour. As Neil said the 200' high boilers leading to the turbine hall, then the low pressure turbine, large, medium and high pressure turbines, gradually getting smaller, then finally a quite small generator producing 500mw of power.  The rail unloading was great to watch. The original MGR's never stopped as the doors were automatic operated by thi ks that looked like Daleks. As the last wagon cleared the shed the exit signal was already green and the train just pulled away. I'll try and fi d some photos.

 

Jamie

[simontaylor484]

Yes Jamie the barge operation was very impressive. A fully laden barge plucked out of the water and turned. Iirc it did feature in an episode of a touch of frost. As well as some action in flats on Ferrybridge square. The MGR operation whilst more interesting to me just didnt have thw same impact visually. 

It remember footage from the last really bad winter we had here the unloading apparatus on the HHA hoppers requiring gentle persuasion with 14lb sledgehammers as they were frozen solid. 

 

[Barry O]

I visited Calder Hall years ago. You could walk across the reactor room as part of the visit...

 

Best part was in the Generator room.. lots of polished brass and , if my memory is correct - a big "C A Parsons"  plate on each one.. always highly polished.

 

Baz

[tomparryharry]

19 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

A friend who was an engineer there told me that the Gas Turbines were there for what they called a cold start with no power available from the grid at all.  The GT's started on batteries then produced enough power to fire up the coal crushers and then the boilers for the main turbo generators.  They had to practice the procedure every so often.  The crushers took a lot of power, turning 2'diameter steel balls as the pulverised fuel was only produced at the point of combustion and blown straight into the furnace.

 

Jamie

 

I think you will lose a lot of calorific content if you don't use the pulverised coal more or less straight away. I observed the opencast at Blaenavon in the 90's and I thought it was pretty poor stuff. However, it was considered 'just right' for power station consumption. 

[Happy Hippo]

Well one bit of good news this morning was being able to arrange my chest x ray. 

 

I can have it on 11 Jan 21. A mere five weeks after speaking to the doctor.

[simontaylor484]

Coal was produced as what was known as nutty slack which were small chunks for power station use these were then pulverized to dust to be blown into the boilers where the dust would explode providing more heat yhan shoveling it in as per a loco

[Florence Locomotive Works]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I once had the opportunity to go around the Ironbridge Gorge power station (now demolished) and was fascinated by the ash extraction system which was a series of long metal rods hanging in the chimney. (It was more scientific than just that).  The rods caused the ash to fall into a storage area where it was then taken away for use in the production of thermalite blocks.

 

As well as being a useful by product of the time, the system was also very effective in limiting the pollution the huge amounts of ash would have caused.

 

However, the bit I really wanted to see which was the rail transfer operation, was not possible as there was no train in that day.

Many years ago my grandfather worked at Clarence Dock Power station in Liverpool and has told me about such devices. Clarence Dock used enormous chains rather than rods. More than likely they got them from Cammell Lairds in Birkenhead. They did of course have to be cleaned on occasion, when IRC they were dragged out on overhead rails on frames that they were mounted to, then vigorously shaken over Clarence Dock, presumably killing every single organism within. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Florence Locomotive Works

[TheQ]

15 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

The Hunter - lovely to fly but the cockpit was an ergonomic slum.

The Lightning - great performance but you were short of fuel when you climbed in.

The Phantom - a brute with some tricky handling characteristics but for its time a great piece of kit.

The Tornado F3 - we should have had the F15.

 

Here endeth Chapter 1.

 

Dave 

Pilots want to play top gun, what they got in the F3 was an armed baby AWACS.

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

Coal was produced as what was known as nutty slack which were small chunks for power station use these were then pulverized to dust to be blown into the boilers where the dust would explode providing more heat yhan shoveling it in as per a loco

 

I’d always understood that “nutty slack” was the general detritus of the sizing and washing process, unsuited to railway or power station use alike and having the sole advantage of being unrationed. 

 

It certainly wasn’t much use as a fuel, being notoriously smoky and producing little heat. It seems to have passed out of use in the 1960s, presumably as part of the drive for smokeless fuels and cleaner air? 

Edited December 24, 2020 by rockershovel

[tomparryharry]

3 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’d always understood that “nutty slack” was the general detritus of the sizing and washing process, unsuited to railway or power station use alike and having the great advantages of being unrationed, and produced in varying quantities from most, if not all collieries? 

 

A lot of 'nutty slack' never made it to the surface, being dumped into expired workings. The advent of long wall cutting solved that, when they took the lot.  The opencast at Blaenavon was very interesting, with some very low seams in quick succession. The miners here would cut two seams at once, leaving quite a bit of overburden. This was left behind.  

[rockershovel]

When we cleared the derelict chicken run and toolshed at my mothers, and replaced them with concrete coal bunkers in the early 1960s, the former coal shed contained a large quantity of accumulated coal dust and rubbish, some of it dating back to deliveries of “nutty slack” a decade before. 

 

It was fit for nothing as fuel, but we did use it for “banking” the fires overnight; a couple of shovels of  that, overlaid with the hot ash from under the grate, would keep the fire in all night. 

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

 

I think you will lose a lot of calorific content if you don't use the pulverised coal more or less straight away. I observed the opencast at Blaenavon in the 90's and I thought it was pretty poor stuff. However, it was considered 'just right' for power station consumption. 

The reason it went straight into the furnace was that coal dust is very explosive so it has to be used as it's produced. Coal dust along with methane was always dangerous stuff underground and theybused to have boards with stone dust on them suspended from roadway ceilings so that if there was an explosion the explosion front would be snuffed out by the stone dust.

 

Jamie

 

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Barry O said:

I visited Calder Hall years ago. You could walk across the reactor room as part of the visit...

 

Best part was in the Generator room.. lots of polished brass and , if my memory is correct - a big "C A Parsons"  plate on each one.. always highly polished.

 

Baz

I got a conducted tour there oneceay. A girlfriends father was a reactor manager. 

 

Jamie

[SM42]

On 23/12/2020 at 15:18, Happy Hippo said:

Douglas,

 

Bad boy!  You were told that little gem in confidence.

 

I heard he can keep a secret.

 

It's the people he tells that let him down.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Andy

[Tony_S]

We too had a few bags of nutty slack (for “banking up” at night delivered to our coal shed but I had to watch the coalmen empty the sacks as my mother didn’t want to be cheated by having nutty slack substituted for some of the regular household coal. I have no idea if crooked coalmen were a “thing “ or mild paranoia by Mum. 

[SM42]

2 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

We too had a few bags of nutty slack (for “banking up” at night delivered to our coal shed but I had to watch the coalmen empty the sacks as my mother didn’t want to be cheated by having nutty slack substituted for some of the regular household coal. I have no idea if crooked coalmen were a “thing “ or mild paranoia by Mum. 

 

 

If you lived round our way then you may have had a few bits of something not entirely unlike coal mixed in 

 

A favourite walk home from school past time was trying to throw stones into the hoppers they use for filling sacks at the coal yard.

 

It was  a reasonable chuck for a 10 - 13 year old.  A good 50 yards and a falling trajectory to clear the fence.

 

Andy