Waddamana !

[THYLACINE]

A trip into the remote highlands of Tasmania to a de-commissioned power station now a fabulous industrial museum.

[THYLACINE]

And here's the connection I was hoping to find.

[hilldweller]

By the time I worked for AEI (Metro-Vicks) they were no longer producing any instrumentation at the Sheffield Works. I was under the impression that metering equipment was always produced at the Trafford Park Works. The last illustration seems to be a maximum demand meter although they normally couldn't be reset by hand.

From the early days, the Attercliffe Common Works concentrated on traction equipment. I understand that large guns were made during WW2. They also made magnetos and tachometer generators at this time.

In the old gear shop was a very long centre lathe, never used in my time, and I was told that under steel plates in the stores department floor, was a very deep pit furnace for heat-treating long gun barrels.

In my time we made traction equipment from milk-float motors to main-line locomotive generators/alternators and motors.

We also made a lot of equipment for the M.O.D. Things like tank turret and gun elevation motors. These had very long thin armatures to provide low inertia and fast automatic gun training for the Chieftain Tank.

We also made Amplidynes which were rotating motor-generator sets with a fast response, they were the interface between the low power electronics of the day and the turret motors.

When I went back to an open day, years after I left, they had set up a little department to repair damaged tachometers again, 'so presumably the Trafford Park facility for them had been closed.

All gone now, how very sad

HD