Memories 5


When I left school in the warm hazy summer of 69 (excuse the pun) I thought I had nothing better to do than be one of the beach boys and wander round all day on me bike or playing in the sea, well! Doris soon put an end to that! after being attacked a few times with the yard broom I thought I best get a job and placate the old girl, in those days the girls normally went into the factories and the lads either the mines or the shipyard, Dad got wind they were taking lads on at Bates Colliery so down I was hauled and in what seemed like hours I was having a medical and given a start date. It was like a walk in the park all us lads were in the underground training gallery at Ashington Colliery and we all thought this is fun, after the training gallery we all went back to out respective pits I was offered a place as a craft apprentice to be a mechanical fitter, I pounced on it and soon I was learning a trade, in the Bates workshops each apprentice would be alongside a trained mechanic for six months then move to a different one, I was put with Ernie Grand and what a delightful bloke he was, after his six month he took the foreman to one side and said leave that lad with me I'll teach him, so, I stayed with Ernie for all of my training and learned a vast amount and had quite a good time, one day I recall working on a 55 ton Barclay locomotive changing brake blocks but I couldnt get the brake block pin through the hole so I put my finger into the hole to see what was stopping it, now if that train had moved it wouldnt even have known it had taken my finger off, next I knew I got an almight bang on the side of the head and I was rolling down the workshop floor and ended with mylegs in the air against the workshop door. I looked up and there was Ernie looking down at me, he said "laddie never put your finger in any hole unless", well I best not there may be Ladies present. After I finished my apprenticeship I was moved to coal prep plant and didnt see as much of Ernie as I would have liked but made some great friends on the plant only know where one of them is now he lives about two hundred yards away! One day I was told to be present for brake testing at the coal drawing shaft and such a spectacular thing it was, the winderman took the brakes off and pushed the lever to send the cage down the pit all the way to the stops then as the 12 foot drum began to turn he got out of his seat and went to the door and lit his pipe, quickly you couldnt even see the drum turn it was going that fast The lilleys (speed governer) suddenly thought "hey this is going too quick" and put the service brake on sadly that little brake didnt have a cat in hells chance of stopping the cage, in the end the blacks controller (emergency brakes) said "Whoa enough is enough" and the huge brake shoes round the huge drum came on with such a bang and in milliseconds the place was full of smoke and the drum stopped dead, however you cant stop two and a half tons of cage so quickly and it stretched the one and a half inch thick steel cable about twenty feet before it stopped, calmly the winderman opened all the doors and windows and when the smoke had gone, calmy he began to reinstall his beloved canaries to their rightful place and sat back in his seat and signed the test certificate for the engineer, how cool eh

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