Mechanical Staff Exchange or "Snatching"

[fishplate7]

This link has been up before but you never get tired of watching it! For those interested in the art of mechanical snatching this is the best bit of video I have seen on it to date. Follow the link below and start at 2.24. It features a youthful Patsy Bolger, signalman in Enfield handing up the staff/pouch to the driver/snatcherman of a down 121 class. The next sequence, which shows mechanical snatching in operation is shot in Maynooth. Imagine what Health and Safety would say about all this today!! There's a lot more interesting stuff on this video too! Hope you enjoy it!

 

http://www.euscreen.eu/play.jsp?id=EUS_524B0F1DFF9D4311A5271797E7849D5E

[Mayner]

Great video, its interesting how rapidly 1970s state of the art Connolly CTC panel became obsolete while there is relatively little change in civil and mechanical engineering practice.

 

From a heath and safety perspective I would have more issues with CIEs workshop and laboratory practice than the staff snatchers. Workers were exposed to significant risks in the workshop and the laboratory footage, there was no risk to public safety while mechanical exchange was in use at Enfield and Maynooth the stations were closed and the signal man is in his cabin.

[Dhu Varren]

I had a cab ride in an MPD set, circa 1959, from Derry to Belfast, during which there were a number of token exchanges between Coleraine and Ballymena, at speed, using tablet catchers. Quite spectacular close up.

[leslie10646]

Eamon

 

Thanks for putting that up.

 

Back in the mists of time, the NCC steam engines had the Manson tablet catcher as a standard part of their equipment. I still remember a footplate ride on a 2-6-4 tank on the main line in the mid 1960s - the fireman, having placed the tablet in the catcher and swinging it out - planted his foot on it to make sure it was steady as possible as we exchanged at over 50mph! H&S eat your heart out.

 

Of course, there are plenty of tales of the tablet being "dropped" - or to be more precise - flying off into the long grass!

 

Leslie

[minister_for_hardship]

Workers were exposed to significant risks in the workshop and the laboratory footage, there was no risk to public safety while mechanical exchange was in use at Enfield and Maynooth the stations were closed and the signal man is in his cabin.

 

Add to that the widespread use of asbestos in insulating coaches at the time.

[Mayner]

A railway works was not the healthiest of places to work, all traditional railway work had a history of industrial deafness, lung diseases and work place cancers which were basically accepted as part of life up to modern OSH legislation in the 70s & 80s

 

Rail is one of the safest means of travel, but the railways by a large had and to a certain extent still have a poor worker safety record and culture

[minister_for_hardship]

A railway works was not the healthiest of places to work, all traditional railway work had a history of industrial deafness, lung diseases and work place cancers which were basically accepted as part of life up to modern OSH legislation in the 70s & 80s

 

Rail is one of the safest means of travel, but the railways by a large had and to a certain extent still have a poor worker safety record and culture

 

Read a book on North British Loco works once (which had some Irish interest in the NBL "might-have-been" offered to CIE)

 

Some toe curling stuff on completely deaf boiler-makers and a charming little story about a lad involved in assembling loco frames...instead of putting any sort of tool in to check if the holes were lined up, he put in his finger. Frames moved momentarily and you can guess the rest.

[Broithe]

Some toe curling stuff on completely deaf boiler-makers and a charming little story about a lad involved in assembling loco frames...instead of putting any sort of tool in to check if the holes were lined up, he put in his finger. Frames moved momentarily and you can guess the rest.

 

I worked in a fairly heavy factory until the mid '90s. Quite a proportion of the older chaps had bits missing. I used to get criticised a bit for generally having my hands in my pockets, but it was a policy to avoid accidentally putting one down in the "wrong place". I had a few near misses, but emerged largely unscathed.

 

An 80 tonne generator frame fell from a crane, seconds after my boss had walked under it. He was on record for criticising people for 'wasting time' by waiting for crane loads to pass.

 

We had the added excitement of high voltage testing going on yards from the factory floor, with 'interlocked' doors that didn't even close properly, never mind the fact that the interlocks never worked in the whole time that I was there. On a fine day, there could be up to 750 kV flying about.

[jhb171achill]

That is ghastly - the sort of thing you'd expect in a Dickensian novel. Lucky more didn't die.

[Broithe]

That is ghastly - the sort of thing you'd expect in a Dickensian novel. Lucky more didn't die.

 

It was, like most British factories, a pretty Dickensian place, it was still covered in flaking camouflage paint from the war.

 

We never actually killed anybody, more by luck (and personal awareness) than judgement.

 

We once (accidentally) fired a thing about the size and weight of a car engine out through the roof, in the direction of the West Coast Main Line that runs past the factory. First thing was to make sure it wasn't on the tracks, which it wasn't (phew!)- but, we just never found it. It didn't seem to have come down in the works and I climbed over the fence of the factory across the tracks, to an area where new cars were stored at the time, expecting to find a flattened car. The ground was quite marshy and we presume that it just went in and buried itself somewhere - it's a 'retail park' now and I wondered if we might find the bomb squad called when the old place was knocked down and the new tin sheds built, but nothing turned up - I often wonder where it is...

[jhb171achill]

 

We once (accidentally) fired a thing about the size and weight of a car engine out through the roof, in the direction of the West Coast Main ...

 

 

Curious...... What was the "thing"?

[Broithe]

Curious...... What was the "thing"?

 

A circuit breaker head, a development version of this sort of thing, mounted at a 45° angle - so, when one side of it came to bits, it disappeared out through the roof. It would (presumably) have landed wherever it did before we could get outside to see what had happened to it.

 

[h gricer]

Great video fishplate, just looking at the broadcast date 14th November 1979, 37 years ago this week, a time snap from another time.

Regards

hg