The Good Old days eh ! I think not .

I passed a factory last week and remembered  doing a job there .     Long since changed ownership  , it was the Cheney factory years & years ago, making luggage locks, suitcase hinges  stuff. 

Trying to keep this concise  & not boring everyone .     It is typical  of what happened back then .   I was apprentice at a huge  B,ham contractor   , massive workforce  ,  car plants , Longbridge  , Oxford ,   major new build contracts  .     

So a working  foreman , two sparks , two apprenttii   working on new build , Nuffield Hospital.       Supervisor turns up on a Thursday ,   will you all work the weekend at this place ,  a new transformer is arriving on Saturday as a replacement .    That was about all we were told  , typical for the time  . 

This sums up the  mis-management  , lack of foresight , nil  H&S    etc of the time .  

We all turn up , theres a guy to open the premises ,   we waited about two hours , fetched sarnies from the cafe .                A flatback truck turns up with a 5  ton , oil filled transformer ,  11K    to 440V  .    All phone calls to our  office  go unanswered  , no one there.      No lifting equipment on site or on the truck . 

Unbelievably  looking back ,    we found crow bars ,  built a wooden ramp , the truck was 2 ft higher than the loading bay , and somehow we go it onto the deck  , I remember the truck leaning sidewards at a scary angle .    

We had to remove the axle bar & wheels from the existing tranny  , fit them , start to  pinch  bar the tranny  6 inches at a time  into a corridor ,   remove several big double swing doors  & eventually got it outside the  internal sub station .   

We fitted it next weekend as I remember ...I remember having spanners on string in case we dropped them into the oil when connecting .   

As an apprentice I had no say in complaining to the office , I believe our foreman made his feelings known , that we were dropped in it .    H&S rules were about 20 yrs in the future I'd think  but getting that monster off a truck by hand was madness really . 

You're lucky to have those memories 

In 30 years time people will be reminiscent of working in coffe and sandwich shops 

I remember once climbing a 160ft radio tower.  We had all our tools on string for that, because if you dropped one, you would probably never find it, if it hit someone it would kill them, and it was a long way down to get another tool.

ProDave said:

I remember once climbing a 160ft radio tower.  We had all our tools on string for that, because if you dropped one, you would probably never find it, if it hit someone it would kill them, and it was a long way down to get another tool.

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You 've reminded me of an anecdote  from Bob the Breakdown .       I worked with him at two different firms  then did all his installations when we were all self employed .   Before I met him  he worked for a large building contractor in the city on electrical maintenance  .      

They phoned him for a call-out on a Saturday , to a tower crane  .    He,s taking the missus out shopping so they detour to this site .    Missus  sits in car waiting ,  glances up at tower crane  ,  9 million feet high  to see Bob the Breakdown doing , what to him was a regular  thing ...... crawling out on the jib  to reset some sort of safety device .    

She had no idea he had to do that as part of the job ....the air was blue and she insisted he left ....hence he came to where I worked at the time .   

The radio tower thing was not for work, it was a hobby thing.  This is going back 40 years now.  Our safety equipment was we each had a borrowed BT pole belt, and 3 of us went up the tower.