The Plant Room

By John Prince

Following on from my moderately successful first attempt at writing, (The Engine Room), having sold at least two copies! (Thanks Mum and Dad). Just when you thought it was safe to go into Waterstones’s! Or visit Amazon…. (If ever there was a hint)!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728355368

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© 2020 John Prince. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  11/11/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5537-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5536-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE.

Coming Ashore

TWO.

Welcome to Scotland

THREE.

Welcome to Ireland

FOUR.

Royal Mint ? Any Free Samples?

FIVE.

Landing Gear Down – Oops!

SIX.

My Machine Doesn’t Work

SEVEN.

I’m Cutting a Taper

EIGHT.

Welcome to Wales

NINE.

Do Not Look at the TV

TEN.

Finish with Engines?

ELEVEN.

Welcome Back

TWELVE.

The Great Flood

THIRTEEN.

The Plant Room

FOURTEEN.

The Ghosts

FIFTEEN.

Oh, No! The Sun’s Coming Up!

SIXTEEN.

Have You Got a …?

SEVENTEEN.

I’m Cold. Feel My Hands!

EIGHTEEN.

The Brown Carpet Affair

NINETEEN.

Those Bloody Seagulls!

TWENTY.

The End?

PREFACE

F OLLOWING ON FROM MY MODERATELY successful first attempt at writing— The Engine Room —I’m pleased to announce that I have sold at least two copies! (Thanks, Mum and Dad.) Just when you thought it was safe to go into Waterstones’s or visit Amazon (of ever there was a hint), I’m here to announce the topic for my new international bestseller (yeah, right), this time with American publishers, a similar anecdotal look behind the scenes at the somewhat forgotten side of the engineering service industry. I am talking about the service engineer.

Be it a humble vacuum cleaner, washing machine, or other contraption that needs looking at, there is most definitely an army of people who go around the British Isles and beyond to fault-find, suck air through their teeth, and at the same time synchronise the slow stroking of the chin, swiftly followed by the almost obligatory shaking of the head from side to side. Among various appliances or industrial machine tools, I will primarily concentrate on the latter.

Having said that, I will delve into my tank of ever-diminishing grey cells from time to time to recount various events that happened to me during my employment within the maintenance service industry. There is no intent to cause malicious innuendo, rumour, or conjecture should any reader think they were involved within the scenario or any incident that I may be describing.

Up there with the well-known cry of Are we there yet? must be the phrases, What’s the problem? What’s wrong with it? or How long are you gonna be? These are normally heard less than ten minutes after the engineer enters the customer’s premises). Those in the know will undoubtedly be thinking, That is so true!

Various companies that may get a cursory mention from time to time may or may not still be trading. I hope I did not contribute too much to their demise, but if companies are still going from strength to strength, no reward is required! Unless, of course, it is a financial one!

John Prince

F AST FORWARD TO 1988…, THE day began hot, sunny, and clear. The CS Alert had arrived off the coast of Africa. Senegal was to be my point of departure, which would draw the curtain over my career as marine electrical engineer. I said my farewells to my fellow engineers and other members of the ship’s staff who had very much become part of an extended family.

I had only about four hours in the hotel in Dakar, but I had to undergo a full six-week course of malaria tablets. Before I had left Southampton, I had begun the transition and was already trying to find the Holy Grail, a job shoreside. Finding the historical Holy Grail would have been easier than finding suitable employment—not dissimilar to situations today!

Having come ashore from my previous life as an electrical engineering cable ship officer, I scoured the local press to see if any worthwhile employment opportunities would leap out at me. Just as on previous occasions, I spotted a vacancy at a local machine tool company. The advert said that enthusiasm and commitment were more important than technical qualifications (up to a point), but full product training would be given to the successful applicant.

So there I was, standing outside a machine tool company at Chandlers Ford at Southampton. I was met by the service manager, John McAvoy. I was given a potted history of the company, a company imported from America, with a range of Wiedemann Computer Numerical Control (CNC) punch press machinery for the sheet-metal industry. It would be my task to install, commission, and maintain the range of machines that were supported throughout the UK and Ireland. As part of a team of only six service engineers, my territory was going to be vast to say the least!

On my first day, I was given the keys to the car in which I was to spend many hours. It was a comparatively new D-registered Datsun Bluebird 1.8 SLX hatchback. I was introduced to my mentor, a likeable bloke called John Light, whose dad, Gordon, also worked within the engineering framework but as the one and only mechanical engineer. Along with John and Gordon, Dave, Trevor, and Paul made up the rest of the team. As it turns out, John was shortly to emigrate to New Zealand, so I had to gather as much information from him as possible in a very short space of time.

My time with John began with a trip along the coast to Keyhaven to install a new machine at a company that made purpose-built furniture for the banking industry. Unlike a repair job, an installation has its own set of protocols. The air and electrics would normally be supplied by a third party, so that when the machine arrived on-site, a minimum amount of downtime should be expected. It depended on the amount of on-site training that had to be carried out as to how long the installation period would be, but usually two to five days would suffice. Installation of larger machines could take up to three weeks.

With every punch press, the basics are the same. The manufacturing process requires that holes of different shapes must be made in sheet of material before, say, it is folded or guillotined. The sheet is clamped to a movable beam over a roller table and positioned to be punched by a series of tools held in a carousel. After a programmed series of moves has been completed, the sheet—usually aluminium or stainless steel—is returned to the start position to be unloaded by the operator.

The typical date of manufacture of the machine varied anywhere between the 1960s to the 1990s. The main difference among these was the physical size of the associated control cabinets. To start with, there would be a cabinet the same size as, say, a typical triple wardrobe in a large bedroom. This control cabinet connected to the machine by means of a square piece of trunking that contained the associated wiring, thereby increasing the amount of room required for the installation.

By the 1980s, the machines had become fairly self-contained, and with a smaller footprint, required less floor strengthening. Every machine that arrived in this country came with its own toolkit, which included a set of tins containing the correct colour of paint to help the new owner keep the machine looking like new—when the operator had time (yeah, right) to use the touch-up paint.

As the reader may be of a certain age, I should offer some further explanation. I found myself having to load machine programmes using what can only be described as thin rectangular buckets. The fan-feed paper tape was fed from one bucket to another, passing between a cylindrical prism and a light source. There was a row of small holes along the centre line of the paper tape, and on either side of the sprocket hole was another set of holes that matched up, producing the required instruction which was input to the computer’s memory and stored until required.

If the prism was not dirty and was set correctly, the tape would zip through very quickly and come to a stop at the end. The machine could then be referenced after the hydraulics came to life. This meant that the programme had been successfully read and was loaded at the start position, enabling the machine also to be at its start position for operating.

However, if the tape did not stop, it signalled that you would have to re-load the tape back at the very beginning and start again. These were very long days. And not only that; if the machine was rather elderly, the paper tapes could well be stretched, and if any of the holes were even slightly elongated, a misreading would occur, and it would be certain that the tape would not stop. I was one of the few engineers who had a mini guillotine that could cut the paper tape. I could then apply pre-punched sticky patches