RB Lincoln Digger Factory
The City of Lincoln and the Ruston Bucyrus Excavator factory was where I would begin the first five years of my engineering career on the factory floor building the iron with men who quickly became my comrades and whose spirit and character became embedded in me forever. Both the main high No 2 Bay machine shop & No 3 Bay erecting shop no longer exist; razed to the ground for a modern style DIY retail experience. No 18 Bay at the other end of the works now provides a home for another engineering company with the remaining unoccupied bays almost all now pulled down to leave the site sad and desolate with not the slightest hint of what had once taken place there only a few years previously when 'hands on' manufacturing was at its zenith. No 22 Bay along with its big machine history demolished and the test field once throbbing with machine activity now stands lifeless.
KEEP ALERT
So! I hear you ask; what was it like working in a 20th century no computers no calcultors engineering factory. Follow me around and I'll show you things you would not normally see. Like the 10 foot diameted spur gear used on the 110/150 size shovel/draglines. You can see those and others being cut - but those teeth will draw blood in no time at all if you put your hands on them. Very Sharp Oh Yeah!. Covering a considerable part of the 50 acre site the works ran East to West along Beevor Street with the conjoined run of eighteen ajacent Bays stretching North from Beevor Street to the back yard at the South end. The two main bays were 80 foot high: No2 main heavy machine shop and No3 erecting shop. Both covered by a large expanse of glass under which the big machines were assembled. In August of 1959 at the North end a considerable number of 38 and 30 series draglines and shovels were being built while at the South end one of the recently introduced 110 series electric shovels was under construction and fighting for build space with 54 type machines. Also at around this time I believe ground was being negotiated for erection of what would be the last 'hand built' 5W walking dragline. It was without doubt 'JUST ONE HELL OF A PLACE TO WORK' and I say that with all due reverence. No1 Bay was also a machine shop but not equipped with as many of the larger machine tools and it was in No 2 Bay that apprentices found themselves placed to gain their first experience of the heavy side of engineering under their fumbling fingers.
Choosing to put my future there had been the right thing to do; the breadth of engineering practice covering so much more than would have been available in South Wales in any of maintenance plant depot, railway company workshops or coalboard facility. Even when considering the steel works the scope of things would not have included anything like the handling of large gears and casting or the variety of asembly work that was involved at RB. The Railway headquarters at Swindon were steam engines and of no interest, local plant yards would be limited in scope and in the 1960's were nowhere as numerouse or as large as they have become today. I had made the right choice.
Front drumshaft clutch assembly
Left hand swing clutch for 38RB
