Developments at Bradwell

Tradewinds

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Ooooh!! I used to make very heavy duty reinforced PVC covers for the Flasks on bogies at Sellafield. They kept the birdshite off them.

Always enjoyed my visits there & did quite a lot of work for BNFL one way or another.
 

NUTMEG

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Thanks Pete, that was a real trip down memory lane...... I will post to the Ashford remembered Facebook page

Here is the shop next to the Nuclear build. I spent many a long hour there.
11990438_1040934992592378_5815864091017573386_n.jpg

That looks like 'proper' engineering does that :)
 

NUTMEG

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Slight thread drift. Am I alone in loving the smell of engineering shops? Cutting oil, swarf, and something I could never put my finger on. Then again, I love the smell of diesel and Stockholm tar and burnt two stroke mix.

Missus thinks I am odd. She may have a point.
 

pks1702

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It goes back to when we had "real" ,local jobs & skills passed down via "real" Apprenticeships to local lads

The days when apprentices were inducted with visits to the Stores for items such as Sky Hooks, Long 'Weights' and Tins of Striped Paint ;)
 

FullCircle

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The days when apprentices were inducted with visits to the Stores for items such as Sky Hooks, Long 'Weights' and Tins of Striped Paint ;)
Ha! I got sent to stores for a rubber hammer. Being a smartarse apprentice, I realised there was no such thing, and went round the back of the workshop for tea and a fag. I went back about 15 minutes later and told the foreman I wasn't falling for that old trick.
He beat me to a pulp, and told me to get my arris to stores and bring him back an effing rubber hammer sharpish.
I complied with his well reasoned request.
If you look carefully you can still see the scars where said hammer was used to correct my errant behaviour.
 

FullCircle

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That looks like 'proper' engineering does that :)
I used to put a 7mm longitudinal camber on those frames so they would be flat fully loaded. Nothing more than a long sight wire, chalk and a propane torch. Bet there aren't too many out there who can still do that. It took 4 months to get a sign off for that process.
 

Bru

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Ha! I got sent to stores for a rubber hammer. Being a smartarse apprentice, I realised there was no such thing, and went round the back of the workshop for tea and a fag. I went back about 15 minutes later and told the foreman I wasn't falling for that old trick.
He beat me to a pulp, and told me to get my arris to stores and bring him back an effing rubber hammer sharpish.
I complied with his well reasoned request.
If you look carefully you can still see the scars where said hammer was used to correct my errant behaviour.

That foreman was a bit thick, everybody knows it's a GLASS hammer!
 

UncleAlbert

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Spent 4 hours at the Apprentice Trade school stores whilst they looked for an open ended ring spanner, 3/8th whitworth, as I remember.

The had to work at double speed to make up the time lost to finish my squared off 2 inch block which then got thrown into the scrape bin after the instructor said it passed muster. How would today's yooff handle the disappointment and ignominy, I wonder?
 

Sixpence

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How would today's yooff handle the disappointment and ignominy, I wonder?

They cheat :D
Had an apprentice under my wing when I worked the shop floor at Baker Perkins, Peterborough. He was struggling with the colour coding number system used on the wiring looms, an electrician who struggled with that was going to find it hard on the shop floor later as it slowed work down too much. Gave the lad the job of sorting out a box of mixed numbers into their corresponding number compartment in the storage box. Sorting through that lot would have imprinted the number and colour into his head, so I thought. He came back fifteen minutes later with the box all sorted, only he cheated and threw the mixed numbers away, got new ones from the store and put them in the box, gave up on him then as there's no helping those that don't want to put the effort in.
Surprisingly, the shop floor looked pretty much the same as that photo, only we used to build all sorts of other stuff, like the hot cook extruder that kicked out funny little things with holes in them. Couldn't see them being wanted by the public back then, think Hula Hoops are quite popular now though, as for corn flakes, they look like yellow rabbit droppings before they go through the roller, great fun playing with the enrober though, used to take plain digestives in to test the enrober and the chocolate coating seemed to taste better just off the machine :encouragement:
Happy days
 

Tomahawk

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A friend if mine is on MDC. He said that the devvelopers have asked for a shopping list of things by way of development tax.

I think it would be very good if they build a new marina ...
 

Sixpence

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DavidofMersea

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Do they have cooling towers like that at a nuclear power station ?

Not usually, that is just Andy Blowers of BANNG scaremongering again. There was a half page spread from BANNG in the local paper a couple of weeks ago saying how dangerous the radioactive discharge from Bradwell was. Yet Andy Blowers was swimming in it, which makes it difficult for me to take him and BANNG seriously
 

Sixpence

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There's no pleasing some people, I'd have thought he'd be over the moon since the Chinese have promised that any dwelling within a ten mile radius of the reactor will have free electricity for the life of the plant, sounds like good compensation to me
 
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