{"id":7884,"date":"2021-03-12T20:41:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T01:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7884"},"modified":"2021-03-12T20:44:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T01:44:41","slug":"episode-280-demoliiton-of-massey-ferguson-rescuing-line-shaft-pulleys-killed-and-maimed-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7884","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 280 DEMOLIITON OF MASSEY FERGUSON: RESCUING LINE SHAFT PULLEYS (KILLED AND MAIMED WORKERS)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE 280      DEMOLITION OF MASSEY FERGUSON:   RESCUING LINE SHAFT PULLEYS<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
March 2021<\/div>\n

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ARNOLD \u2018RED\u2019 SKEOCH\u2026TIRE BUILDER<\/div>\n

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DAD MADE TIRES LIKE THESE IN 1920\u2026LATER HE MADE THE BIG TRUCK AND TRACTOR TIRES.  PROUD OF IT.  SKILLED TRADE.<\/div>\n

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Why was I so interested in those line shafts hat were being ripped from the ceiling of the Massey factories in 1980?<\/div>\n
 A legitimate  question.  I ask myself the same question once <\/div>\n
in a while.  Why would anyone want ro spend<\/div>\n
days and weeks high on ladders unbolting ancient wooden laminated pulleys that would never be  used again.<\/div>\n
The answer?  My  dad was a factory worker\u2026a tire builder.   He spent much of his working life beside the swift moving belts<\/div>\n
that ran from line shafts in factories  across the industrialized world.  He did not make farm machines.  He made rubber tires.<\/div>\n
  Rubber tires made for the passenger cars of the 1920\u2019s.   He  was a very tough<\/div>\n
man\u2026a proud tire builder\u2026member of a skilled trade. <\/div>\n

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Natural  rubber was needed big time.  It still is needed\u2026both an aural and vulcanized rubber.  From the Amazon rain forest came this peculiar gum upon which great swaths<\/div>\n
of human society would ride.   Rubber tires,  initially solid rubber then the pneumatic tires..  The story of rubber <\/div>\n
is too large for this sidebar\u2026.suffice it to say that rubber tires in the 1920\u2019s had replaced Iron and wooden wheels on farm machines<\/div>\n
as well as trucks and  automobiles.   Today rubber is taken for granted\u2026not talked about but it is worth <\/div>\n
remembering that those huge four engined  jet passenger planes could not take off or land without rubber\u2026natural rubber.<\/div>\n

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Dad never said much about his work when we were little kids.   When asked, however, he did say<\/div>\n
a few things about the line shafts on which all manufacturing depended.  <\/div>\n

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\u201cWere those line shafts dangerous, Dad?\u201d<\/div>\n

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\u201cBloody  right they were dangerous.  Do you really want to know?”<\/div>\n

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  Around 1919,  After dad got back  to Ontario from a winter on the prairies living and bedding<\/div>\n
down 16 horses in a barn\u2026no farm house, no people, jus 16 horses…after that experience\u2026dad welcomed the switch  from a rural to<\/div>\n
an urban life.   The motor industry was booming.  Cars and trucks needed  pneumatic rubber tires<\/div>\n
so dad became a tire builder.<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat did those factories look like, dad”<\/div>\n

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\u201cOur factory in Guelph was powered by belts running off a line shaft.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cLine shaft?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cA long piece of thick rounded steel rod with pulleys of various sizes bolted to the rod.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u2026and  the rod revolved via a belt looped around an electric motor\u2026or a seam engine in early factories.  Bloody dangerous.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDangerous?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI saw a young man killed on a line shaft.  It was not pretty.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cIn order to shut a machine down there were two choices.  First<\/div>\n
choice was  to turn the motor off but then all machines would<\/div>\n
shut down because the whole line shaft would not be moving.<\/div>\n
Companies did not like that.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSo, what was the second  choice.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJust shut one machine down;\u201d\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHow?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThere was usually an  idling pulley right beside the drive pulley. If<\/div>\n
the belt could be edged over to the idling pulley then just that machine<\/div>\n
shut down.  Often there was a lever that could gently move the big belt<\/div>\n
from drive to idling.  I am not sure why the guy decided to push the<\/div>\n
belt by hand.  No one knew why he did that.  In an instant his arm slipped into the<\/div>\n
drive pulley and his body was wrenched up and around the line shaft.  By the<\/div>\n
time the motor was shut down he was dead  as  a doornail with some body parts<\/div>\n
detached.\u201d<\/div>\n

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Now was that story true?  Had my mind magnified the story?  Never totally sure so I looked up lineshaft accidents<\/div>\n
on the internet.  Seems that many workers got their body parts severed on revolving<\/div>\n
pulleys attached to line shafts.   Do so yourself.<\/div>\n

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Dad did not stop there.  He had  a more chilling story about a new employee<\/div>\n
at Dunlop Tires Corporation \u2026 I think the Whitby plant.<\/div>\n

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\u201cSome guy took a short cut across the rubber rolling machine\u2026he came<\/div>\n
out the other side flat as a goddamn pancake.\u201d<\/div>\n

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A much shorter story that may or may not be true.  I believe it.  The week dad retired<\/div>\n
Eric and I asked if we could visit the factory. We wanted to see how dad spent his working life.<\/div>\n
We got the royal treatment from the<\/div>\n
executives and the foreman.  Dad was busy making truck tire.  Seemed a little odd  for Eric  and I to be escorted <\/div>\n
around the White plant while our father was slapping heavy belts of rubber\u2026vulcanized rubber.. onto a<\/div>\n
spinning machine then carving the rubber into a tire.   Dad was always in good shape physically<\/div>\n
because tire building needed strong men..  He grinned at us as we passed his  work station.<\/div>\n
His clothing was spartan\u2026a sleeveless T shirt and belted  work pans.  Nothing for the<\/div>\n
spinning machine to grab.  No jewelry.  <\/div>\n

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 If I remember correctly we also passed by the long<\/div>\n
rubber rolling machine.   We did not take that short cut that made pancakes our of<\/div>\n
rubber workers.  Dad did not want Eric  or me to become tire builders.  Why?  Take a  guess.<\/div>\n

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An artist’s sketch illustrating a line shaft powering many machines<\/div>\n

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A more complicated line shaft powering real wood working machines.<\/div>\n

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Some line shafts  in the Massey Ferguson factory.   Awaiting rescue.   These I was able to reach using a step ladder.  Shaky job but<\/div>\n
I had no worries.  Superman.<\/div>\n

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Now these beauties were another matter\u2026they were 20 feet in the air.  Impossible to reach.  Well\u2026not quite\u2026!<\/div>\n

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IN the back of my mind were the stories dad mentioned so casually about those early line<\/div>\n
shafts.   Wouldn\u2019t these things be needed for horror moves?<\/div>\n

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Note the bolts.   Once removed carefully the pulleys spill into two parts which I then revolted back together.   <\/div>\n

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Most of the time I was absolutely alone in a building that had not been touched by the wrecking ball.  The  wrecking was going on<\/div>\n
in other Massey buildings.  Where I worked there was no one around. Some buildings I could even drive my<\/div>\n
truck into for fast loading.  Some of these pulleys were so big that even when bolts removed the two halves were a bit of a problem getting from<\/div>\n
the ceiling to the floor and then into the back of my truck.   Wouldn\u2019t the big pulleys be grand  show pieces for a movie.  I felt elated by both <\/div>\n
the challenge of  recovery snd the prospect of a bit of profit.<\/div>\n

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You can get some idea of just how high the line shafts were in this factory room.  So high up as to be invisible.   Then I fount the gantry.  <\/div>\n
(Unsure if this is he right word\u2026gantry)<\/div>\n

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Yet the real beauties (if a mineshaft pulley can be  called a beauty)\u2026yet those grand pulleys were way beyond reach.  Twenty feet up.  So I wrote them<\/div>\n
off.  Then by a quirk  of fate I discovered an abandoned gantry on wheels….  A set of movable stirs with a small platform at the top\u2026on<\/div>\n
wheels the size of dinner plates.  So for two or three visits to the factory i was high up in the air liberating some grand pulleys.  They were oily and<\/div>\n
dusty\u2026messy job\u2026  have time to wash at school before class.<\/div>\n

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In the end I managed to get about 30 or 40 of these pulleys.  <\/div>\n

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Guess how  many have been used  on movies sets between 1980 snd 2020?    You got it.  None.  Not one goddamn pulley.   There was joy in the getting.<\/div>\n
That was good enough for me.  <\/div>\n

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MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO A RUBBER TIRE BUILDER\u201d   ARNOLD \u201cRED\u201d SKEOCH<\/div>\n

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DAD   and his fellow retired rubber workers  met annually at the Royal York Hotel.<\/div>\n

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EPISODE 280      DEMOLITION OF MASSEY FERGUSON:   RESCUING LINE SHAFT PULLEYS alan skeoch March 2021 ARNOLD \u2018RED\u2019 SKEOCH\u2026TIRE BUILDER DAD MADE TIRES LIKE THESE IN 1920\u2026LATER HE MADE THE BIG TRUCK AND TRACTOR TIRES.  PROUD OF IT.  SKILLED TRADE. Why was I so interested in those line shafts hat were being ripped from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}