An Unknown Machine in an Unknown Park in North Woolwich
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
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The Mystery Crane!
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Hi Jago, I love all your videos and I was interested in this "Icogni" thing. However, it appears it's not available in Australia.
I tried Incogni and found the service very good. However, I cancelled as I wasn't able to apply it to multiple email and physical addresses (something they plan to change in the future).
The cancellation was amazingly simple. The refund was quick and they continue to keep me updated on the status of the data removal they had already initiated (seemed strange at first, but makes sense).
I don't often recommend large businesses, however in this case the service sold was good (though not quite for me) and more importantly the cancellation service was amazing.
Also they choose some pretty fantastic channels to sponsor.
The idea that the council had to deal with an abandoned crane on a bit of waste ground and stuck it in a park because it was interesting looking seems believable , it is something I could see happening.
Bath Council had a similar idea, dumping an old repainted steam crane on a housing estate
Wouldn't it be more viable to sell that crane for scrap?
What the hell _is_ that thing? Better put a park around it to be safe!
@@UrbExGear not if you care about old machinery, preservation or history. Once it’s scrapped for a few paltry quid it’s gone forever, at least here it’s surviving. Just.
Makes me with cranes in my town's old port were slapped in the middle of roundabouts....
A thoroughly uplifting episode.
I see what you ...
It was for a maternity ward. Smaller babies were delivered by stork but the heavier ones need a crane.
You should be on the stage, there's one leaving in an hour.
This channel has me hooked
@@MarkUKInsects get out 😂
OpenStreetMap has been updated, the park is fully mapped. As a map nerd (and open source/libre software professional) this makes me very happy.
i.e. someone saw this video, and went and updated OSM 😀
came here to check for OSM updates :)
Looks good, but it is an anchor short, the one in front of the crane next the two benches.
Google Maps still doesn't show anything though.
@@andyjay729 Google Maps often doesn't. I spent a whole summer completing Google Maps the bicycle infrastructure in my council area in Sydney, and six months later they trashed the lot, along with a tonne of useful crowdsourced data all over the world, just because a couple of dickheads made a joke with an Apple facility. I don't expect pedestrian or cycle data to be complete or helpful in Google Maps at all these days.
Archimedes and Ara, the two boats in the video, have subsequently been rescued and acquired by the Rothen Group, canal contractors based in Atherstone, and Archimedes is now back working again after some significant restoration works. Another 87 year old boat doing what it was designed to do.
OMG! That's the old gardens that used to sit bankside of the old BT International satellite earth station which was located on the corner of Factory Road and Pier Road. Prior to BTI developing the site it was originally the Henley Cable works. That used to be a well kept garden and was a lovely place to spend a lunchtime.
Belter of a vid Jago. I wonder if said crane was used to move cable reels about in the works that Sally has mentioned?
I remember the Earth Station. Why did it go? is it something to do with the lack of telephone calls people make today.
I think you might have solved the mystery... we know Henley Cable works had a small track-running cable-crane run on what is said to be a Brunel-Gauge...
a Pathe Video for April 2014 has images of it at work (it's a little hard to tell, due to poor lighting and quality, but, it does look fairly similar)
@@hublanderuk BT's London Teleport, their 3rd UK Earth Station. Improvements in technology and increasing use of internet communication has reduced the need for HUGE dishes so they sold both London Teleport and Goonhilly in Cornwall and now only have Madley in Herefordshire. Jago could do a video about it. 🙂
@@hublanderuk Nowadays transatlantic phone traffic is more likely to travel via cable than satellite. BT's terrestrial microwave links were nearly all replaced a long time ago.
My grandfather worked in Burntisland shipyard (closed 1968). They used small self propelled steam cranes to move sheets and semi complete parts around the sheds (very like those in the photo), to and from the stock area (mostly open to the elements) and so on. The major work being done by much larger cranes around the proto ships themselves. In Burntisland, the self propelled cranes ran on standard gauge meaning they could get move a mainline truck containing stock into the yard and unload at whatever place was deemed appropriate. (I spent many an hour on summer holidays growing up watching the yard at work) Quite possible, I wou;ld guess, that your boy here could have been used for similar duties.
This is probably standard gauge, too. "About five feet" is almost exactly half way between Irish broad gauge (which is 3" wider) and standard gauge (3.5" narrower). I've no idea why everybody's got the idea that the crane's built to Irish gauge.
@@beeble2003 H&W's famous link to Belfast possibly. Our railways are the same gauge as the Republic of Ireland.
@@markwright3161 But this railway isn't in Ireland. It's in London. It would be crazy to make the yard's railways incompatible with everything else in Great Britain, just because the company was based in Belfast.
@@beeble2003 I understand that. I was just suggesting what some of those people might be thinking as that's the bit you mentioned not having an idea on. They might join dots like this; H&W - Belfast - Belfast/NI supplier for equipment - supplier's equipment built to local gauge before exporting to their yard in London.
I agree that it most likely is standard gauge because that just makes sense in GB. You'd have a whole bunch of parallel lines and extra shunters otherwise, but not everyone will think about that. There's at least 1 person who commented that they thought H&W might have bought these cranes in bulk in Belfast to the local/NI spec, so Irish broad gauge, then transported them to their other yards/docks.
@@markwright3161 Yes, somebody suggested H&W bought a job lot of cranes but that just doesn't make sense for a dozen reasons. If this crane isn't standard gauge, the reason will be the stability of the wider base, not "We decided to ship a crane across the sea from a place whose railways are incompatible with everything else here."
Great Video Jago. I am a local (to that area), and most round here call that little strip/viewing platform/stairs to the foreshore, 'The Anchor'. The crane is almost certainly H and W, Because there are so many other monuments to them in the area. The Massive entry gates to their yard are just down the road in Lyle park. There are a couple of bits of old H and W machinery in Royal Victoria Gardens and others dotted round the area.
I am local (to an area)
@@GilesWendes Well done
@@gilldanier4129 thanks!
The amount of b-roll you managed to shoot of one crane is truly impressive! :)
Haha, that was my thought as well. I clearly need to push beyond my boredom limit with regards to b-roll filming.
Someone from the crowd was complaining about existing of sponsorship as "they are YT premium users"... For starters we should all support Jago in his struggle to make income even if that means we should listen to the message of some sponsor as Jago is very creative. As a maij dish, Jago could read the list of ingredients from weed killer concotion and I would enjoy it immensely, and for dessert - our payment to YT goes to... TH-cam!
Jago doesn't see a penny from that pile
Great content as usual...
+1! I don't think I've ever skipped a Jago crafted sponsor; he's a unique talent 👍🏿
See Google's support page on this (comment gets dropped if I link. I searched for "who gets money from youtube premium" and it was the first result).
In particular: "If you're a TH-cam Premium member, you won't see ads, so we share your monthly membership fee with creators". IOW, no, I'll keep fast-forwarding thanks.
EDIT: long spiel about how I hate advertising yada yada yada, removed to avoid wall-of-text.
I agree. I'm a premium user (and very occasional contributer to the Jago Fund) and while I find the in-video ads annoying I can skip through them easily if I'm not interested which I can't do with the TH-cam's own ads. People like Jago with ads are better than no people like Jago.
@@PeterGaunt Ad blockers completely remove TH-cam's ads (which is precisely why advertisers pay video makers to put the ad inside the video).
Jago. If your measurement of the gauge is reasonably accurate then it could be Irish standard gauge, so the crane could have been brought over from Belfast when they opened, or part of a bulk order for both British & Irish yards.
That sounds plausible.
True, but the H&W yard was the other side of Victoria Gardens and Ferry Pier,
I mentioned that theory above as I had not seen your comment. Yes, quite feasible.
That sound plausible. It would be 5'3". I think 5'3" is 3/4 of 7'.
If his measurement of the gauge is reasonably accurate, it's almost certainly standard gauge, not Irish broad gauge. Standard gauge is 3.5" narrower than "about five feet"; Irish broad gauge is 3" wider. It's overwhelmingly more likely to be standard gauge, since then the cranes can run on the same track as every almost other piece of railway equipment in Great Britain, including the incoming deliveries to the yard.
Makes me sad too I fondly recall the station as a museum and preserved steam railway . Back in 1980s I was involved in a video and photographic project documenting the area so I have lots of photos of industrial dereliction
Sadly Stothert and Pitt who were based in Bath no longer exist but they did build many cranes for the old docks along the Thames and luckily examples of their cranes can still be seen on the harbour side in Bristol
..and Freemantle, Western Australia!!
Also have a stouthearted and pit rail crane at the Tasmanian Transport Museum. Australia.
I was fortunate to visit S&P's Bath factory with my Father who was an Inspecting Engineer at the time. He was there to witness acceptance tests of one of their modern cranes - this had a system to allow the hook to follow the vertical movements of the ship being unloaded, and it was tested using a 'see-saw' platform driven by an electric motor! Fascinating stuff, and very sad that they no longer exist in Bath. The area where their factory was has been very nicely renovated by the council and is a pleasant area to walk through nowadays.
In the early 1960s, my father's ships were regularly dry-docked in Brigham and Cowan's yard in South Shields (now a housing scheme). They could be there for up to 6 weeks at a time and we'd visit him and stay on the ships at weekends and a crane very similar to this was used around the drydock walls. It was self contained and steam powered and I remember seeing and hearing it being flashed up every morning around 0600. The noise was something similar to the old Ivor The Engine kid's programme sound track. Happy days, now, we're in and out of the drydock in 10 days or less + a couple of days floating repairs, then back to work, spending the next month putting the engine room straight again and fixing all the new problems created by the yard!!
My brother (who is one of the people who built the Canary Wharf LR) and is a traction expert says that this is a multi-purpose crane--a little crane that can be lifting thin boats one day, and catfood the next--it's a go-anywhere, lift anything crane. He says it is missing not only the cab, but also the engine--those gears are far too big for a little steam engine. He also seems to remember that when they were building the development that to get past planning they had to have land for recreational purposes, greenery etc etc. When the whole thing was built the green bits fell into disrepair. No doubt somebody once cut a ribbon to open it with a comically oversized pair of scissors, never to go back. I'm amazwed it hasn't been melted down for scrap.
It looks like it's on Google Earth in the same spot since at least 1945, you can just make it out on the German reconnaissance photos. Looks like it lives where it worked.
Got a link to that?
@2:09, the canopy supports are beautiful. I hope Newham council is not allowing the church to take too many liberties with the lovely old station building.
There was a turnstile for the trains behind the station. Well the the remaining pit I think now ?
@@ianmaddams9577 - Turnstile for the trains? How do they climb over them?
My father was an apprentice at Harland and Wolf's yard in North Woolwich. He said they did ship repairs, built small vessels and built ship's engines.
I don't do cookies or surf-shopping so no one is getting my data. The fact that I have a leather clad dungeon with recorded screams available day and night, where I indulge my passion for whipped cream and kippers is my affair and no one else is going to find out. Ha!
BRB adding “Shared interest in industrial dereliction.” to my CV under ‘Hobbies’.
My guess is the crane is from the wharf that stood on the site, and the park as a whole was part of BT's London Teleport site that was just over the road, all part of the docklands enterprise developments in 1984.
Old Ordnance survey maps show the wharf where the ferry pier is now was a 'trav crane wharf', with rails running across the road into the ale stores, and aerial photos in 1928 show both that wharf and the one where the park now sits have similar (if not the same) small cranes on rails (with wooden cabins atop). The rails across the road seem to have gone by then, but the ale barrels and more are still stacked up with small boats waiting.
'Just over 5ft, so broadly correct' Love it! 😄
Yes, about 5 ft. I bet is is actually 1600 mm, or 5'3", especially given the likely link to H&W, a company with Irish operations.
@@JulianSortland Note that standard gauge is also "about five feet". It's only half an inch farther from 5ft than Irish broad gauge is, and it makes _much_ more sense for that track to be standard gauge. There are huge disadvantages to not using the same gauge track as basically every other railway in Great Britain, and almost no advantages to using the same gauge as your other shipyard 300 miles away on a different island.
Fascinating! My father worked at Harland and Wolff shipyard in North Woolwich from 1939 to 1942, right through the Blitz. He’s no longer around to answer your questions but your hypothesis seems entirely reasonable. Could one reason for the lack of documentation lie in local government boundaries? North Woolwich was a small exclave of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich until 1965, when it was ceded to the new borough of Newham. It is possible that the files about this park disappeared around that time.
Curiouser and curiouser, indeed an intriguing tale. I reminds me of a crane featured by Martin Zero on his TH-cam channel, that also stands in lonely isolation (Up North).
Thank you Jago for this video and to those that commented, both humorously and serious.
Best wishes from Oxfordshire.
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but the old main gates from the Harland and Wolff yard now sit in Lyle Park just along the way in what I hope is still a lovely rose garden.
No one has yet! Maybe I should visit.
I loved this quick look at an obscure piece of machinery. In my hometown, there is a grain tower which still stands at the site where a railway used to run through. The railway yard and the train station were very close to this granary and it can be seen in photos from the 1890s. I wish that my town would do something to memorialize the former existence of the railway since it established the city in the late Victorian Era.
Haha, it is so recognizable that when you start filming some infrastructure/transit for a video, you end up in the most random places! for me, those are things like: a parking garage in Amsterdam or a random road in the countryside near Kijfhoek. But this crane and this whole park is very strange indeed...
I was thinking the base is far to small for the crane to lift much at all until I realised the drop-down gizmos on the corners weren't to secure it in situ but to anchor it to the rails when it was lifting a job.🙃 Thanks for sharing this piece of early engineering.
A video about a mystery crane has certainly raised the standards.
Yes. Truly uplifting.
You need a video about a mystery flagpole to truly raise the standard...
There's also a 4-bladed ships' propeller 30 yards further past the crane, according to Satellite View.
Harland and Wolff were further upstream at the entrance to the King George docks, this may be a hangover from the STC works that were on the site or any of the other industries that were there, but probably not H&W…..
As you say Newham Council may of just had it kicking around and thought this was a good place to put it, being industrial landscape and all that.
Great film as ever Jago,
Cheers
I was about to say 5 ft 3 inches is the Irish gauge (also Victoria state, Aus.). So H&W may have brought its equipment from Belfast. Another possibility when finding weird guages is what happened in New Orleans. When the streetcars were put in, people feared the tracks would be used to move cargo through the city by the railways, so the gauge was required to be larger than standard gauge to create an incompatibility with the general system.
Well done to Yorvik Prestigitator who updated Open Street Maps within an hour of this video going live
The maritime museum in Rotterdam has a fantastic collection of dockyard cranes of all types, from the small to the massive. Some are still in working order, iirc. They may well have something like it, or could be helpful in general.
My memories of exploring North Woolwich decades back was that there were bits of trackway everywhere, often bits just left in roadways where they were too much effort to dig out when the rest of the track was pulled up. The area had a plethora of industrial works, most long since bulldozed away and they used all sorts of gauges. My suggestion might be to wander around the backstreets, maybe with a vintage 6 inch OS map (local libraries can print you a copy) looking for bits of 5 foot gauge track - especially by the dockside, broader gauges often being used for dockside cranes. That photo at 7:26 looks a very feasible location.
It's only "about five feet". Note that standard gauge is only about three inches narrower than "about five feet".
Both the underframe and machinery deck are steel castings, with large sections bolted together. No welding apparent anywhere on the machine. If you do see a weld on a machine this old, it will be a later repair. Welding took a long time to develop to the level that it could be trusted. Consider how long boilers were still being riveted. Boom is riveted, a bit too early for welded booms.
Although the crane is compact, the massive gears imply that it had a fairly substantial load capacity. Broad gage wheels gives a more stable base for lifting to the side. Power input was via the large fine tooth gear on the starboard side, could have been a steam engine originally, but easily converted to gas engine or electric motor.
Travel components are visible both below the base and on the machinery deck.
I'd like to state for the record that there were several of these cranes in Thorne, near Doncaster, at the canal barge yard. They were for building and repair of barges, not ships. On some canals, they were also used for loading and unloading of wool and cotton, and sometimes coal and other fuels as well as materials for barge building. I've seen them being manoeuvered by hand; several men on either side would push the crane towards the wharf and then back again when the work was done. Before I moved away a decade ago, several of the cranes were left as reminders of the industrial history of the canal wharf that is now in the grounds of Doncaster University.
Jago uploads a video which points out something is missing on OSM, 20 mins later, the entire thing is mapped... :P
I really thought that this video would be sponsored by Surfshark! That sponsor read was hilarious though, Jago!
Questions answered, or not… it's great to document this stuff. Thank you!
On the Disused Stations website I saw a 1916 OS map which showed a jetty where the approach road to the free ferry pier now is. Pier Road was called Stanley Road in those days. The map shows a track running from the jetty into the Victoria Ale Store. The jetty bears the caption "Trav Crane Jetty". Could this be the crane we're wondering about now ?
That’s an interesting possibility.
I wondered if it was a jetty crane, they often were rail mounted and the gauge could be random.
Nice. I used to go down to the satellite-dish-filled "BT London Teleport" which was there in the 1980s-1999 and that little park bit was just between that and the river. I think that the crane was placed there by whoever it was who (GLA?) built the new dual-carriageway onboarding ramp to the ferry as "landscaping". I remember being excited by the "no explosives" road sign there which I had never seen before.
th-cam.com/video/c95eoKiDmEw/w-d-xo.html shows the construction of the new piers. The north pier was build on the spot of Fosters' jetty, which had a very very similar (if not THE) crane on it. The video shows Henley's jetty still in place in 1966, that's where the small park is now. Henley also used a similar crane but with a longer jib as far as I can make out.
I love the term "our boy"!!
The explanation to why joey filled a bathtub with margarine is a video I'd pay to watch
Well the answer is obvious: He couldn't afford butter.
So spreadable, it's incredible.
@@stephensaines7100 : His real problem is the toast-hoarding. In three bedrooms, floor to ceiling.
Joey was a slippery character. He was cunning enough to slide out of many a tight spot.
the lolz
The moment Jago said "it is not on OpenStreetMap", I thought: "now it will be"
Sorry about the margarine bath. I just like it Ok. No need to kink shame me in public
If you don't spread it about we won't either.
Maybe he was just buttering you up 😆
As Mr Spock would say "Fascinating, Captain!". It looks like the sort of crane that all sorts of industry would have used. The local steelworks in my home town had this sort of thing in the past. You're probably right in that it would once have been steam powered, but has lost it's vertical boiler and, if it ever had one, its cab. The Harland & Wolff suggestion is interesting, and if your measurements are correct, could it have come from their Belfast works? After all, the Irish gauge is 5 foot 3 inches - very near your measurement. No idea who built it though.
Always enjoy your video's, Jago. I can't help with the crane but would comment that the canopy at North Woolwich Station had started to become unstable when I worked at the museum. After a snowfall in the early 2000's we came in to find one of the horizontal beams sagging, so had to get it shored up with accro's. Lack of maintenance funding and eventual closure by Newham Council meant that it fell into further dereliction.(The Council did not own the building but staffed and 'maintained' it). The stanchions are not 'railway' and were erected some years after the building had been refurb'd by the LDDC and opened as a museum. They are actually from old Victorian school playground shelters that had been salvaged during demolition, in fact they don't match! These had been stored for sometime at the Council's former Folkestone Road depot in East Ham before erection at the museum. Keep up the good work
Interesting! I assumed they were GER, since they resemble the ones on the Central Line’s eastern extension.
I just checked Open Street Maps and the area you showed is now showing much greater detail. Maybe someone at OSM saw this video and got straight to work!
Love a good detective video. I'd watch more about unusual industrial objects. If you chose to make them, of course.
This...
So would I. 👆
I have now visited North Woolwich and measured the track gauge for the crane. I'm fairly sure it's 5 feet 6 inches - possibly a little more, but certainly no larger than 5 feet 6.5 inches. It's definitely not standard gauge (4 feet 8.5 inches), nor Irish broad gauge (5 feet 3 inches). It is compatible with Spanish and Portuguese broad gauge, but I'm doubtful that a machine built for that part of the world would have been relocated to the UK. Instead, I'd agree with other commenters that the wider gauge was used to provide better stability for the crane, and hence the crane tracks were never intended to be used by main-line rail vehicles.
Having studied the film as intently as I am able, there appears to be a large gear wheel on one of the two carrying axles beneath the chassis. At some time, then there would have been a driving mechanism; either a chain or other gears, linkerd to an engine on the rotating superstructure. My guess is, yes, it was once steam powered, but the boiler and cylinders have been removed.
Edit: The shaft that goes down thru the center pin to the travel is out in the open at 4:18. Still not sure how the horizontal shaft connects to the main mess of bevel gears.
There is a big band brake on the port side for the hoist drum, but no other brakes visible, the crane would do well on level ground. No sign of friction clutch for the hoist, apparently a jaw clutch. The set of 3 bevel gears at 3:25 do have a pair of friction clutches for swing and possibly travel and boom hoist.
The crane can lift heavier loads by clamping itself down to the rails, but it can't travel when clamped down.
Previous: Somewhere in that mess of bevel gears on the deck is a shaft that goes down thru the center pin to the mess of bevel gears under the chassis for propulsion. From the angle of filming, it's a bit hard to identify which is which, since there is also an offset vertical shaft that drives the swing gear. The mating gear is inside the base circle, rather than the more common case where the big gear is on the outside of the base circle.
Seeing the hybrid bottle screw type "tie down" to the rail ( 8:12) I first thought they were council installed devices to stop the displayed crane rolling away or to prevent somebody putting the crane in their pocket and walking off, but a close look at the design and attachment points looks like it was designed to assist the cranes stability and lifting power during use by physically holding it down to the rail bed. Ingenious design... looking at the two halfs of the rail head clamp and attached drop ring. Great video as usual.
I love this new series of "I haven't got the foggiest but I'm here now so let's just get on with it".
The park would have been built as part of the flood defences along with the Thames Barrier, Barking Creek Barrier, Dartford Creek Barrier and the walls and embankments that join them. So likely the GLC would have placed the crane there. You might have more luck with Newham library services rather than the council in general.
Newham have cleared their libraries of local history, and replaced it with old ladies porntr in gujarati (translated Barbara Cartland?)and computers
I think you should do a video on the foot tunnel jago! Love the videos thank you
The crane might have not moved very far at all. In the image "EAW005314 ENGLAND (1947). The Standard Industrial Estate alongside the Royal Albert Dock, North Woolwich, 1947" on Britain from Above, you can see a wharf where the park will be with a small crane very similar the the one in the video (you need to login to zoom in).
Next time you want to measure something like this, use your feet. Place one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, between the two rails, and count the number of feet you need (including a final fraction), then compare you shoe to a ruler or tape measure when you get home.
Wasn't that for platform lenghts ?
@@LeoStarrenburg Understanding the reference there ...
And English size 10 mens' shoes are almost exactly 12" long. How convenient, if you use Imperial measurements!
@@john1703 And don't forget three times the length of the first joint of your thumb for the three inches!
@@marionbloom1218 I am by no means oversized digitally, but the first joint of my thumb appears to be one and a half inches, so at least one of us would get seriously off target fairly quickly were we to attempt to apply our own personal rule of thumb whilst mensurating.🤔
At 5:38, the Harland and Wolff document shows a vessel named Cyril Kirkpatrick being launched.
Cyril Kirkpatrick (later Sir Cyril Kirkpatrick) was the Chief Engineer of the Port of London Authority from 1912 to 1924. During his tenure, the King George V Dock at North Woolwich was completed, and opened in 1921. He subsequently was the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1931 / 1932.
Sir Cyril went into private practice as a consulting engineer in 1924; and Sir Cyril Kirkpatrick & Partners continued until 1954, when it amalgamated with another consulting practice, Scott & Wilson, and subsequently was known as Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners.
One of the most significant projects of Sir Cyril Kirkpatrick & Partners was the supervision of the construction of the thirty-three “Phoenix” concrete caissons used in the Mulberry Harbour operation following the D-day landings in 1944.
I joined Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners in 1967 in London, and now work in Hong Kong.
I had a walk through a town centre park today. Saw quite a few anchors, actually, pissed as a handcart at ten in the morning. The sort of anchors that see Buckfast tonic wine as a breakfast option.
Fascinating video. Ransome and Rapier's crane factory was near Ipswich docks, until Robert Maxwell took it over, sucked all the cash out of it, and closed it down. There are nasty flats where it was, of course, and an area near the railway spur was carefully landscaped, with benches, and lights, etc., and then abandoned. Must have cost thousands. I took a wander down there before Christmas, and it was still unused.
@brianartillery And isn't that retail park near Warren Heath called Ransomes? There's a large Sainsbury's and a John Lewis Home there. I didn't know Robert Maxwell had owned Ransome and Rapiers. And didn't Ransomes make lawnmowers as well?
@@aprilsmith1166 Same root, but different companies. Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies made lawnmowers - I believe they still make them at a part of their once vast site on the old Felixstowe Road - I did security work in the 1990's on Ransomes Park, which had been their works. They had had blast furnaces on site, as there was glassy blue slag all over the place. They also had their own rail spur, as had the nearby Crane's foundry. When I was there, it was being seriously downsized, with a serious feeling of kenopsia about the place.
But yes, two vast works at opposite sides of town. The swing bridge over the lock in Ipswich docks was made by Ransome and Rapier in 1904, if I remember correctly. Still works perfectly.
The 'park' that you are refering to could possibly have been constructed in the early 1980's, around the time that North Woolwich station was closed and turned into a station museum. During that period the Thatcher government were setting up a lot of local enterprise schemes to help massage the dreadfull dole figures. Many projects were embarked on utising local labour and resourses. North Woolwich was in an awful mess ( I know, it still is) and the H&W site needed cleaning out to help pave the way for the new London City airport. I worked in the area at the time and I do recall a lot of work going on in the vicinity and this is possibly when the park was created and the crane moved there. This is only a suggestion based upon memory and we all know what happens to your memory as you get older!
North Woolwich station didn't close until well into the Nineties when they wanted the railway for the Jubilee Line extension. So they ended the North London Line at Stratford instead. I was certainly using it in the mid to late 90's when volunteering at Newham CAB first at North woolwich then at Silvertown,
This would have been the era of the YTS initiative so many unemployed local school leavers might have found themselves working this.
After seeing this,. I somehow feel like I am being held up in the air. Maybe I am being lifted up by Jago's mesmerizing wit.
It is most likely a Harland and Wollf yard crane. Probably this type was used in pairs to move boats the size of small canal boats or equipment etc. The reach and tonnage they have (2 tons easy) is enough to move this kind of boats in a pair and get them in and out of the water. The power source is usually a mounted small steam engine, in this case it would have been on the right side. Remarkable that the brake is still there. Old photographs by Harland and Wollf show many tracks around the boats they have on shore.
Although an empty narrow boat of the type made here weighs about 11 tons empty of everything.
Back in the late 90s, there were two or three derelict saddle tank locomotives dumped on some waste ground near there (nothing to do with the erstwhile North Woolwich railway museum). I don't know what became of them.
This was so fascinating! If you ever figure out who put the park there and why please share with us. :]
As soon as you mentioned Harland and Wolff, the gauge of "about 5 feet" suddenly made sense. 5ft 3 in is the Broad Gauge of Ireland's railways (and Victoria and next-door South Australia too). So is it a crane built by Harland and Wolff themselves in Belfast to match the Broad Gauge tracks they would have used in that city?
Builders' plates too often get nicked from old machinery unfortunately.
Standard gauge is only half an inch farther from "about five feet" than Irish broad gauge is. Why is everyone assuming that it's Irish broad gauge?
Industrial Archeology 201-Sherlock Holmes,London edition! Crane school! Definitely steam powered, later diesel?? Interesting???Thank you,Jago,as another excursion into a side line,that most people would pass by,as banal!! Thanks 😊!
I'd put my money on a Thomas Smith (Rodley) electric drive, something like their #615
hold my beer, im off to Woolwich. Ecellent urban exploration Jago, what a strange place!
Fascinating. A pity this fascinating park is not being looked after though.
@Piers Lindley Hopefully there's a guerilla gardner watching this video who will be inspired to tackle it!
there were hundreds of these little steam cranes around the UK working small docks, canal wharfs and many industries, gauge isnt an issue with some as they ran on isolated track inbetween the edge of the water and the SG track, some of the piers on the Thames had cranes running on isolated tracks at the end. a wider gauge gives better stability
Curious and curiouser.
The crane that appears in Martin Zero’s TH-cam video is:
The Mount Sion steam crane on the Manchester Bury Bolton canal. Still sits where it spent its working life.
According to Google Maps this area is called 'Crane on Rails Park and Garden'. As to the origin of the crane, I have no more idea than Jago.
There's a fair bit of industrial dereliction in that area. Even more than when I was at uni over that side of town 😞 But there are really swanky pads going in now, so I shouldn't complain, but I will.
As to that crane - it appears on Google maps of the area, just to the west of what appears to be the biggest plug in the Eastern part of London, or even the Northern part of of Woolwich.
...there's a pair of anchors in the park. i laughed. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
classic Jago, funny without being....great video again
That calling out of Steve in the ad really threw me, for I am a Steve, and felt called out.
Really interesting topic! I feel a need to check out this undeclared park now, see the crane for myself. Also never knew H&W had yards on the Thames, so this was educational as well as entertaining.
There's usually a lot of bottles, cans & little gas canisters laying around there. It's a secluded little spot out of the way, might get busy some nights.
I tried several variants to post the 3-D model that Leo Starrenberg talked about, still no luck, will try another couple variants later on. It's a beauty.
What an interesting mystery you have on your hands here, Jago! I’m very intrigued and the knowledge gap is immense.
I used to catch loads of bass there many years ago when i lived in east London . Never thought i would see that on video pier road if i remember rightly .
Could the track be 5'3". That would be Irish Standard Gauge and may have originally come from the Belfast yard where is quiet possible that was gauge used ?
...excellent observation sir! 🙂
Thanks for sharing another really interesting video, Jago. I'll have to remember to check out this location and the crane and anchor, the next time I go cycling in North Woolwich 🚲
If your phone estimate of the rail gauge was approximately 5ft then some historic link to Harland and Wolff may fit the bill. Ireland's railway gauge is 5ft 3in so H & W bringing an underused crane over to their yard in Woolwich from Belfast would make good sense to perform various tasks.
Looking at a 1940s online map there seem to have been, at one time, a steam ferry running from that very spot.
Agreed. Was thinking 5’3” Irish standard gauge.
Irish broad gauge is three inches wider than "about five feet"; standard gauge is 3.5 inches narrower. Standard gauge is much more likely. It's very hard to believe that H&W would build their yard railway infrastructure to be incompatible with everything else in Great Britain just because they had a couple of spare cranes 300 miles away in Belfast.
North Woolwich is kind of isolated from Woolwich isn’t it. Which I find it very interesting. And when the North London Line once served North Woolwich before it was removed and is now part of the Elizabeth Line and DLR.
And I do remember going on the Woolwich ferry once. Still the ferry is operating today.
“Because we share an interest in industrial dereliction….” Come to Derby. You’ll love it.
Also, Frog Island in Leicester.
I visited Derby regularly in the early nineties when it was still clinging onto the huge Victorian factoies by the station. Just five years on, they were gone. Not even a decorative door frame left to show what was there.
@@chrisoddy8744 You're not wrong!! Know it well!😂
Cranes in the London dockyards may be pretty huge, but the ones used by Woolwich Arsenal along the explosives wharves aren't. The rails would run along or out the fingers of the wharves and allow munitions etc to be swung from the docks to the lighters and visa versa. Lighters weren't very tall vessels as they only had to manoeuvre the river and docks to moored ships etc.
A friend of mine has examined a few of the Woolwich docks and some areas of the arsenal itself which has been in Operation since the 1700's.
Fabulous investigation into the part of the overlooked London, admittedly I have travelled through North Woolwich, although I did live in East Ham at the time and was working on a research project for UEL before the Olympics, but as it was a sociology project it comprised of lots of closed questions and didn't pay enough for me to be traipsing around Woolwich in the dark, rain and wind, so I gave it up after the first week of seven...
No idea about the crane, sorry...
I cycle past this park several times a week but have never noticed it before! I reckon the Harland & Wolff explanation sounds the most likely. That area must have been so much different back then. P.s. the ferry was running fine today, with a 2 boat service 🙂
Can you measure between the inner faces of the rails please?
Some very similar looking dock cranes at Gloucester old docks.
The park east of North Woolwich old station is Royal Victoria Gardens, on Albert Road. 5ft gauge is interesting. It was the original gauge for the Eastern Counties Railway (forerunner to the Great Eastern Railway) line to Bishopsgate, and I assume the Port of London Authority Railway might have shared the same gauge at one point in its life ? When LNER 4472 / BR 60103 "Flying Scotsman" steam loco visited North Woolwich station, in connection of the opening of the railway museum, they had to remove the chimney off the steam loco, in order for her to clear the roof of Silvertown Tunnel (now Connaught Tunnel) and it is pure conjecture on my part, that maybe a small crane was required for dismantling and re-assembly. That is my guess, but if I am wrong, it is a good rumour to start, and you heard it here first ! No, seriously, it is probably of maritime use.....
Excellent video - amazing how a trivial find can lead you down interesting byways!
You might want to submit your riddle to Nicola White, mudlark extraordinaire and local to that area. She has a fairly successful youtube channel, and a trove a historic references and contacts about everything Thames related.
I can see that I will have to follow Nicola on YT
@@a11oge Yeh, her channel is generally very good. I like the way she splits her posts into two - one devoted to finding stuff and the next to her cleaning them upp and discussing them in her workshop.
@@PeterGaunt Yes. I was pleased to see that she discusses and investigates her finds. I have now subscribed
I don't know but I used to live in the area until 2 weeks off a year to the day since I left London for good - but your two options are Royal Albert Dock which had rail down both sides (until very recently which City Airport have presumably now torn up), taken from there and put down because muh docks. Option two, and I suspect more likely, is what you spoke about - the area where Thames Barrier Park is would seem to fit. It has to be one of those two, and yeah, because they use big cranes doesn't mean they don't also use smaller cranes for moving things around in the yards and whatnot; it could have had some more general use in industry on a similar note but in the area.
There used to be a plaque right by the crane explaining the area, obviously no longer there but try the council they must have put it there when they made it in to a park, used to sit in there for lunch when working on the cross rail project
I'm thinking this could be for some super heavy industry. My, limited access to such places, is that yes you need really heavy lifting, But also slightly less heavy stuff, then stuff not so heavy, right down to small hoists and something one man can lift. A bit like the Siphonaptera poem. Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to biteem, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
@MarkUKInsects Wow! That is spooky! I've known that poem for years but only learnt it's actual name a few days ago and now here you are referring to it! I love spooky coincidences like that! It's a bit like that six degrees of separation thing.
You are very probably right in it being a Harland and Wolff crane.
In a photograph of the Harland and Wolff canal boat yard you can see rail tracks going alongside all of the craft in production, and in a photograph of the Themis under construction it is possible to see part of a similar crane alongside it.
The ship building yards on the thames had ancillary suporting companies. One was the Manganese Bronse and Brass Company my grandfather worked for. Ships propelars was one product. They actually cast the propelars for the Queen Mary, Ihave a souvenier ashtray in the shape of a propeler
From its 'styling' imma guess it's a Thomas Smith-made crane of Rodley, Yorkshire.
It IS self-propelled; Note at 03:29 the arrangement of gears under the frames.
They're clamped and keyed to the axles and will have been driven by a bevel gear via a drive-shaft through the dead centre of the turntable.
It also looks like it may be missing a 'shelf' off the back which would have been at a slightly higher elevation and which would have held the boiler.
Such 'shelf' would, like the rest of it, have been an iron casting and would have had the boiler water tank as the lower part of the casting.
Such casting would have acted as the counterweight, probably giving a lift capacity of @ 3-5 tons (imperial).
It's not a Grafton, cos on them the large flywheel was invariably on the RH side. It may be a Coles, but the large A-frame isn't usually one of their features.
Of course, there were many other smaller builders of cranes, and it could be an absolute obscurity lost to time.
Jago, you are the Zed to my Zee. This crane caught your eye and now it lifted all of our attention.
Sadly I don't have more information about that crane, but Gloucester docks has several more complete examples in place, see the link to the photo site: www.alamy.com/stock-photo/gloucester-docks-crane.html?sortBy=relevant
That's weird, watching this video, I said to myself 'there are a few of those at Gloucester docks'! Haven't been there for years but remember wondering exactly what they were for, as they are patently too small for unloading cargo from ships!
"The 7½ ton steam crane on the North Quay is a standard Leeds type built in 1944 by Joseph Booth & Brothers of Rodley" - Gloucester docks website.
Neato piece for sure. To my eye it looks like a little dock loader for small to medium barges of dry goods. Probably maxed out at eight to ten ton lift by indicator of the track anchors. Most likely driven by a five horse steam single vertical engine if not a smaller twin. Beyond that it's marvel anything is left of it, from elements exposure, vandals, and nerdowell scrappers nicking off with things bolted down or not.
If for nds were not a problem, time a friend, and location ideal. It would be neater still to see it as it would have been when it was running up and down dock side.