The increasing
demand for tubular-sheathed heating elements, both for industrial
and domestic use, continued after the war, and manufacture was therefore
transferred in May 1948 to a new and larger department in the Mosley
Road works. Time-saving assembly methods were brought into play, and
the weekly production capacity increased from 5000 to 15,000 single
elements. Many of these are for assembling into boiling plates and
grill boilers, of which over a million have been sold since 1932.
Other
sections moved over to Mosley Road included mercury arc rectifiers
and other vacuum plant, distribution and instrument transformers,
and small switchgear with their corresponding office staffs. The
various sections of the publicity department were brought together
for the first time, and the organization of exhibition stands
and production of cine-films were resumed on an increasing scale.
Some
steel fabrication work, principally on large condensers, evaporators
and feed heaters, was transferred in 1948 to Stockton-on-Tees, an
area where suitable labour was available. Here a partly built excavator
factory, the Bowesfield works, was acquired and completed, providing
a floor area of 110,000 sq. ft.
Small
turbine manufacture was moved to one of the West works extensions
originally intended for switchgear. Control board assembly, which
had been on K aisle for nearly fifty years, took over the remaining
space, thus bringing nearly all switchgear work together again and
allowing control gear to spread over most of H and K aisles. The
manufacture of radio and electronic control equipment continued
to occupy West works 4, 5 and 6, and railway signalling equipment
was added to the products of this area.
These
removals enabled much more room to be given to the manufacture of
steam turbines and large electrical equipment in the main works,
and it became possible to meet not only the exceptional demands
immediately following the war but also the needs of a growing electricity
supply industry overseas. The whole of the floor space under the
giant cranes in B and D aisles is now used for machines of the largest
size, and 'dynamo test' has been enlarged by the construction of
a new pit measuring 30ft x 14^ ft x 16 ft deep and the addition
of a 2500-hp driving motor; some two miles of high voltage cable
are now installed.
For
jet engine and gas turbine development, which began in 1938 with
the first machines being built and tested in the main works, a special
test house was built at Wincham in Cheshire. By 1944 however a new
factory in Barton Dock Road, Trafford Park, had been built and equipped
on behalf of the Government, and it was taken over by the Company
for gas turbine work after the war.
The
manufacture of welding equipment was moved in 1946 to the Leonard
works, and the electrode section was designed to produce two-and-a-half
to three million feet a week. The engineers, drawing office and
sales staffs moved over in the following year, thus bringing the
whole department under one roof.
|