A Personal Memoir - 5

Large Steam Turbine Large Layout

Bldg. 273-K20

I had job transfer requests in for toolmaker or layout upgrades. On August 11, 1975 I was transfered to large layout, first shift, in Building 273, Bay K-20 in Large Steam Turbine. On the large iron layout table the men worked in pairs. The ostensible leader of the day group was Ed Burch, a lean man habitually smoking a pipe and bearing a remarkable likeness to the artist Norman Rockwell. On arrival Ed sternly told me that they were not inclined to train anyone in the art of layout and I had better have the qualifications for the job. Of course I had no idea of the history of the problem. On second shift they had a man who had been promoted into layout from being a "sweeper" which they considered an insult to their craft. I assured Ed of my GE apprentice and various machining backgrounds. It turned out that Ed, and quite a few turbine machine operators, had come from the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) when the company closed operations. Ed eventually told me of his ALCO apprenticeship (I had applied to the company myself in 1947 - thankfully they and the Mica Company on Broadway had turned me down). His education, more broad than GE's, had included pattern making and casting theory.

One of our main jobs was to lay out the joints of the turbine outer shells for drilling. The rough machined castings were set up on end on the table, extending some 35 feet in the air. We had an electric hydraulic table that would lift us into the air to do the upper layout. In the mean time there was usually an outer or inner shell on the table set up on jacks on the joint. These castings were from the foundry where they had burned off surplus material from the joints - supposedly ready for rough machining. We had to level the casting, crawl inside and check all the pads, joint and surfaces for stock - filling out forms with the amount of stock (or deficit). If short, unlikely, it went to welders to build it up or, with more material than allowed, LSTG engineering would meet with Foundry engineers to ask for more money to machine the surplus stock. Ed Burch always went to the meetings with our "proof" reports except for one occasion. Ed was out and I, over my protest, was sent to the meeting. There was an ECPD engineer that I was friendly with from my previous job and there was my shop manager who wanted me to verify vast amounts of extra stock for extra money from the foundry. I found it very embarassing (and they never asked me again).

To do layout in the shop we had wheelbarrows to carry our tools, tram sticks and white calcimine water paint to paint on the castings for layout. We were constantly called to the welding area in the front of K Bay to check if the welders had added enough material so machining would "clean-up". To make a good weld on the steel alloy castings they had to be heated. So I would enter the casting, joint up, step onto the fiberglas blanket to protect us from the blistering heat, and paint the surface to be layed out (with a cloud of steam from the instantly drying paint). The major "fly in the ointment" of this operation resulted in the glee of the chippers and grinders who ground the welds for us. They perversely ground off all "defects". I say perversely because they removed every prick punch mark in the area - which were our reference points for layout. You could depend on having to re-layout the casting from some reference they had fortuously overlooked - sometimes having to re-layout from the bores, a very laborious process. No amount of complaints ever had any effect. For a short time an apprentice was assigned to our group and she was to accompany me on my rounds. She was a small, pretty girl whom I have no idea why management accepted her for the machining course (I suspect it was the "diversity" urge) and she later moved on to an office position. In the meantime it meant a lot of catcalls and harassment whenever we had to go to the welding area.

We were also responsible for aligning elbows on the outer shells and assembling distribution boxes in the shells. Working with the cranes next to the welding area, we checked the elbow alignment after the crane hung it on the shell. Assemblers sledge-hammered it into place and, on our approval, welders welded temporary straps to hold the pipe for the machine welders. The distibution boxes were a strenuos operation. They are the part that turns the steam from the inlet pipe and directs it against the rows of turbine blades. Again there was a machined fit (which didn't always fit the first time). At this time my foreman was a man named Brown. He took pleasure in assigning jobs in the late afternoon after we had had a tough day, too late to start anything in the large work we did. So, when I got an assignment at 2 or 2:30 I would simply go to the voucher cage and accumulate the drawings and vouchers we would need. The second shift didn't appreciate this because it meant we could charge some of our time to a job we really hadn't started. And then we had a startling event. One day foreman Brown wasn't at work. I knew he had a house just South of Amsterdam and he told me of his problems with the water well (we had originally had a water well in our house so I was familiar with their problems). It turned out that GE Security had searched his house and found a lot of Company materials that he had stolen. He was fired on the spot and we had a new foreman. We were not sorry about foreman Brown but a truly sad event transpired. Ed Burch, he with the ever-present pipe, was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died during the operation. Ed lived with his wife on Route 67 in an old farm. They were antique dealers and he regaled me with stories of the furniture and other items he found and sold. I was keen on acquiring a typewriter; he kept his eye open for me but never found one. Ed was an intelligent person and a real gentleman.

I was sent to personnel in early 1977. There was an opening for a toolmaker in Building 285: the "bucket" building. I interviewed with the toolroom foreman Ron Redmond. He approved and I was hired for the first shift opening.

Original: July 16, 2008.