Places I have worked and their histories – the early years.

Paper Round – Hinckley

Hebron & Medlocks – Leicester

        Len-Medlock-dies-aged-89
Leicester was run by Ron & Bernie Medlock. Hebron was reputed to be in Australia.

Started at the age of 18 almost straight from school. One of two trainees taken on at Gateway House site Leicester.

Spent first two weeks learning how to print in capitals. Took me those weeks to fill out an A0 size sheet (1189mm x 841mm) with line upon line of alphabets and engineering words. All this before I was allowed to draw. (I have Geometrical and Engineering drawing at A Level.)
Signed on at the Leicester Technical College to start ONC (Ordinary National Certificate) year 1 in engineering on day release and a Saturday morning.

My first job of the day was to empty the coffee machine of all the threepenny bits that the machine took.  I would then top up all the containers with tea, coffee, milk powder, sugar and soup. Threepenny bit

Then I would go around and exchange / sell the coins to the other engineers and draughtsmen. After decimalisation we kept that same coffee machine but the exchange rate had to change as 3d =  1.25p (no such coin). Great days!!!

Rolls Royce

Worked on Rolls Royce drawings converting the RB211 from imperial to metric with the aid of 7 figure log tables.

British Rail

Worked at Derby site drawing & designing the tilting train APT that’s now at Crewe being used as a children’s party area.

Advanced Passenger Transport

Peterborough development Corp

Architectural drafting. Road layouts, district heating pipe layouts – underground and in the houses.

My first brush with computers – valve ones. Create the calculations and get them onto punch cards. Wait for the computer room to be free and them feed the cards into the machine and get a set of punch cards back with the answer. Take these to someone to convert the card back to readable results and pick them up next day. Long process. Used for heat loss calculations and latitude/longitude calculations of the end of the underground pipe runs.

Baker Perkins

Currys

DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security)

Marconi

BAE Systems