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Thread: Ipswich rail museum "big lathe"
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12th Apr 2010, 07:52 PM #1Senior Member
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Ipswich rail museum "big lathe"
i found this its a lathe that used to live in the old Ipswich rail workshops you will have to scroll down to the picture of the big lathe the caption says it was the biggest machine made in Australia at the time i know of another site i think i posted it before but ill post the link again here
latter i think i should give the workshops a call and see what information i can get truly i think its an exciting bit of our history in Ipswichhappy turning
Patrick
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13th Apr 2010, 06:27 PM #2
Great stuff Patrick, I have been thinking of going there for some time, it's well advertised here in Qld, but haven't gotten around to it, is that lathe still there?, love to see it up close.
Richard.
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13th Apr 2010, 09:25 PM #3Senior Member
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im fairly sure its gone, where who knows but i do know someone who used to work in those workshops till they closed down so next time i see him ill ask him if it was there when he was but i think it was long gone before that they have some cool stuff like a few do all bandsaws and a Cincinaty mill i have been to the museum a few times but i didnt have the interest in machines then that i have now so i didnt notice them
happy turning
Patrick
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14th Apr 2010, 08:48 PM #4
Thanks, I'will check it out some time this year, for sure,
cheers.
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6th Jan 2011, 06:14 PM #5Pink 10EE owner
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I think I may have found one of the Ipswich lathes. It is or was located at Cockatoo Island shipyards which I believe is now a museum..
Someone else can se if they think the same
Here is a pic of an Ipswich lathe at Ipswich rail yards (all clickable pictures)
Here is a pic on Picture Australia of the cockatoo island ship yards with the title "Ipswich lathe"
And this is what made me tie both pictures together..
A picture on Google Earth taken at Cockatoo Island shipyards showing a "Shanks" lathe... I had seen this lathe before in an old black and white picture but never knew where the lathe was located.
The end of the Ipswich lathe is in the corner...
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7th Jan 2011, 09:46 PM #6Senior Member
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Big Lathes
I recall my grandfather taking my father and I on a tour through either CAC of GAF in Fishermans Bend back in the early sixties (he was the machine shop foreman).
They had a lathe of similar size although the dimensions I cannot remember. I do remember that while I was there they were making a crankshaft for a ship and were turning the crank throws on a billet of steel that was 5 feet in diameter and about 10 feet long. I do remember him saying that there was 45feet of concrete under the lathe.
Roger
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9th Jan 2011, 02:10 PM #7Senior Member
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interesting i heard from a tafe teacher the railway workshops did lots for the local industry i wonder if they used the large lathes to make things for the heave industry up here in Queensland i just cant think of any components for the trains that would need such a large lathe??? but i am also sure there would have been a company up here that could do the same work like ship builders???
happy turning
Patrick
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9th Jan 2011, 02:57 PM #8Pink 10EE owner
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Were there any ship builders in Qld? Maybe repairers... Ipswich being a coal mining hub (at the time) would have seen need for large machine tools for things like crushers... But they would have had competition from places like Toowoomba with the very large Toowoomba Foundry company...
Apparently when Vickers Ruwolt in Melbourne went belly up the current Bradken plant near Ipswich was owned by the same company and a lot of the large tools were moved to this plant..
There is a lot of history out there still about out machine tool industry but in twenty and thirty years it is going to be lost as the older people die off... Australia seems to be not very interested in this history which is amazing as it what made us where we are today.
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9th Jan 2011, 03:20 PM #9
There are some big lathes around still.
Its not as big as the ones shown but big enough.
This one is in Mackay.
The block being faced is 900 or so on 1 face.
I took the pic
Grahame
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9th Jan 2011, 04:10 PM #10Senior Member
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Grahame that lathe looks similar to the old Russian one we have at work but ours is not as nice lol someone said they had a job so heavy it snapped the tailstock center when they put it in
.RC. funny you mention Vickers i just remember a work mate telling me the old Bradken/vickers site was right in the center of town you can still see the train tracks and when i moved here the bones of the old sheds were still standing...... its a small shopping center now
as for Big lathes i know in Brisbane a tafe at Salisbury there sheds used to do something with boats drive shafts and had large between center lathes but im unsure of what swing they would have and i know there were a few other places but at what time they were acquired i dont know so that leads me to think the Ipswich lathes were probably used for things needed in the mines and stuff
oh while i remember another tafe teacher used a planer thats table would run off the bedhappy turning
Patrick
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9th Jan 2011, 04:16 PM #11Pink 10EE owner
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There is still plenty of big gear around, I was mostly talking about the history of manufacturing in Australia is being lost.. I find it strange that people like documenting history of people but not history of what got us here today... I could not care less about the history of <insert popular person here> but would like to know the history of places like Vickers Ruwolt, or the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation or the shipbuilding industry...
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9th Jan 2011, 04:55 PM #12Most Valued Member
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Seems he wouldnt of been USEING it to often.
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9th Jan 2011, 06:27 PM #13Member
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I can thoroughly recommend a visit to the Railway Workshops at Ipswich. I spent a whole day there recently, including crashing the diesel train simulator ( It did not like a being slammed into reverse while under full aceleration). Photo of simulator in cabin can be seen below. A ride on the 100 tonne capacity traverser is terrific, as is watching the blacksmiths working in the foundry. In my case, it was a 4th year woman apprentice just finishing her time, and was being employed as a tradesman there.
I didn't see any huge lathes, but there was a rather large milling machine - see photos below
PS you may have heard about the Qld luxury coastal express train , with handcrafter timber carriages built here in Townsville, and reportedly sold very quietly overseas five or more years ago by our money grubbing Qld Govt - it virtually gave it away at a firesale price. Well, that train is hidden in one of the workshop buildings there! Looks like the sale might have fallen through, but the Govt is denying it.
This is the same Govt that sent the State of Qld broke during an incredible 5 year boom period for mineral and rural exports, and has now sold off the Qld Rail network, and is currently destroying the magnificent Darling Downs food bowl by encouraging coal seam gas exploration and development. They extract this gas by drilling deep holes and pressurising it with chemicals, some of which are carcinogenic and are now appearing in the water table on prime farmland. The method is largle unproven, no one knows the long term effects on pastural land, but the Govt is greedily viewing the mining royalties, at the expense of the farming communities fo Central and Southern Qld. Mongrel politicians!! Lots of communities on the Downs will have disappeared in 10 years if this continues, and it will under the present Govt.
Have a look here for further details about the ghost train that lives in an Ipswich shed.regards,
Jill
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9th Jan 2011, 08:45 PM #14
That lathe could easily turn a ship's propellor shaft! I remember seeing a documentary about construction of Nimitz class carriers at Newport News shipyard. They had a lathe peeling off enormous chunks of steel this new propellor shaft. I seriously doubt that lathe was as big as this sucker.
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9th Jan 2011, 10:58 PM #15I break stuff...
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Not an Australian lathe, but it's still pretty impressive..
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taMV8CcszbE]YouTube - crankshaft lathe 2 cookebros engineering[/ame]