Scrap copper wire.
Because the old lift annunciator system was being renewed this meant that all the original VIR (vulcanised india rubber) insulated wiring was being replaced with modern stuff........and there were miles of the steel conduit and wiring to be pulled out.
Naturally some means had to be found to dispose of all the useless copper.
There was a scrap-metal disposal place down at the bottom of Elizabeth Street, in the bit between Campbell and Foster Streets.
It was just a small yard squeezed in between two buildings and I'm pretty sure this is where it was located:-
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| The location today. Nice to see that Golf House is still there after so many years. |
Golf House was there back then. It had an animated neon sign on the roof depicting a golfer chipping a ball onto the green; the golfer would swing his club and the ball, a series of lights arching over to the green, would light up in sequence. Aaah! The days when the rooftops around the city were filled with colourful neon signs.
There was also a pawn shop nearby and further up the road, towards Central, was the large Tooheys brewery complex.
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| Tooheys in the left. In 1965 the trams had disappeared from Elizabeth Street. |
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| This photo is from 1961, when tram-line removal was at its height. |
Anyway....back to the subject - copper wire and its removal and disposal.
As we removed the old stuff we'd store it away, accumulate enough to fill a couple of sugar bags and then we'd lug it down to the scrap metal place, sell it to the bloke and the proceeds would go into a kitty which would then be used to pay for lunch & drinks every so often at the Forbes Hotel, a pub over the road from Grace Building. All the crew shared in, including the maintenance guys.
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| The Forbes on the left and Grace Blg. on the right. Very handy! |
Now the scrap metal man would give us more if the old insulation was removed and he just received the bare copper wire....which we would pound down into lumps (almost ingots!) so more could be carried in one trip.
To remove the insulation by hand was a pain in the neck but a solution was found. I can't recall who came up with the idea but it was a beauty!
Down in the basement, towards the back (Clarence Street side) was an incinerator, the chimney of which passed right up through the building and exited above the roof adjacent the goods lifts motor room.
The incinerator was used by the cleaning & maintenance staff to burn waste paper and stuff and was certainly ideal for burning old rubber & cotton insulation off copper wire.
All went well; each time a load was ready to be delivered to Mr. Scrap Metal, we'd take it down to the basement, get the incinerator going and feed in the coils of wire, gradually adding more as the previous coil lost its insulation.
Once the burning off had been done and the metal cooled down it would be raked out, taken back up to the motor room and pounded into lumps, ready for transport. (This was a real enterprise, I can tell you!).
However, one day, when a batch of wire was ready to be incinerated, the job was put in the hands of Larry Evans, a first-year apprentice.
It was lunchtime and whilst Larry went down to the basement, others of the team were sitting in the sun on the rooftop when suddenly a large cloud of black smoke puffed out of the chimney and, several minutes later, a sooty-face Larry appeared at the motor-room door but without the copper.
Apparently what he'd done, so as to accelerate the process, was to throw "a bit" of paint thinners onto the fire! The result was a WHOOOSH! of flame which had the effect of not only blackening Larry's face but also of burning off some of the soot which had accumulated in the chimney!
How to Destroy a Flagpole.
If you have another look at the photo of the roof of Grace Building as it is today you'll see the edge of the roof has a sort of "battlements" appearance.
Along that side of the roof, more towards the turret at the far corner, was a timber flagpole. (I think there was a matching item on the Clarence Street side as well).
The new wiring work we were doing included the installation of new steel conduits in the shafts and the largest of these was 2-inches in diameter.
Back in those days we used to "set" conduits when running them, whether up & down lift shafts or in motor rooms to controllers and floor selectors; the conduit was always bent and arranged very neatly.
It was an acquired skill to bend conduit without kinking it - if there was a kink, which pinched and therefore narrowed the tube - then pulling wires through it became very difficult.
Also, there were restrictions on how many and what size wires could be carried in the various conduit sizes, which ranged from 5/8" (the most common) up through 3/4", 1", 1-1/2" and then 2".
To "set" the small conduits we used a length of timber......a bit of "four-be-two", about 3 feet in length.
Towards the top end was a hole, drilled to comfortably take a 5/8" or maybe even a 3/4" conduit.
The piece of conduit to be curved would be inserted through the hole then gently bent to the required shape, making sure that no kinks occurred.
(In hindsight, this procedure was the greatest time-waster and must have added many hours to repair and installation contracts).
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| No, this is NOT what we used back then! |
It was nearly impossible to bend 2" conduit using the "timber with the hole in it" method.
For a start, a larger piece had to be found and it usually required a couple of blokes to do the job.
So when one of the lads had to put a bend in a length (I think conduits were 12 feet long) of the heavy stuff one time, he went looking for somewhere/something to assist and found it in the form of the flagpole.
The timber pole was mounted to the "battlements" by a couple of sturdy steel brackets and there was a gap between the timber and the masonry which nicely accommodated a steel tube 2 inches in diameter, allowing the operator plenty of room to get comfortable leverage.
It was a "Goldilocks" situation - just right!
So the exponent of conduit-setting inserted the conduit up to the point where he wanted the bend to start, got on the other end and began to heave on it.
Next second there was a loud KERR-RACK!.......and a split ran up the flagpole from bottom to top!
Needless to say, lift mechanics hastily vacated the scene and an alternative method had to be found for bending 2" conduits.
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