Friday, June 16, 2023

Nice to hear from JI

I had an email from John only a few days ago after enquiring about his welfare.

John has moved from the retirement home he was in at Pennant Hills and is now in another at West Merrylands.
He reported that not only is he a grandfather, but is also a great-grandfather of six!

John is shown below cradling what I assume is the newest of those six. 😀


 

All the best, John. Enjoy the sunny days.


Sunday, June 12, 2022

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 17

It's about time that I finished this off rather than have it sit suspended in the drawing office.

Earlier entries provide information on the ultimate demise of Arnolds, so I won't rehash what was mentioned in those, and Peter Gregory's information very effectively covers the life and death of the company.

So all I want to say in this last entry is that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Arnolds and my subsequent years in the elevator industry with Otis.
When it was all over, I had accumulated almost 30 years  (29 years and 4 months) in the business, with my career starting as an apprentice electrician and ending as a regional manager.

We experienced things and working conditions which could not exist today under current Health & Safety legislation yet it was all just normal to us. There is an oft-used cliche which says "it was a more innocent time" - well, it wasn't "innocent", just different because that was then and today is now. You can't judge the past on what you know today.

I hope that this blog stays available on the Blogger server for ever......it is a collection of personal historical information and anecdotes and that's exactly what history is made up of. Maybe my young grandchildren will have the opportunity to browse it one day - I hope so.

Regards to everyone who I knew and worked with and whose names form part of my indelible memories. Thank you for being there.


 

 

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 16.

OFF THE TOOLS and INTO THE DRAWING OFFICE
Although I continued in the field until 1966 I don't have memories of any notable events which I experienced before joining the Drawing Office in 1966/67.
I recall John Howell losing several fingers in an accident at Grace Blg when his hand was dragged into a sheave - and his fingers were miraculously reattached by microsurgery at, I think, Sydney Hospital in Macquarie Street.
But I am unsure of whether that occurred before I finished field work or after. Not that it matters - I'm just trying to pin down the chronology.

I can thank Clive for "inviting" me to join the Engineering mob - I do remember that several times he gave me some basic instructions in adjusting hydraulic lifts and maybe he saw some potential there, sufficient anyway that I became an Electrical Detail draughtsman, joining an existing bunch of misfits of the likes of Martin Seturins, John Gray, John Goulder, Robert Deahm, Bert Fisher, Michael Yarrington, Morrie Herring, Tom Yip and Jan O'Flanagan - all overseen by Warren and Clive.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the DO, right up to the day that Arnold's closed its doors.
There wasn't a day went past that we didn't have a good belly laugh about something or other and yet we were, at one point, working six days a week - Saturday overtime had become a standard. Maybe it was when we were doing a lot of work for Otis.

Lunchtimes were interesting: there'd usually be a game of poker or pontoon taking place at least a couple of times a week. They became serious enough for someone to buy a copy of Hoyles Rules!
L to R: Martin, John, Bob, Tom Yip, Warren, Clive (back to camera)
John and Bob referring to Hoyles
Out in the lunchroom someone set up the old boardroom table-top as an ad hoc ping-pong table and serious competitions were often held. There was a severe crack running along the table and everyone always tried to get the ball to hit that because it would bounce in any direction at complete random, making it very challenging to return over the "net" (a piece of board).

Remember a mechanic (welder?) down in the welding shop by the name of Jack Carey?
He was a bit of a grump most times.
Either Geoff Neville or Mr. Gregory was showing a potential customer (may already have been a client) through the works one day and took him through the DO and down the back stairs, encountering Jack at his workbench. Geoff (or Mr. Gregory) asked Jack what he was making or doing or whatever and the reply was "Fixing up another drawing office ***k up!".
The Engineering department wasn't one of Jack's favourites!

In summer it was bloody hot in that office under the corrugated-iron roof, with no insulation and no proper ceiling. Quite the reverse in winter, when we'd freeze our bums off. A full ceiling was installed at some point and Mr. Gregory okayed the installation of some fan heaters, which were fixed to a couple of the timber columns. They didn't do very much but provided some air circulation in summer and a modicum of warmth - for those close by - in winter.
One of those fan heaters is sticking out on the left


The windows on the western side of the 'office had metal louvres fitted on the external wall, which also helped in keeping the temperature down a bit. I remember the day (in 1975) when Michael Heath came in for an interview, fresh from England. I was in shorts, long socks and a polo-shirt, sweat pouring off me and in walks Mike in a bloody suit and tie. He looked like a boiled lobster!
The temperature in the office was pushing 90 degrees F - possibly higher.
When at the drawing board you had to wipe the sweat off your forehead before it dripped onto the tracing paper (we didn't always use the new plastic microfilm) otherwise every drop would create a bubble which couldn't be flattened out.
Michael got the job and within a week of his commencement he became an Aussie - shorts from that day on!

More to follow.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 15

Very recently I had an email from Frank Freson, the "mysterious Frank" to whom I referred in episode 13 of this occasional series.
In his email Frank was able to tell the true story of what happened that day back in the mists of time and also offered to provide me with some information and anecdotal input about his days (two years as an apprentice) on the tools with Arnold Elevators.

As a preface to those reminiscences, the following is a potted history of Frank's career after he left Arnolds. The words are his and I've just edited the length where necessary.
===========================================================================
 After breaking up my apprenticeship, and moving out on my own, I did a couple of different jobs until I decided to go back to electrical work, because I already had some training and experience in that field.
I got a break with a contractor in Bondi as an unlicensed electrical mechanic and after a few years had gained enough experience to apply for a job as a leading hand which then lead to a foreman's position (still unlicensed) on a 200-men army barrack in Randwick.

At that point I was now in charge of licensed electricians and that's when I said to myself "If they can get a license, so can I", so I studied and sat for the license examination.

I had some good breaks in my career and was given the opportunity to learn more than my fair share (estimating, switch-gear, substations, mining and heavy industrial).
I soon got into contract management and administration, electrical designs, and travelled a fair bit.

I moved to Belgium in 1989 and picked up a job as the assistant project coordinator for a Traffic Control and Surveillance System (TCSS) in a road tunnel project the company had in Hong Kong, their contract was for the engineering design,  the supply of material and equipment, test & commission
In 1991 I was sent with a team to test & commission the job, it was scheduled to take 6 weeks, it took longer than 3 months. Before long they made me the local contract manager and I ended up staying in Hong Kong for 2 years.

I ended up meeting my wife and came back to Brisbane after 2 years.

Then came the mining crash - I was with an engineering consulting group and in my final role as a discipline lead on a project for the Ranger uranium mine. I had joined them as No. 39 in a business unit and when I was the last of 9 I had the choice of taking unpaid leave for a year, or move on.

So I retired instead.
=================================================================================

What follows is a collection of Frank's memories of working for two years with Arnold's.
Many thanks, Frank, for providing me with these recollections and I invite anyone who would like to add to "Life is Full of Ups & Downs" to just email me the stories.


Now read on.......... 

I owe a lot to Brian Baxter because he was a good teacher and he certainly piqued my interest in control circuits which proved to be invaluable in later years.

To this day I never forgot the terminal markings in the lift control circuit (at least I “think” that I remember): DC, DC1, DC2, SS, SB.
If the grey matter still works DC was the feed off the rectifier heading down to the first set of door-locks which came back on DC1 before heading back down to the second set of door-locks and coming back on SS. From SS it then went off to the car safeties (stop button, trap door switch, slack rope switch, roof top isolator, and the safety gear) and came back to SB. In those days the ‘terminal’ were simply brass screws through the insulated panel, we didn’t have those fancy modern terminals that comes in all shapes and sizes then.
I must admit that during those early days of working mostly on DC controlled systems I was under the impression that everything had a + & - polarity until the day I ended up in an awkward position when I was in the office and had to refit the fluorescent tubes in the foreman’s office that had just been painted.

Seeing 2 pins at each end of the tube I asked the foreman which one had to go in first, he replied “The one with the green dot”; needless to say I couldn’t find one and everybody had a laugh at my expenses.

Grace Building.
I remember few things about that project such as marble being used for the control panels [I think it was slate, Frank. BK] and seeing an arc between 2 contacts that was slowly eroding the marble away until we knocked off the main circuit breaker.

I also remember twisting the strands of a bare earth wire with the old ‘egg-beater’ to make the wire stiffer so it could be used as a ‘snake’ and pushed through conduits. The pub across the road was a popular stop for lunches but apprentices were generally too young to be there so we had to make do with a milkshake and a pie from the place next door.

A memorable event that came out of the old memories was seeing a lift that had just pulled up at a landing where we were working on another one and hearing that they couldn’t get it started again; no worries I’ll go up to the motor room and check.
As I entered the lift motor room I saw one of the main circuit breaker on the wall was open and not seeing anybody in the room (everyone was working around the building) I thought it had tripped and switched it back on. That’s when I heard somebody yell out from the corner of the room.

I forget who it was and but it could have been Clive (?) with somebody else being shown something near a motor; they had taken upon themselves to disable the lift for a few moments without telling anybody else or using our “Out of service cards” that we use to place outside a lift and at each landing to let the public know.

Every got a major scare, no one got hurt and I got yelled at for turning the circuit breaker back on without first checking around, realising that I could have killed or seriously hurt someone I also yelled back that they should not have done what they did without letting somebody know. I was never dragged over the coals over that incident or remember hearing anything else about it.

The Haunted Lift?
A building where we did some regular maintenance was 10-odd floors high and probably located in Wentworth Street [Avenue. BK], but being such a long time ago its location is a bit vague. I remember the floor-level controller being a modern one for those days, it consisted of rows of limit switches for each floor that were actuated by cams as a small panel, driven through a reduction gearbox to move up and down in line with the lift car, passed by those switches.

Part of our inspection was to ride inside the lift to confirm it stopped level with the landing and we usually did this on the way out before going to our next job.

One morning we entered the lift on the top floor, pressed the buttons for each floor, confirmed they were all lit up, and down we went; 10-9-8-7-6-4-. What? Did we just miss 5? The lift continued on, 3-2-1-G and then headed back to 5 where it stopped. We repeated the test and this time there were no more glitches in the matrix.

I could have been with Dave or Brian at the time but he headed back to the lift motor room where he checked everything on that floor controller without finding a fault or a cause for missing that floor. It never happened again.

A Sweet Sticky Job.
An old lift was located in a factory that made those little single serve, square shaped, sugar pack that you could get with your tea or coffee, and the whole place was covered in sugar dust, including the top of the lift car
Each time we turned the inspection light on top of car it would burn a layer of sugar powder if we didn’t dust it down first but even then there was still the smell of burnt sugar in the air.

Our hands, clothes, and tools would always end up being sticky with sugar and had to be cleaned up after each visit. After going there a few times it wasn't one of my favourite job but I didn’t need to worry for very long because on our next visit we discovered the building had been destroyed by fire. I don’t know the official cause of that fire but with that sugar powder covering everything it’s not hard to imagine that it was an accident waiting to happen.

[That building was Industrial Sugar Mills and was located in Surry Hills.
I also can remember with shudders what it was like working there; in summer when you sweated you walked out feeling like a large serving of fairy-floss!!. BK]

Tomasetti House.
I’m not 100% sure if that was the name of a particular building where we rewired the door locks while the lift was being re-roped but after reading the blog it sounds like that it probably was that building.
I remember that we were being held up and couldn't start wiring the locks because the lift was held near the top floor by its safety gear when they took the old ropes off.

At the time the bottom lift door was open to give access to the bottom of the well and I came up with the idea that I could climb up in the lift shaft and release the catch as I went past so we could open the doors and start our job.

Imagine suggesting or doing something like that today?

Well, rules were vastly different then and even thought it sounds dangerous we never did something that we couldn’t do safely; so off I went up the lift shaft, and released the latch while somebody else opened the door. As I moved up to the next one I’d say “See you on the next floor.”

Set Up?
There was an old lift from another company with a totally different design than anything we had, and Arnold had been given a contract for regular maintenance.
It had a unique floor levelling system consisting of metal tape, with perforations through the tape to represent each floor, and that tape was attached to the bottom and top of the lift in a single loop and guided by a sheave in the lift well and one in the lift motor room. The actual controller was an electronic assembly using a light source and photo-electric cell in a glass tube (like the old valve used in radios and televisions) and an amplifier (again using valves) to drive a relay. The photocell would only be activated when the light shone through one of the holes in the metal tape as it looped up and down with the lift motion.

One morning we were inside the lift motor room for the regular maintenance and as the lift ran we heard a loud squeak as we caught a glimpse of a rat that had been hanging on the tape flying through the sheave. We searched the lift well but never found it.

About a week later Brian came back from making one of his daily calls to pick up our next job and said we had 2 jobs to do, the first was to deliver a message and the second was to go to this site and find out why the lift wasn’t working, and then asked me which one I would like.

I asked if he trusted me with the breakdown and he replied yes because he had taught me everything he knew about that lift. I grabbed his tool-bag and proceeded to the job where upon arriving and seeing the lift operating I said to myself ‘Great, an intermittent fault’ and called the caretaker. The first thing the caretaker mentioned about the problem was an awful smell inside the lift, and that’s when I remember that rat.

It was in the liftwell, dead as a doorknob and smelling like a dead rat. Cleaning it up was not what I expected and never discovered if Brian set me up or not.

Electrocuted!
One day as we phoned in for our next job (I can’t remember if I was with was Brian or Dave) we were told that a man had been electrocuted in a lift and they couldn’t get him out; we got the address and rushed over even running up the street. When we entered the building we found the lift was near the top floor so off we ran up the stairs; being the youngest I got there before the tradesman and discovered a gentlemen sitting on a chair inside the lift, looking quite normal.

We asked him what was wrong and he said he received an electric shock when he tried to open the external door. Looking at the door handle we immediately realised that it was a type that should never be live because it was a mechanical lock, not an electric one.

Not taking any chances we tested first and then opened the door to let him out. We inspected the equipment in the lift shaft to make sure there was nothing unexpected and came to a conclusion that static electricity was the only thing that shocked him.

The Vaseline.
That particular building is also one where we installed new trailing cables and, being an old boy scout, I always end up with the job of wrapping the loop of cable under the car with twine, to hold the trailing cables in place. We also used Vaseline to ease the cable through tight spots and the jar was always at the wrong end of the well when you needed it.

I wonder what people working in the building were thinking when they heard us yelling inside the lift shaft “Where’s the Vaseline”, “Pass me the Vaseline!”. Of course we just acted like children!

The Striped Paint.
Again I forget the site or who was involved but I remember that we had to replace some floor boards in the motor room and do some general upgrade work including repainting the equipment in that “Arnold green” colour.
As you came up into the motor room there was also a low beam where it was easy to hit your head on the way in, so a decision was made to paint it with broad stripes to make it stand out. The tradesman gave money to one of the apprentices and sent him out to buy a few things including a tin of white and black stripe paint.

That *apprentice was away for ages and he finally came back with a tin of white and another tin of black paint; as he handed them to the tradesman he said that he had walked all over the city and couldn’t find any but in the last shop the salesman said he could take those 2 tins and mix his own on site.

The truth is that he quickly wised up and just did a bit of window shopping to pass the time and make it look as if he had been walking all over town to find that special paint!
*So who was the apprentice, Frank?! Hmmm?!


Saturday, October 14, 2017

VALE: Clive Smith


Clive in his office, circa 1968.



Kevin Garland phoned me on the 4th. October to advise that he'd seen a funeral notice for a "Clive Edward Smith", of Narrabeen, in the Courier Mail and could this be our  Clive to whom it referred.
Sadly, it was confirmed when I received an email from John Inglis later that same day.

When I went from "the tools" and into the "drawing office" (no-one called it the "Engineering Department"....it was always just "drawing office"), which was around 1967, Clive was my immediate boss.
My job was that of an Electrical Detail Draughtsman.....I drew up the wiring diagrams which were printed and ended up in the motor-rooms of lift installations. Hydraulic pipelines were also detailed for manufacture and site installation.
In addition to overseeing my draughting work, Clive introduced me to the wizardry of setting-up and adjusting the hydraulic valves on pump-units; I still remember the name of the brand - EECO - and two types of valve - the UV3 and DL3.

Outside of work, Clive introduced me to sailing.
He crewed on a small yacht, Tampico II (designed by the not-then-famous Ben Lexcen), which was based at the Spit Bridge marina.
I nearly went on its first (and perhaps only?) Sydney to Hobart race in 1970 because they were down a crew member but, thank God, at the last minute were able to press-gang the navigator of HMAS Melbourne. I say "thank God" because that was the roughest race to date and I am sure I would have been sick from start to finish!!
At least the yacht made it to Hobart, finishing about 24th, I think.

However, thanks to Clive, I continued sailing, crewing for a member of the Middle Harbour club and racing on Saturdays on Sydney Harbour. What more could you ask for on a beautiful summery day?

The photo at the top is how I still see Clive in my memory. He invariably wore a white shirt and tie, with his sleeves rolled up exactly as shown.
Just like his compatriot in that little office, Warren Watt, Clive was a terrific bloke to work with. Fond memories.

My condolences are extended to Clive's wife, Dawn, and their family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
The following information is courtesy the Lift Engineering Society of Australia and was extracted from a collection of reminiscences by Clive which were featured in the October 2017 issue of their newsletter.
Clive gave a talk about his working life at the August 2017 meeting of LESA - the last that he attended.

CLIVE SMITH - Recollections of Life in the Lift Industry.
Clive started work in the lift industry in February 1952 and his first introduction to lifts was to walk into the motor room at Gowings at the corner of Market and George St Sydney.
He is not sure whether he was assisting John Inglis or the foreman, Stan Butler.
There was a GE gearless machine, a Smith Major Stevens 480V DC machine and an Otis Ward Leonard control system and an old goods lift. It was quite a scary introduction to lifts but it showed the need to set goals – to work on the best jobs; learn as much as possible; gradually work up.

Professor Lewin developed a magnetic amplification system with saturable reactors to control the speed of a motor supplied from a generator. There was an installation at the Mercantile Mutual building in Pitt Street. This was an indication of where lift controls were heading.

Clive had a lot of adventures at the Snowy Mountains site with John Inglis, Pederick Spencer and a few others in the winter as well as the summer. It was a very challenging project.
Clive enjoyed the lift industry. As a 16 year old apprentice, he had to go to the office, pick up the pays, and take them to the Roberts Hotel, and give them to the workers.
He and another apprentice would also chat up the usherettes in the theatres to get in and see the movies!

When Otis Elevator bought Arnold Engineering in 1972, Clive moved on and established Eastern Elevators in partnership with Warren Watt.
In 2014 Warren became seriously ill and sadly passed away in April of 2015.

Many years ago they established Eastern Elevators in Guangzhou, China.
Manufacturing started in Chongquing in 2002. Chongquing was developed in World War 2 to be a heavy industry centre far from Japan.

Prior to his death Clive was Service Manager for Eastern Elevators and assisted with running the company, although he no longer had any share-holding.
He communicated with Singapore and Indonesia branches also.

Clive was planning to retire at the end of this year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 14

ON REPAIRS

Cleeco Shirts

In the area shown in the above photo (click it for full-size), just off Broadway, in Mountain Street near the Grace Bros emporium, was a small three-story building which housed Cleeco Shirts.

We were doing major repair or modernisation work which entailed working in the pit, digging old brickwork out, because I recall using a Kango electric jackhammer......something like this:-

George Farham was the fitter but I can't remember who else was there....Dave Rutter possibly.

At the time, George owned a blue Morris 1100 and would drive it to that job, because there were all-day parking spots in the street at the time we started work, which was before the office workers in the area arrived.
George lived in the Eastern Suburbs somewhere.....around Maroubra or Randwick, I think.
His route took him past Centennial Park, or through the park, because he usually took the shortcut.
Back in those days the park was accessible to road traffic all the time...I don't know if that is still the case today.

Anyway, one morning George arrived at work with the front of his car covered in black ash and he didn't know why. He hadn't been near anything which would have dumped cinders all over the car and it was a bit of a mystery. Any damage was only superficial......paint was not burnt off. It was just covered in blackened bits of leaves and grass, particularly in the grille.

The mystery was explained the next day.
George retraced his route and when driving through Centennial Park he noticed a mound of cinders and ashes where the park workers had been burning a pile of prunings and grass cuttings. (You could do that back then).
Apparently he had meandered off the beaten track after having had one too many at the pub on the way home and had simply driven straight through the ash pile but couldn't remember it when he got up the following morning!

Aaah! The perils of driving under the influence before breathalysers arrived some 18 years later (1982).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dave Rutter and Bobby Coates "Fix" a lift.
50 York St. on right, with Grace Blg in the background on the left.

It may have been at 50 York Street, it's old enough.....but then again, it could have a been the building where the scaffolding is seen. But it was just down the road from Grace building.

The lift was a manual passenger unit, driven by a sulky old lift driver who always had something to whinge about.
On this particular occasion, Bobby Coates needed a hand with something or other so Dave Rutter and I strolled with him from Grace Blg - where Bobby had his maintenance depot.
When we walked in the front door - the lift was just inside the foyer - the driver started to moan and groan that something was wrong on top of the lift....I can't remember exactly what it was....something to do with a noise..... but the looks that Bobby and Dave exchanged indicated that it was most likely a load of rubbish.

We got into the lift and Bobby asked the bloke to take it for a run up and down, so that they could see or or hear anything odd.
We then stopped at one of the upper floors, where we got out and the driver was instructed to take it down so that Bobby and Dave could get on top of the car.

When the roof was at floor level they climbed onto the top-bow and the two mechanics had a good look around and had the driver run up and down the shaft again whilst they sat on the roof, listening and watching for strange happenings! They found nothing out of the ordinary....no bits of loose equipment, nothing hitting anything as the car moved up and down the shaft. Everything was fine.
They then came back to the floor where I was waiting.

Dave and Bobby exchanged whispers and then one of them asked me to pass them a hammer from the tool-bag.
Dave then started hitting various bits of the roof superstructure, with loud metallic sounds echoing up & down the shaft and, at the same time, he and Bobby were grinning like monkeys as they exhanged a running commentary along the lines of:-

"How's it look now, Dave?"
"Pretty good, Bob...maybe just a bit more to the left. What d'ya reckon"?
"Yeah....okay (BANG!). How's that now?"

"Looks good, mate.....I think that's fixed it".

Of course, the driver couldn't see what was going on and I was struggling to contain my laughter!

With the little one-act play over, the guys got off the roof, the driver brought the car back to floor level and we went for a few runs up and down the shaft.
The driver was pleased that everything seemed okay once again!

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 13

ON REPAIRS - AFTER GRACE BUILDING

Eventually the modernisation job came to an end and we relocated to other jobs, several of which I can recall with ease:-

Tomasetti House
I think that this building was located on the corner of Kent & Bathurst Streets. (The Google Maps photo is of the building we worked in....I think). It was down the back of the Town Hall, if memory serves correctly, but it's hard to recognise many of the older, insignificant, buildings now that their facades and surroundings have changed over 50+ years.

EDIT. 25-October-2017
My thanks to Bob Deahm for correcting my original location, which I had as Sussex & Bathurst Streets.
Bob is sure that address was "Sunderland House" and I agree.


I'm not sure exactly what the repair job was at Tomasetti, although I do remember rewiring door locks and doing some "stuff" in the motor room.

The bods on the job included myself, Dave Rutter, George Farham, the Hudson brothers...Kevin and Dennis... and another apprentice by the name of Frank, who wore glasses.
(More of Frank below, under Washington H. Soul Pattinson).
It was at this job that George Farham threw away his perfectly good pliers after he latched onto what he thought was the end of a bit of old VIR wiring. It was in the somewhat dark and dingy lift pit that this incident occurred.
When George gave the "wire" a good yank the skin of a decomposed rat appeared...complete with eye-watering odour. George tossed his pliers - and rat - across the pit and that was the last he saw of both!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
332 Kent Street
Not sure of the crew on this one or even what the work entailed (other than setting a lot of conduits) but I can definitely remember working here because it was directly opposite the Kent St. entrance to Radio 2UW ....... "Eleven-ten on your dial"!
We would watch Ward "Pally" Austin arrive & depart in his Cadillac, usually with a group of teenage girls hanging around the door waiting for him.
This is what the two buildings look like today......looking north, with 2UW on the left and our building on the right.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Washingon H. Soul Pattinson, Pitt Street.

I have mentioned this building in an earlier item but we now come to the time when an electrician by the name of Helmut Nehls (nicknamed "Crash-hat" by George Farham!), the mysterious Frank and myself were doing something electrical here.
I refer to Frank as "mysterious" simply because I know nothing else about him - can't recall his surname and I don't think I ever worked with him other than here and at Tomasetti House.

The drama occurred.....SEE THE FACTUAL DETAILS IN FRANK'S REPLY, BELOW MY INCORRECT VERSION! .... when Frank was standing in front of the control board ready to test which of the 415 Volt A, B and C phases had dropped power.
Instead of using a test lamp (every electrician carried a test lamp in his leather bag), for some weird reason Frank took one wire and touched it to one of the other two!
Needless to say, the two he touched were the live ones.
There was a blinding flash accompanied by a very loud BANG! and the entire building lost all electrical power and, from what I understand, so did several other adjacent premises.
Frank was very lucky that he was wearing glasses because at the very least they prevented flash burns to his eyes and quite possibly saved his eyesight. As it was his face was blackened and he had no eyebrows left.
I think he went up to Sydney Hospital (Macquarie Street) for first aid.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~