How It All Started
General Engineering
Water Control Gates
Pioneers In Concreting Machinery
The Introduction Of Mobile Cranes
Excavators And Crawler Cranes
In the summer of 1869, Mr. J.A. Ransome, Mr. R.J. Ransome, Mr. R.C. Rapier and Mr. A.A. Bennett, left the Ipswich company, Ransomes, Sims & Head, now Ransomes, Sims & Jeffries Ltd., by agreement to establish a new company, Ransomes & Rapier, on a site on the west bank of the River Orwell, which they appropriately named Waterside Works. Here they continued their already established business, the manufacture of points and. crossings, rail wedges and trenails for railways. It was a period of worldwide activity in railway construction and the new company was soon expanding into the design and manufacture of far more ambitious equipment for the home and overseas markets.By 1874, a steam locomotive had been built for use in construction work on the Shanghai and Woosung Railway and it was the first locomotive to run in China. The order had specified that the loco should be delivered complete in one case and be suitable for manhandling on site; 8 men using two stout bamboo poles, lifted it onto the track. Ransomes & Rapier did much towards the construction of this first railway in China, including the manufacture of two larger locomotives, rolling stock and other equipment, and the railway ran at a profit for one year before being sold to the local Mandarins, who immediately closed it, tore up the track and pitched the whole lot into the river.
In later years, the largest locomotive turntable ever built at Waterside Works in fact one of the largest in the world was supplied to Chinese Railways. It was 98'-6" in diameter and was tested with a load of 412 tons.Locomotives, rolling stock, bridges and signalling equipment continued to be made by the Company for some time but subsequent developments were in turntables, traversers, locomotive hoists, hydraulic buffer stops and the various types of cranes, including steam and, later diesel breakdown cranes, some with lifting capacities of more than 100 tons.
It soon became apparent that many of the cranes and equipment developed for railways had other industrial applications, and the Company was involved in a wide variety of general engineering projects, including the building of steam and electric dockside, overhead and Goliath cranes. During this period a number of long-reach steam Titan cranes of about 30 tons capacity were built for placing heavy masonry in dock works, a notable example being the crane used in the construction of the break water at Dover Harbour.
Among the more unusual jobs was the installation, in 1904, of the revolving stage at the London Coliseum Theatre, which consists of a circular centre piece with two annular sections, the outer one 74'-O" in diameter. The three sections can be revolved together or independently in either direction and at varying speeds. The structure is l2'-O" deep and each section revolves on a circular rail track. The stage was originally designed with high speed rotation for presenting various racing events, including horse racing, but this proved too dangerous and the authorities limited its use to slow speed rotation for scene shifting or stage effects. Water tanks, mechanical stokers, refrigeration plants, swing and bascule bridges have all held their places in the list of general engineering products of Waterside Works, while in 1914 the Stokes Mortar for trench warfare in the First World War, was designed and manufactured. In the two decades between the World Wars a number of catapults, fired by compressed air or explosives, were built for the Royal Navy for launching aircraft from the decks of warships.One of the last of the general engineering contracts in 1964, was the design, manufacture and erection of the revolving restaurant, 515'-O" above street level in the Post Office Tower in London. The revolving floor is 64'-0" outside diameter, and lO'-6" wide and makes one revolution in about 22 minutes.
In a very specialized sphere of engineering, the year 1874 saw the invention of the Stoney Sluice of which Ransomes & Rapier were the original patentees and manufacturers. Prior to this invention, the sizes of sluice gates had been limited by the resistance to opening and closing resulting from the excessive sliding friction created by the pressure of water on the gates. The patent consisted of a free roller path between the gate and its abutments reducing the opening effort to only 1/80th of that required for a sliding gate of equal size. In effect, the gate was put on roller bearings and could now be controlled easily and accurately and closed under pressure with certainty. Large irrigation and flood control schemes, which had before seemed impracticable, were now put in hand and for many years the world history of irrigation and water control was largely a record of progress of Ransomes & Rapier in the design and manufacture of sluice and lock gates and the machinery for operating them.Some of the earliest installations were on the Rivers Thames and Clyde, the Manchester Ship Canal and on the first hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls. In 1902, sluice gates were made for the first Aswan Dam on the River Nile.in Egypt and were followed by similar works on the Nile at Isnq, Nag Hammadi, Asyit and the Delta Barrage, while upstream in the Sudan, 80 deep sluices were fitted in the Sennar Dam and 375 gates in the distributory canals which control the water for irrigating the rich Sudanese cotton growing areas. Many other important installations were built in India; Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Canada, Mexico, Argentine, Brazil and 50 other countries throughout the-world.In 1960, Ransomes & Rapier decided to concentrate their design and manufacturing resources on the production of a wide range of contractors' plant and mobile cranes, and general engineering products were gradually phased out.
Concrete mixing machinery and the controlled mixing of concrete were in their infancy in the mid 80's but concrete mixers were already being developed at Waterside Works. By 1887, the design of a fully equipped batching and central mixing plant complete with elevators, storage bins and rotary mixer, was illustrated and specified in some detail in a Ransomes & Rapier catalogue, surely the first central mixing plant for concrete designed in the United Kingdom. Continuous experience in the design and manufacture in concrete mixers resulted in progressive ranges of tilting, non-tilting and roller pan mixers, with batch capacities from 3.5 cu.ft. to 2 cu.yds. or more, catering for both the jobbing builder and the civil engineering contractor. Other types of concrete mixing and handling machinery have been produced, ranging from crawler mounted pavers with distributing booms, to vibratory finishing screeds for road building. In 1932, the Company was the first in the United Kingdom to manufacture concrete mixers mounted on lorries, now universally known as Truck Mixers. The idea of batching at a central plant, with laboratory accuracy, and of mixing in transit or on arrival at site, revolutionised the organisation of building and civil engineering sites and enabled contractors to buy concrete to guaranteed specifications and strengths impossible to maintain by traditional Bite mixing. Continuous development in the design and manufacture of Rapier high discharge truck mixers has resulted in the latest highly sophisticated machines of 5 and 6 cu. metres mixed batch capacities, either with hydraulic or diesel mechanical drives, which are built for users at home and abroad.The rapid transfer of ready mixed concrete through pipes to remote delivery points has been the object of a number of pneumatic and mechanical devices developed over the years. They were known variously as concrete placers, gun and pumps and were the forerunners of the present day Rapier Ramcrete Concrete Pump, a twin-cylinder.hydraulic unit with its own diesel engine mounted on a lorry, which also carries a fully revolving three sectioned hydraulic folding boom, capable of delivering concrete to a height of over 200'-0" or a horizontal reach of 900'-0". The maximum capacity of the pump is 5O cu.m. of concrete per hour. During the next decade there will be an increasing demand for this type of equipment to reduce the cost of concrete placing by crane hoisted skips.
In the Palace of Engineering at the British Empire Exhibition, at Wembley in 1923, Ransomes & Rapier exhibited the first petrol electric, rubber tyred mobile crane, with cantilever jib and a patented variable voltage speed control system, which was to set a new standard of safety and simplicity in load handling and revolutionised existing ideas of craneage in industry and public services. It was a 2 tons capacity crane mounted on two front wheels and a steerable two wheeled caster at the rear, which could be turned through 90 each side enabling the crane to slew about the centre point of its front axle. Within a few years, Rapier Mobile Cranes were being used by railways, docks and industry and three sizes were in regular batch production for loads up to 7 tons. The designers then turned their attention to producing an even more maneuverable crane with a revolving superstructure and many variations in performance and load capacity of these types were produced. Today's great mobile crane industry evolved from those early cranes and Ransomes & Rapier have always been in the vane of its progress. It is to this unbroken background and over 50 years experience that the modern range of Rapier Hydraulic Mobile Cranes owes much of its outstanding success. These hydraulic cranes, which are made in 4 sizes for working loads of 6, 8, 12 and 15 tons, have telescopic booms in 2, 3 or 4 sections and are built as yard cranes, fast road traveling cranes or rough terrain four-wheeled drive and steer sight cranes. An interesting coincidence is that exactly 100 years after the delivery to China of that first export order, the little steam locomotive for the Shanghai-Woosung Railway, the Company started 1974 with an order for over 80 hydraulic mobile cranes for the Chinese People's Republic.
The first excavator to be made at Waterside Works was the result of an Australian customer changing his mind at the 11th hour. It was in 1914 that two 35 ton steam railway breakdown cranes were nearing completion, when the customer, the New South Wales Railways, asked for shovel equipment's to be fitted so that they could be used for coaling locomotives when not in use as cranes. As the customer is always right, it had to be done. The jib was strong and heavy enough to take the crowd reaction from the bucket arm but it was not possible to fit another steam engine to provide power for the crowd. An arrangement of hoist and rope reaving and braking to give the necessary crowd action was therefore devised, patented and fitted to the two cranes. The patent was subsequently sold to an American excavator manufacturer who exploited it so widely that in a few years it became known throughout the excavator industry as the rope crowd. It was not until 10 years later that Ransomes & Rapier branched out into the manufacture of excavators and the rope crowd was not then available to them. However, other methods of operating the crowd motion was designed and the development of the excavator side of the business proceeded at pace. By the early 30's a range of machines, with bucket capacities from 0.25 to 2 cu. yds. for contracting, quarrying and mining, were in regular production.
At about this time there was a call for a face shovel for removing 55'-0" of overburden from the iron stone beds of Stewarts & Lloyds in Northamptonshire. An electric stripping shovel, weighing 650 tons and carrying a 9 cu.yd. bucket, was designed and manufactured at Waterside Works and it proved so successful that 12 similar machines, some with 11 cu.yd. buckets were made in the next 6 or 7 years. By 1945 it was apparent that the face shovels could no longer economically remove the greater depths of overburden then being encountered and that large dragline excavators working from the top of the cut, would have to be used. A Walking Dragline, of a size never seen before in Europe, was designed, manufactured and erected, again to the order of Stewarts & Lloyds. This machine weighed 1,400 tons, carried a 20 cu.yd. bucket at 260 ft. radius and could dig to a depth of 100 ft. Thirteen of these large walking draglines were made, with bucket capacities from 11 to 44 cu.yds. and boom lengths up to 303 ft. The two largest of these machines, which were known as Rapier W.1800, were supplied, one to an electrical undertaking in Southern Italy, for stripping marl and shale overburden from lignite coal seams, and the other to the National Coal Board for opencast coal mining in South Wales. These big machines are powered by two 1,500 h.p. generator sets and are capable of moving a weight of overburden every hour equal to their own weight of 1,750 tons. A slightly smaller walking dragline, with a 33 cu.yd. bucket supplied to a power company for opencast coal mining in Alberta, Canada, was specifically designed for working in sub-zero temperatures down to -50 dec. C. This presented many design and material problems but the resulting machine was, and is, an unqualified success.Meanwhile, the production of the more popular sizes of excavators continued uninterruptedly and this vast experience has been focussed into the current NCK-Rapier range of highly sophisticated rope Operated and hydraulic excavators and crawler cranes. The excavators carry face shovel buckets from 0.875 to 4.25cu.yd. capacity and interchangeable front end equipments for face shovel, drag shovel, dragline, grab or crane duties.
NCK-Rapier build 9 sizes of crawler cranes. The largest machine is the 110 tonne Eiger C.110, carrying a maximum boom of 70 m (230'-0") long and is the largest crawler crane in manufacture in the United Kingdom. The Company has specialised for many years in the production of this equipment and is proud of the fact that more NCK-Rapier crawler cranes are now sold in the United Kingdom than any other make - in fact it is unusual to see a construction site without one!
Considerable rationalisation of the Company's products has taken place throughout the life of the Company to meet changing world market conditions and to improve the economics of manufacturing. Profitability in the civil engineering, plant hire and quarrying industries now demands far greater productivity and reliability than ever before from the machines that serve them. To keep pace with these requirements there is a continual improvement and innovation of design and manufacturing techniques at Waterside Works to ensure a product which gives safe and reliable operation with maximum use of profitability. Advanced machine tools, and value engineering methods result in competitively-priced products and there is stringent quality control at all stages of manufacture from raw material to final testing. These are qualities for which Ransomes & Rapier have a long standing and worldwide reputation. Their product lines of construction equipment now consists of crawler mounted excavators and cranes; rubber tyred hydraulic mobile cranes; concrete pumps and truck mixers - all bearing the trade mark of RapieR or NCK-Rapier and manufactured to the exacting standards which have made them internationally famous.
The two world wars changed life rapidly for the men at Waterside Works. In 1914 extra buildings were erected for shell making and millions of various types and sizes were manufactured there. In 1939 R&R quickly switched to a wide range of war work, including shells,guns,tank turrets and a lot more. There was also a good deal of work connected with ships. The works escaped damage in the first conflict but was heavily bombed in the second. Important shops and machinery escaped but there was serious loss of life following a shower of anti-personnel bombs and in one night the company lost a manager and several men.
TRENCH MORTAR
R&R made special contributions in both wars. In the first Wilfred Stokes won a knighthood for inventing the trench mortar. It was simple and effective but because it did not look like a proper gun,the not-too-bright military experts did not understand it at first. Shells dropped down a steel tube were exploded by a pricker at the base,the range governed by an elementary screw system on the front legs. The concept was a stroke of genius because the tube was also completely sealed at the bottom against the mud of the trenches.
With the large sum of money Sir Wilfred got for the American rights to the weapon he endowed a staff superannuation fund. The company's ability to solve tricky problems led to the Royal Navy calling them in to design a catapult capable of launching an aircraft from a ship. In operation it was one of the most spectacular pieces of apparatus ever constructed at Waterside Works. It was telescopic and could be driven either by compressed air or an explosive charge.
The most exacting test of the catapult took place on a battleship with the huge guns trained in various positions to ascertain the possible damage to the launcher due to blast.Chief Engineer R.Stanley Lewis Records:
"As the guns came into a nearly fore and aft position,the concussion became terrific.Great tool chests chained to the deck broke loose,doors had their hinges smashed,parts of a crane nearby were blown out but the catapult came through unscathed."
And it went on to play a vital part in the Second World War,by which time the popular Richard Stokes was in the managing director's chair-- and Member of parliament for Ipswich as well.
Electronic mail address
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Last updated on: 25/09.2002
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