Time for me to stop gawping and shift my arse before the drumshaft crew sent out a search party. Think on, lad, think on!
I’d managed to turn a trip to the stores for rags into a bit of a skive, taking mental notes as I walked down the 3 Bay gangway past Charlie Dixon’s rev frame section.
One frame was finished and ready to float across the service road to truck build for the marriage ceremony: top and bottom united, front end fitted, and then the finished 38-RB would leave the place where it was born, down the famous No 3 Bay ramp and out into Beevor Street, heading for the test ground.
Next door two twenty-ton gantry cranes grumbled up and down, sending tremors through the floor as they set castings on the boring machines to be machined square and true. A shaft of sunlight lit the dust over Dixon’s patch.
The slingers were Beano and Nuryev. Nuryev’s real name was Wilf, but I called him Nuryev because he always rose up on tiptoe in his hobnail boots to direct the lift, pincering with his finger and thumb. Beano’s real name was Batchelor. Typical Lincolnshire humour. Beano gave the signal and the two cranes began to lift in tandem.
And it was time for me to stop gawping and shift my arse before the drumshaft crew sent out a search party. Think on, lad, think on!
