Interesting Careers

[JonL]

I had to have a bit of a think before starting this thread, I didn't want it to turn into a big willy-waving contest... but so far I've found there are so many interesting stories behind the engineers we have on this site and in my local MES that I'd be truly interested in hearing about any interesting jobs or tasks people have had in the past, either a career path, task during a career, things you've done volunteering, anything really. Stuff that you maybe had to stop and say to yourself "I didn't imagine I'd be doing this when I left school!".

Mine is short but quite varied, for a majority of my career I've been involved in flight trials for the MoD, designing, building and using data gathering equipment, and also looking after the instrumentation fitted to the aircraft used by the Empire Test Pilots School. I've stepped away from that now (I work on mil. aircraft still, but for a company whose name sounds like the noise Zebedee makes...), however I did also find myself running the Accident Data Recorder section for a while, and did some time in motorsport (Astons & Ferraris primarily). When my leg started playing up I got into teaching, educating apprentices in Avionics, then moved on to teaching motorsport studies at a college (I was a terrible teacher, never did the paperwork). I've written a couple of books, one that was very poor (first attempt at writing a book, was only a kid really, didn't do a good job) and a second that I was actually proud of, did a lot of research and I think got the subject matter to the right level. I still freelance in motorsport sometimes, acting as a race mechanic in my free time, but that's dried up a bit lately. Just like the aircraft trials work it did get me travelling a bit, seeing a few bits of the world. I'd love to claim I was excellent at all these jobs, but to be honest for around a third of them I was a fish out of water waiting to get found out! One last one of interest, for fun I've done a bit of film extras work, I'm an amputee (leg, missing from the knee) and you can get a bit of pocket money for lying around covered in fake blood for a few hours. I'm lurking in a couple of films and such, although again I've not done it for a couple of years.

Over to you, what have you got!

[ilvaporista]

I am a petrolhead and have spent most of my career in the automotive industry.
First summer job was a sales assistant in a camera shop. Worked on building sites most summers including one at Porton Down watching the Lightnings from Empire Test Pilot school shoot straight up amost vertical.
One year on placement at a nuclear power station under construction, Heysham 2.
I started my first full time job in production engineering making forklift trucks in Basingstoke, Lansing Bagnall.
Next to Corby in powder coating, then to Italy for FIAT (Magneti Marelli)designing and making alternators including the F1 ones for the red cars.
Back to the UK at SU Automotive for carbs, throttles, oil pumps and fuel systems.
Return to Italy with AP for clutches and brakes on highly automated production lines to the joys of PLC's and CNC.
Now doing air conditioning for the last 15 years.
At school:
I never thought I would end up in Italy!
I never thought I would travel so much.
I never thought I would go behind the Iron Curtain.
I never thought I would be shot at.
I never thought I might be kidnapped.
I never thought I would marry an Italian.
I never thought I would speak three languages.

When you start out you know so little of your future. As you grow older you learn from your experiences.

[barlowworks]

I left school at 17 after 1 year of sixth form without a clue what to do with my life. The reason I left after 1year was my dad managed to get me an apprenticeship as a mason/ pavior with the local council so I was shovelling concrete and laying flags and kerbstones for the next ten years. I helped to build a lot of the Sheffield inner ring road, a job that was ahead of schedule but losing money. The management tried to blame the work force and introduced a time and motion study but we argued that if the job is ahead of schedule we were doing the work and it was mismanagement. I once got paid 5 times for laying the same 25 kerb because they didn't know what they were doing. I eventually told them to stick their job and went to be a postman.

Working on the post was not what I expected, I didn't mind working in all weathers, I'd done that as a mason/ pavior. It's the vicious dogs and the lippy kids I couldn't get on with. After 18 months they advertised for telephone engineers on post office telephones so I gave it a go and got in. It's the only job I've been asked if I can ride a bike and had a colour blindness test. 3 years later Busby arrived and we became BT.

During my time at BT and later Openreach I've jointed exchange and local cables, worked in the old Strouger exchanges ( affectionately known as clockwork), and worked on customer maintenance from the old dial phones to broadband and outside broadcast circuits up until my retirement 3 years ago.

You will notice there is no mention of engineering anywhere in there, I eventually got into 5 inch gauge after modelling in O gauge for 40 years. An unusual route to get where I am, I hope you will agree.

Mike

[Roger]

I think this still sums it up for me.

[Oily Rag]

The chances of me finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep myself occupied.

Slightly modified version of the original by Douglas Adams

[JonL]

I haven't read HHGTTG in years... really should pick them up again...

[jem]

It is interesting to see where other people have come from in model engineering. From the year dot I was building things in the garden and so my father thought that civil engineering would be the career for me. I became a site engineer, but did not like the idea of setting out, only for some navvy to knock all my pegs out, and I had to start again, I wanted to do the building. so I left civil engineering and started a scuba diving school with a friend in Mallorca, great fun, but no money, so my partner left and I got the concession with Pontinental at Cala Mesquida for the water sports, diving skiing boat hire, anything that would make money, great fun, and made money. this required lots of lathe work on maintenance and general engineering. So the hobby came into its own. Maybe some of you will have holidayed there, and so we have met? meanwhile I and my wife decided to build a house for ourselves, which we did much the the horror of the spanish, as a women just did not build houses. We enjoyed building and so build a couple more, my concession came to an end, so we decided to go into the holiday business renting chalets which we enjoyed very much more. Meanwhile I built up a large workshop and did a lot of wrought iron work, repairing fridges building tools and so on. look at www.jemjack.co.uk if you would like to see more. So you see we don't all know what we will be doing 60 years later. But anything to do with engineering is interesting to me.

best wishes Jem

[ettingtonliam]

I got into model engineering at school, built a Stuart No. 9, a Juliet, a Westbury mill and a Wallis & Steevens Simplicity roller, but decided to go into civil engineering as a career. I was always fascinated by big construction plant, cranes, excavators, scrapers, dozers etc, and their ability to remove a large hill in a few days!
After University, in 1971 I started in the London office of a large consulting engineer as a graduate design engineer and was fortunate to work on the design of the towers for Humber Bridge. This was followed by a move on site for Humber, doing the marine works for the tower foundations.
further moves followed, to a contractor for a power station infrastructure and sewage works, to British Gas for the high pressure gas pipelines, then to local government and consulting engineers for roads and bridges, a steelworks rolling mill and another sewage works, till I moved to Southern Ireland in 1998, as Project Resident Engineer to help them spend their Euro money on upgrading their road systems in Limerick, Cork, Mayo and Offaly until I retired from full time work in 2012, and returned to the UK.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, especially the Irish time. Would I do it again? As the industry is today, with far more paperwork, and people looking over your shoulder all the time, probably not, the fun has gone out of it.
Time was, you were sent off to a new site with a roll of drawings and set of contract documents, the client would show up for a sod cutting ceremony, and then disappear until it was time for the opening ceremony. There was a lot of responsibility in getting things built, but really the client and design office didn't want to know, it was down to the site teams for the contractors and the client side, which I was mostly, to sort out the problems, and deliver the finished article, reasonably to budget and time, and to organise a good 3 course sit down meal at a decent local hotel, so a whole bunch of people I'd probably never seen or heard of before could come and stuff their faces on opening day, and congratulate themselves on having done a good job! Nobody outside of the site teams was really interested to how the job had been done, just that it had been done.
The sense of personal acheivement was tremendous though, and thats why I did it for over 40 years.

[Doug]

I always wanted to fix things, taking all my stuff apart as a teen not knowing how to put it back together. My parents (mum and stepdad) has no clue what tools were other than gardening. I left school and tried to get into electronics but failed because I had no GCSE’s so took an apprenticeship in Electrical industry working on industrial electrical installations like hospitals (Staffordshire) and factories (Rover, JCB, Bentley was RR etc. ) then after breaking my wrist 8 times in a row after a work accident I decided to try again at Electronics as I would be unlikely to break my wrist again. I got in this time but six months in, an attempted stabbing made me decide to move away from stoke on Trent back to Leicestershire where my father’s family lived. I couldn’t find an electronic course so swapped to engineering which covered a bit of everything. After completing the BTEC I got a job as a maintenance technician at an injection moulding company, they had everything from CNC machines to woodworking department so a great place to work, I then moved about a bit to a quarry, rubber door seal plant and an aerospace sub contract firm that introduced me to Lasers and EDM machines my first job there was to build an 8 axis CNC laser drilling and cutting machine from scratch which was quite a task, then after 2001 things got too tight and I very regrettably had to leave due to no overtime and too many bills. I then got into CNC service and project management, moving hundreds of machines for Rolls Royce at Derby and around the country. After that I became a Laser service engineer travelling the world fixing laser drilling machines. After six years and one angry volcano I decided I had enough travel for one lifetime so quit and was offered a job at the same company working in the uk as a maintenance engineer fixing lasers, EDM and Viper Grinding machines. I spent the next six years in the expanding company growing the maintenance dept from just me to a team of six and a new 56,000sq ft facility. Sadly it all went south when a new boss jumped in and made it such a bad place to work that I was the 21st person to leave out of an 80 person workforce in 3 months (think that must be some sort of record). I went back to CNC service which is what I do now. I am very happy just pottering round fixing machines and enjoying the engineering industry that the uk now has.

[Oily Rag]

Jan 9, 2019 21:35:40 GMT JonL said:

I haven't read HHGTTG in years... really should pick them up again...

Every time I read the first four books (I think the later ones were not as good) I realise the gems in the pages.
I must have ready them 3-4 times over the years.

[don9f]

I am originally from the Wirral in Cheshire and grew up there, through the 50s and 60s. My Dad was an Electrical Engineer in the Petro-Chemical industry and from an early age, got me interested in all sorts of electrical and mechanical things. Both my Dad and my Uncle were into Model Railways and of course on the “real” Railways on the Wirral, steam still reigned supreme.

Encouraged by older lads at school, an interest in steam engines became all consuming, fuelled by regular bold expeditions being made to the nearby steam sheds such as Birkenhead Mollington Street (see photo in the Motivation thread), Speke Junction, Chester, Croes Newydd (Wrexham)....all of which in those days were very welcoming to us “Engine Spotters”. If you were really bold, you tried Liverpool Edge Hill but being thrown out of that one was almost a certainty!

My local shed though was Mollington Street and it was here that my long association with 9Fs began. In the mid 60s, the shed was home to around 55 of the class and as mentioned elsewhere, I used to dream of building a working model of one for myself. “Unfortunately” we moved in 1966 to the other side of the country to Lincolnshire which by then was just about devoid of steam....railways took a back seat at this point, although the interest never went away completely.

My love of things Mechanical resulted in me taking up an apprenticeship with English Electric Diesels of Lincoln and after completion of this, I was given a rather boring job with Napier Turbochargers....part of the same Ruston Group. Once I had my own car, I volunteered at the Great Central Railway at Loughborough during its early days and became involved with the footplate and maintenance side of things....rekindling the railway thing.

In 1974 I was offered and started a job with British Rail and over the next 40 years (with a short gap) became involved with a great number of interesting jobs and projects associated with Diesel Locos, High Speed Trains, Diesel and Electric Multiple Units and all manner of other vehicles. I have worked at many depots (they weren’t “sheds” any more), around the country but spent the longest time, 12 years at Immingham TMD on the bank of the Humber Estuary. In its day, this was a very busy freight depot, sadly now demolished. The culmination of this career was working for Bombardier on the “Voyager” fleet based at Central Rivers Depot near Burton on Trent. I retired from all this in 2014 and the railway today is nothing like it used to be....I was glad to go really!

Going back to 9Fs....by 1985 I had the money and the opportunity to start building one of Les Warnett’s models in 5” gauge. I used to make regular trips to see Norman Spink in Chesterfield to buy castings and materials. It was whilst visiting the real 92214 being restored (or more correctly at that time, being taken to pieces!) at Buxton to measure up / photograph etc. sometime in 1987, that I decided to get involved with the real thing as well and stayed with that project for the next 23 years. I became the Lead Engineer for the group and we successfully re-introduced the loco back into service in 2003. We operated it for 7 years, the home base then being the Midland Railway at Butterley, but visiting various other railways with it as well. In 2010 the owning Trust decided to sell it whilst it still had 3 years boiler ticket. Sadly our group was getting smaller as age and infirmity increased and a 9F is a big engine to maintain!

I still work on full size steam....currently machining new motion parts for a certain “Duchess”, also overhauling a steam driven air compressor for another group that own a “Duke”! If I can find the time I’ll even try to finish the overhaul of my model.....well documented in my 9F thread (that hasn’t been updated since July!!!).

If anyone reads this far, well done and I hope you found it a bit interesting....for me there’s no doubt that if we could go back in time, I’d do it all again!

Cheers Don

[Deleted]

well I started to write about my past and it was getting too long, I have a bad habit of doing that..lol

So here's a much-shortened version:

Whilst still at school in my mid-teens, my dream was to go into the RAF as a pilot, my academic level at that stage was very good, my tutors so no problems with me getting the exams required (I was in the top 3% for maths) and doing well in all of my other subjects. I was also in the ATC (Air Training Corps) with a good few hours flying in my log book, my other incentive for joining the RAF was that my father and both grandfathers served, my fathers father being a career serviceman flying more than 3 tours in Bomber Command, so the family history naturally led me in that direction. Alas this all changed when 16 and I fell ill, I'm not going to go into details but it put paid to me joining any military service (even the army wouldn't have me) and has continued to affect my health and always will.

So I didn't carry on with my education, I was far too ill during my mocks and had no incentive to push for my finals, something my Head Teacher noted and mentioned to my father later.
At this time I was working part-time in retail, actually in 'Wickes' and not really knowing what I wanted to do I stayed in retail for a few years until made redundant from another DIY outfit when Assistant Manager. I then joined ICI in their paints division, retail side as a Rep for South East London, I was there from 1983 until 1990, I did very well while with ICI, first to achieve 1 million ltr sales in a 12 month period and a dissertation that I wrote ( the whole company had to write one) was noted as the best and I had a one to one with the chairman who informed me when I asked if I could keep it that it was going to be used to train the rest of the sales team how things should be done. I always was good at doing these things, it was tough work though, no computers involved back then although they were about in the office.

Well I resigned from ICI in late 1989 giving the required 3-month notice and opened up a model shop with an old school mate, this did well in the beginning but the recession hit hard soon after and with large sections of Vauxhall's Luton closing down this hit our customers very hard and thus us, we just didn't have enough capital to see this bad period through and took the decision after 2 years to close the shop, it wasn't the end per se as the workshop side was doing very well and I just moved that home, my business partner pulled out and I was on my own with one ex-shop customer (model maker) who I employed to help out.
During this time I worked part-time in the Harrow model shop, I had known the owner since a child, in fact, longer than I could remember as my father said that he used to go the old shop premises when behind the Harrow & Wealdstone railway station with me when just a baby, this was early 60's.
It was while I was working at the shop one Saturday that I met Film director Bob Keene, he came in to buy a load of maritime bits and pieces as details for a model in a film he was directing, I happened to have a range of maritime models that I sold through the shop of which he bought the lot. Me being my helpful self, offered to urgently make him some more if he needed them. He replied 'What are you doing next week'? well as I worked from home I could say 'nothing', he said great, report to Image Animation, Pinewood Studios, Monday morning and that was that I never really stopped from then until I retired over two decades later due to my deteriorating health. It was while working in Film/TV that I picked up my skills on the lathe etc.
I won't bore you with the various films that I've worked on, I've mentioned some in the past... if you really want to know what I got up too in those two decades you'll find about half listed on the IMDB website if searching my full name Peter Seymour-Howell

That's me folks

Pete

[don9f]

Hi Pete, that’s a great “short story”! To someone like me who is interested in railways and particularly signalling, the name “Harrow and Wealdstone” strikes a chord, but of course sadly for the wrong reasons....

Cheers Don

[Deleted]

Jan 10, 2019 23:23:23 GMT don9f said:

Hi Pete, that’s a great “short story”! To someone like me who is interested in railways and particularly signalling, the name “Harrow and Wealdstone” strikes a chord, but of course sadly for the wrong reasons....

Cheers Don

Thanks, Don

yes it sure does, IIRC 1952 with one of the expresses being destroyed was pulled by the LMS turbine pacific, I wasn't born but the reports are pretty horrific. It's still a sad place in some ways as people keep jumping off the bridge that IIRC was damaged in the ensuing chaos of that sad day.

Pete

[simplyloco]

From Modest Beginnings...

Junior school: top of the class every year! Grammar school: bottom of the class every year!
Jan 1963 when 15 years old went to Army Apprentices College Chepstow and joined the Royal Engineers to be trained as a Fitter/Machinist: top of the class first and final year
1966 Posted to Osnabruck, Germany, for two wonderful years fixing everything in sight, and thereafter base workshop postings in UK. Loved it! Lance Corporal at 19, full corporal at 21 and accelerated promotion to sergeant at 25. Disillusioned at 27 (it was the officers' fault) and decided to seek another career while there was still time.

1974. First job as Production Foreman for an electronics manufacturer in London. 60 people working for me, hire and fire responsibility, which I exercised at every opportZunity. Tempted away from this great job by Abbey Life with the promise of riches that never materialised and I was soon broke...
I missed the Army but decided against it and joined the Met. Police. Whilst waiting to join I got a job as a milkman: the only job I ever got the sack from as I couldn't get up in the morning...

The Police pay was awful, so I started moonlighting for PG Cooper Precision Engineers in a railway arch in Alperton, Wembley. Peter Cooper was an ex Metal Box Co. toolmaker who had set up his own sub-contract shop. After a few Saturdays he offered me a full time job, a compliment indeed:  £100/week in 1977! 

Unfortunately, my lovely wife had just been asked by Linotype-Paul to relocate to Cheltenham. I said no, but nine months later I'd given up my job and we were both working for Linotype in Cheltenham. a course of action which changed my life.

Production Planning and Control became my niche. After five years I was at my peak, and then we were all made redundant when the firm moved to Germany!
Mitel Telecom as a Senior Planner didn't work out, and I got a job as Materials Manager for Almex Ticket Equipment in Cirencester. They sacked the Production Director when hard times came along and I found myself in that role, but after sorting their problems they got rid of me too!

Much to my surprise and delight PE International took me on as a Management Consultant. Assignments varied from tea bag manufacture  to underwater breathing apparatus: all struggling with the new computer driven manufacturing planning systems. For a bit of variety, PE sent me to Qatar for over a year to redesign the ancient admin systems in the recently nationalised oil company. It was hot, but Carol, Alex and I had a refrigerated swimming pool so it wasn't too bad...

Seven months at Vickers Defence in Leeds, dragging Challenger battle tank manufacture into the twentieth century, told me that I should do something less dramatic, and I joined (I should say I was poached by!) Profile Consulting, a small family firm in Gloucester. We parted company after ten very happy years,  which included assignments in Canada and Pakistan, and I took the self employed route. Just enough work trickled in over the years to keep my boat in Montpellier and give us enough time to enjoy it!
It's a great life!
John

[JonL]

Some fantastic concatenated life stories here, a great read.

[suctionhose]

I’m a little envious oft the great company and military opportunities that have been available in the UK. We really lack that in Australia.
The work I’ve done is not special by comparison but there is a story attached I guess.

I always want to be making things and that aspect was well advanced at home with our model engineering long before the need to ‘get a job’ ever breached the horizon. When school days ran out, Dad said talk to Dave. I did and started work. My brother’s music teacher, a Patternmaker himself said “be a Toolmaker” So I was.

It was a traditional apprenticeship starting on the broom, doing the repetition work and being sorted from the boys. The Company was in its infancy but growing rapidly and I was a good prospect. I got to do every job in the place from welding to site work to machining to estimating and drawing. Future was brighter than even I could see but it came at a price: Give us your life!

Thrust into a supervisory role a year out of my time I realised that this Company would consume me and spit me out as trash when they were done so we had a disagreement and I left. Dreams of what might have been have haunted me for decades, but I recently learned the name of the person they eventually found: 5am to 7pm, 6 to 7 days a week he works. Got no life other than work. I made the right choice.

My father had been retrenched. We bought a business. A year later we were broke. I hung onto the house working 2 jobs and moonlighting on the weekend. It was a crap time! Going past a factory I knew one day, I stopped to see what they were doing. “If you ever need a job, come and see us”. Not long after I did and I started working, no running the engineering division of a family owned plastic moulding company.

The Old Man was a tough as nails. A pro fox hunter from New Zealand who’d live for weeks at a time in frozen wilderness. Had done well in life through sheer balls of steel. We had a massive falling out one day and favourite son chased me down the road fully intending to beat me to death!

I sought shelter in a nearby business whom I knew. Any work here? They told me they belonged to a special Church and didn’t hire outsiders but if I registered a business they’d give me work. I did. They did and I found myself self employed and surviving.

One day I was queuing in a lunch shop beside another local businessman and said if you need help I’m available. A month later he called with a piddling little job – a bracket or something – 15 years later I was on his leadership team with a small but extremely capable engineering workshop at his disposal. We made everything on site to high standards and with my network of specialists, anything was possible and done the next day. Sadly, our industries are not like that anymore.

Australian Manufacturing is characterised by small volumes, limited capital and great expectations. I built and converted machines to do things OEM's never imagined. All those special jobs we could do…

Nothing is for ever and I moved on but in manufacturing, the rules are always the same. What you make is immaterial – it’s just a process.

My work has been unspectacular but varied at least. I said elsewhere that I need constant mental stimulation. I’ve made nearly everything one time or another, project managed everything from concrete pours to factory relocations and High Voltage Substations. I think there’s always someone in the mix that has no specific title or qualifications but is essential to doing anything – I’m one of those people!

[smallbrother]

My Dad did a self-build house back in the mid 60s and this sparked my interest in construction at the age of 10. In school I was mad keen on rugby and this was my pastime until my knees would take no more at the age of 37.

I started comp school as a clever but lazy bugger until I was 16 and then realised if I got my head down there was a decent and interesting living to be made in construction. So I did A Levels and went off to Polytechnic rather that Uni as Polys did more of the sandwich type Civil Engineering degrees.

My year in industry was spent constructing the foundations of electrolytic tinning lines in Ebbw Vale steelworks in 1975/6. I found the final year back at Poly very difficult as I had seen life on site, the many practical problems didn't lend themselves to the incredibly deep mathematics on an engineering degree. Anyway, thanks to a very kind and supportive mate from Barbados I got through.

The best job going in late 1977 by a mile was with the National Coal Board Opencast Executive. I was fortunate to get the job and spent 15 years in the industry. The scale of the operations and the money involved was quite staggering. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in mining until a dickhead boss came along who was only interested in his own promotion at the expense of everyone else. You either had to toadie up or feel his resentment and being a bloke of principle I went with the latter. Not surprisingly, I suppose,they paid me off soon after.

I then went to work for a nearby Borough Council. It was like going back in time by 40 years. Nevertheless, within the constraints of such an outfit, I found myself working for some very good bosses and enjoyed contributing to flood prevention, something which was a common and very disruptive occurrence in the Rhondda Valleys. My time of enjoyment came to an end after about 10 years when another dickhead came along with exactly the same outcome.

I finished with the council on the Friday, with a pension, and started with a local consultant the next Monday on a self-employed basis. Very lucrative as it turned out! I did this for 4 years until the recession took hold in 2010. By this time I was on 2 pensions and was happy to finish work altogether. We had a young son, my wife is a good bit younger than me, so I stayed home.

When my rugby came to an end I took up drumming and played in a few rock bands. I would still be going now but problems with my back and knee were making it difficult to carry all the gear around for rehearsals and gigs. As the drumming was winding down I got into this hobby. Nothing of my past experience is of much help except I recall lots of tank engines working all over South Wales and that, I suppose, is why I have 3 miniature ones and am building another one.

Pete.

[pault]

I’m not sure what I will do when I grow up but until I do I think I will just carry on playing with trains and making things.

[Deleted]

Jan 11, 2019 15:27:56 GMT pault said:

I’m not sure what I will do when I grow up but until I do I think I will just carry on playing with trains and making things.

Haha....love it Paul....

Pete