Messenger at Ardnacrusha 1956-1960

Unknown artist

1956-1960 Messenger I started working as a Messenger at Ardnacrusha Power Station when I was fifteen. I worked in that position for four years. The work was varied and interesting. It ranged from answering phones to guide duty, from post collection to operating office machines. The post, correspondence and memos had to be collected and delivered, to and from all the different managers / staff in various offices and divisions. I had set times for doing the rounds and I also posted the outgoing mail in the local post office each afternoon. One of my duties was to print out drawings for the Drawing Office and Civil Works Department. These drawings were printed on an old-style printing machine which, when in operation, was extremely loud. The negative was placed on a special type of paper and fed into the printer which had two large carbon lamps that moved over and back until the print emerged at the other side. This print was then developed. When copies of documents were required, the typists typed out stencils. I then attached the stencil to a duplicating machine called ‘The Gestetner’ which could produce as many copies as was needed. One of my daily duties was the collection of the megawatt-hour sheet from the hydro-metric engineer. This sheet recorded the amount of electricity generated at a national level each day. From those figures, I would prepare a graph on a load mounting card, which showed at a glance, the peaks and valleys throughout the day. The graph gave a precise reading of the national demand for electricity. I also colour-coded the graph in order to indicate the different categories of energy for electricity generation. This graph was referred to by the engineers and staff in the main control room to anticipate high demands for electricity.