MEMORIES OF A NATIONAL
SERVICEMAN
Trevor Sidaway
ROYAL
ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
The REME badge
Before moving into
the drawing office I spent a few weeks helping to erect an overhead crane in
one of the side workshops in the main REME factory
The crane was not new
but was in good shape and went together reasonably well—we had the help
of as many Spanish labourers as we needed, especially useful when we raised the
overhead rails and crane platform into place. The workshop was to be used as a
non-ferrous foundry and this complimented the iron foundry that was well
established
Colonel Matthews made
good use of this new foundry for some of his pet projects, one of them was to
produce a sign in the form of a very large REME cap badge, this was to be
mounted on a suitable backboard and installed at the bottom of the ramp leading
up to the REME camp at Governors Cottage
I was in the Drawing
Office by this time and I’d already had some experience at producing
designs for oversize cap badges, for a number of the Colonel’s military
friends.
These were about
three times full size, cast in brass and mounted on small shields that had a
hinged prop to enable them to stand
on a suitable flat surface—a little like a photo frame however, this REME
badge had to be on a different scale and to be clearly visible from the coastal
road alongside the Camp
Three foot high
A reconstruction of the REME sign, cast in Brass and Aluminium and
mounted on a backboard painted in Regimental colours of dark blue,
yellow and red
The height of the REME
badge was settled at three feet, this was the maximum size of drawing that I
could produce on my drawing board,
the drawings were to be used as full size templates by the Woodwork/Pattern shop--a procedure that had worked
well with the earlier smaller scale cap badges
I recall that I made
four separate drawings to enable four separate castings to be made;
the lightening flash—cast in brass
the
horse and world—cast in aluminium
the scroll-----------------cast in brass
the
crown-----------------cast in brass
The procedure to cast
the chain was left to the discretion of the Patternmaker and Foundryman
To produce the
drawings I used a grid system that enabled me to use a small scale drawing of
the badge so that each box of the grid had a small outline of part of the badge
that I could enlarge and transfer on to the grids of my larger drawing
I also specified
thicknesses at various critical points on the paper templates
The master
patternmaker—Sergeant Robinson—did a great job, using his abundant artistic
skills in carving some of the finer topography of the badge—especially
the crown and chain
The master foundry
man--an unknown corporal—also showed that he was as much at home with non
ferrous casting as he was with iron casting
The assembled sign
was handed over to the Quartermaster, installed on a post at the entrance to
the camp, and served as an example to the manufacturing skills of the Workshop
photo courtesy George Staples
The sign
was installed at the bottom of the ramp, leading up to the camp,
where it joins
the main
The Quartermaster took the trouble to come into my office to compliment
me on the project adding that I’d
obviously had the good sense to refer to the EMERS (Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
Regulations) which specified
that;
“A
line drawn through:
the centre of the World,
the Horses eye and
the
centre of the pearl on the top of the Crown
Should be straight and vertical”
I didn’t even know that
such an EMER existed but I pretended that I knew all about it
The Quartermaster
name unknown—who was also a keen supporter of the REME 1st
eleven football team
# Playing trains with Prince Charles &
Princess Anne #
# More about the models #
# "Resting" in Tangiers--at the EL
Farhar #
# Football in Gibraltar (Part one) #
# Football in Gibraltar (Part two)
#
# Keeping the Laundry going and other
Sports #
# Home #
email me trevor_sidaway@hotmail.com
Link to "Black Country
Stories"