past weekend I went to the W.A.Young Foundry in Rices Landing, Greene Co Pa. walking around checking the old machines and saw a crumpled rag sitting on a stool, opened it up and this is what i found.
Did you check the storeroom for hot rod parts?! Having worked in a cast iron foundry for 25+ yrs., I always perk up when I hear the word foundry. Tough, hot, dirty, noisy and honest work!
Those pics give off a helluva cool vibe. I can almost smell that place. History, never to be repeated. Thanks for posting. Any more?
Willie, it would cost a small fortune to start a Foundry in this country today.The main reason ours, The Sandy Iron & Brass Works (founded 1858), stayed around until about 2 yrs. ago, was because it was grandfathered and only had to meet minimum requirements. Still Proud of all the quality products that were made there!
I worked at Merrow Machine, Hartford, Connecticut from 1966-1978. We had lathes and other machines operated by overhead belts until OSHA made us get rid of them.
There was an old shop locally like that, I know it was making parts until about 1980. They used long wooden poles to push the belts from pulley to pulley to change the spindle RPMs.
they do the same thing here. use the poles to move the belt to an idler pulley, than change tools or speed
Cool, I remember going to Kings Machine shop here in town with my grandfather and they still had the belt driven machines there up into the late 60's. After the owners retired the Safeway store that had most of the rest of the block bought the property to expand the parking lot. Those photos bring back some memories as I worked at the Safeway store for a couple of years as a teenager.
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