Engineers reading

I have just finished reading Nevil Shute's "Trustee from the Toolroom", a story about an engineer called Keith Stewart, who designed and built model engines and wrote for the "Miniature Mechanic".
Its an old fashioned slow read, but talks about lathes, milling machines and other bits which we find in our workshops and first published in 1960. If you have time on your hands, try and find a copy.
Perhaps Mr Wyatt needs something like this ???
BobH

I'm sure Neil has already read it as NS was also an Adept user, but of the Adept shaper.

Yes a great little book. I read it years ago and have it still sitting on my shelf awaiting a re-read. From memory, Neville Shute was an aircraft engineer so he knew his machining, and supposedly Keith Stewart was modelled on ET Westbury whom NS knew during the war through work on WD gadgetry.

I think N S Norway (Shute) was a stress calculator working for Barnes Wallace on airships. Others probably have more accurate details.

Martin

Yes, a very good book, especially the part about the importing of diamonds, I think, hidden in the dirty sump of an engine!

I wonder if that would work today?

Peter G. Shaw

The story is that the protagonist was based on ET Westbury.

Neil

His autobiography, "SlideRule: The Autobiography of an Engineer" is also well worth reading.

Russell.

**LINK**

Warning - the following post has been written by an enthusiast and may have nerdish elements!

Agreed about Slide Rule. The autobiography pretty much stops before the war though. There's a biography by John Anderson which has more detail, particularly of the latter part of his life and the move to Oz.. Shute kept pretty quiet about his wartime service but the novel "Requiem for Wren" perhaps gives some clues as does "Most Secret" which he was not allowed to publish during the war for security reasons. He seems to have been interested in pyrotechnics and may have had a hand in the Great Panjandrum.

Shute is on record as saying, on being asked, that Keith Stewart is based a little on ETW who he was a full time employee of ME at the time. The description of a model engineer quietly living in the suburbs, having a world wide correspondence and delivering his copy in person every week surely has a large element of LBSC in it as well.

Shute and a colleague flew to Australia in a Percival Proctor in the late 40s. The co-pilot James Ridell wrote a book about this journey - Flight of Fancy. As a completist I've tried reading it but as it seems to be mostly about his dreams I am struggling so far!

Cheers,

Rod

FWIW - Nevil Shute's letter, where he mentions basing his character on ETW, is quoted in the article about the book and NS, in ME 22nd December 1960.

Edited By Robin King on 04/11/2015 19:29:33

i plowed through 'Trustee from the Toolroom' a few years ago. it is an incredibly boring turgid read. i wouldnt advise anyone to read it, notwithstanding the model engineering 'interest'. the plot is pretty bad and the key character 'keith' about the most boring person imaginable.

it would have been far more interesting if the key character had been based on LBSC instead of poor old Edgar Westbury!

cheers,

julian

I have now re-read all of Neville Shute's novels, plus his autobiography 'Slide Rule' and have them all still on my bookshelf, and thoroughly enjoyed all of them (except "On the Beach" which I thought was most depressing - shall not read that one again) including "Trustee from the Toolroom" - sorry Julian! One of the reasons I enjoyed them all, besides being good stories, was that they described a way of life, and attitudes to life and to other people, that existed at the time the book was set in and that now gone forever. I will read them all again in the years to come, I hope!

Neville Shute did work with Barnes Wallis on the private enterprise airship that was built at the same time as the one the government was building, the ill-fated airship (R101 from memory) that crashed in France killing all on board (I believe), which effectively ended our countrys' involvement in airships, even though the private enterprise airship he was working on was turning out to be a very successful design. He then helped set up and ran a company building aeroplanes and advanced successful ones for the time at that. What he did during the war I don't know, but eventually he retired to Oz living in the countryside in Victoria which enjoyed very pleasant weather conditions all year round and at the time of his death was actually into model engineering having a small lathe in his workshop. I believe!

Chris

Sorry, I can't agree with that. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Russell.

He was a member of the Melbourne society of model and experimental engineers Founded in 1926.

It meets the second Friday of every month to this day.

I stumbled upon this link
**LINK**

Regards
John

This is the second outing for the "Trustee from the Toolroom", last one was "A hobby related novel on 4/6/13.

I found it a quite interesting read if you imagine the life of Keith Stewart in post war London, and on a rather small income.

Ian S C

I like No Highway which is about metal fatigue bringing down airliners of a new design. This was written in 1948 several years before the unfortunate crashes of a couple of De Havilland Comets due to fatigue cracks originating around square windows leading to catastrophic fuselage failure bring the planes down with considerable loss of life.

The prophetic nature of this novel shows what a brilliant aeronautical engineer Neville Norway was.

Its Fathers Day. My daughter has sent me the LadyBird book How it Works - THE DAD. How I laughed, the bit about when Andy was to have his vasectomy and his wife saying it was Neutering ... etc etc. There are other titles, "The king of the Barbecue" and "The house husband"
BobH

One of the titles in that series, 'The Shed', should be required reading for Model Engineers!

Iain

I'm reading "The Secret Life of Bletchley Park" at the moment. It's amazing what a group of bright people in their sheds can achieve.

Russell.