Day 4 23/6/19 Dusseldorf

Day 4 23/6/19 Dusseldorf

Relaxed start to the day as we waited for my luggage to turn up, the courier had rung about 8am to say he would be here between 11:30 and 1:30, turned up about 1pm. Thank goodness we now have all our luggage, my new case is looking decidedly worse for wear but at least it has arrived.

Ouch, it was new when we left Melbourne!

We then went to visit the drop forging Museum. Took a while to find it as unlike in Australia, where there are advertising signs everywhere, some of the attractions here are not well signposted sometimes almost appearing to "hide", more on this later.

Rather obscure Museum/ factory building

The house built by the brothers as their family home was pretty impressive. 

The Museum is housed in the former Hendricks drop forge factory that was first established in 1886. The factory went through the usual ups and downs, expansion and retraction until it closed in 1986. At this point the Museum took over, making some safety improvements to allow the public to visit and even kept on the remaining employees (only 8 by this time) to demonstrate the machinery.

Even though the factory had an extensive grinding department to supplement the forges, this was  exclusively for sub-contractors who rented the space and in many cases utilised their family in their particular area of expertise, buying the blanks from the forge and supplying them to various company’s for sale.

This is another reason the forge / museum is a bit obscure as the purveyors of the finished product did not want it known where the blanks came from, intimating that it was all done in the back of their workshops where the public was not allowed.

Trimming dies for the scissor forgings

The original drive wheels and belts are still in place

Scissor blanks ready for grinding and polishing

Workers Washroom

Note the wooden "safety shoes" worn when using the grinding machine

Dale admiring the steam distribution pipework.

Steam boiler, note the concave brickwork on the side of the boiler housing. The boiler consumed 2 tons of coal a day, all shoveled by hand

Steam distribution

A 2 cylinder diesel engine replaced steam in 1955. This was largely replaced by electricity in 1980 when the diesel engine cracked a cylinder, it soldiered on with the remaining good cylinder running some parts of the factory until its closure in 1986. (note piston hanging above engine)

From there we went for a drive around Solingen and its environs, finding some very narrow streets whilst in search of a supermarket, being Sunday afternoon, we hadn’t realised that very few businesses/ shops are open.

 

Interesting architecture in Solingen

Gates and driveway leading to our flat