simon

A problem that can arise with lubrication is where bearings can have cages which are attacked by some of the additives in more modern oil formulations. The vintage car side of things usually tries to avoid having modern formulation oils in contact with original pre war bearings in gearboxes and back axles. I think you'll find it is the additives which cause the problem and not the detergents. The detergents wash out dirt which can have accumulated in the likes of an engine and the dirt, which may have lain unmoved for many years, then causes problems by blocking small oilways. This is unlikely to cause any great difficulty in lubricating a single simple bearing. The additives, however, can actually attack the metals within older bearings. These additives are usually found in gear oils (particularly for Hypoid axles) as opposed to engine oils and an SAE 20 oil would be a light lubrication engine oil. When you say sleeve bearing I take it you mean an "Oilite" type of bearing made of bronze which allows oil to pass through it to the shaft inside, as opposed to a bearing with rollers or balls. It is the latter which are most susceptible to additives. An SAE 20 oil is what Rolls Royce specified for their chassis lubrication systems and I would have thought would have been a fairly safe bet for most bronze bearings. It would be commonly used as well for lubricating the bearings on dynamos, magentos and the like.

"Well, yes - but I have my point was that I can think of no other example of a 'Harmonics' stop (with a composition of 17-19-flat 21-22) by HWIII. Whilst, on paper, one or two of the mixtures at Liverpool Cathedral appear to come close. the composition of many of them was altered, either during the building of the instrument, or shortly afterwards. Goss-Custard hated tierce mixtures, apparentl" In its original incarnation, as built by HW III in 1928, the University Chapel organ in Glasgow had a four rank Mixture stop on the Great of 17 19 b21 and 22nd. It was an entirely new build by HW III. Although it's shown as a Mixture in NPOR, it does run in my head that it was actually labelled Harmonics. http://npor.rcm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N11996

" his magnets were almost certainly made and wound by a certain Mr Rolls, (of Rolls-Royce fame"... Just a small point, but the Hon C.S. Rolls wasn't the electrical or mechanical man. That honour goes to Sir F.H. Royce whose electrical company started in 1884.

On the subject of "Eagles Wings", I remember a few years ago a Radio 4 Sunday morning service from a church in Glasgow I could picture well. The choir had obviously been told to "give it laldy" (trans. with gusto) and so they sang : "They shall rise up on wings as seagulls" . On the subject of hymn books, the bane of my life is CH4 , the purple covered thing we have to suffer in Scotland. The music edition is too small for the page hooks on both organs and pianos, the print is pitifully small and is grey rather than black. An awful production. The English Hymnal would have been a better buy.

I've always been a railway enthusiast although largely I've had to limit myself to 00 Gauge models. What I can do for real though is sit at my 1933 Willis console ( a rebuild from 1890) or at the wheel of my 1933 Lanchester 10 and it is just possible to feel slightly transported back in time. The Willis had the Musicom control system installed a few years ago but I remember before that the clunks and clicks the couplers made due to the 30s electrics in the console, very like the mechanical controls of the car. Of course, the accelerator is the organ pedal type and both have ebonised finishes. Now - who says organists are stuck in the past...?

Only a couple of minor points : the Crichton Lewis was cleaned and overhauled in 1982/3 by Willis, not Harrisons. It has however been tuned by Harrisons for quite some time now. St. Michael's Parish Church in Dumfries, where I'm organist, has a two manual Willis of 1890/ 1933 which we recently had overhauled by Willis. Unfortunately many of the remaining churches have gone over to electronics but Dumfries used to be a wonderful place for budding organists as it had a lot of churches and produced several University organ students and scholars, myself included.