Station Clock – Barter Books

The old station clock at the front of Barter Books in Alnwick had not worked for a long time, probably since the building was a working station.  It is a very high quality timepiece turret clock made by the renowned Potts of Leeds who made many of Englands public and station clocks.

It has a pin wheel escapement a variant of the deadbeat escapement, instead of using teeth the escape wheel has round pins that are stopped and released by a scissors-like anchor.

The movement was thick in muck, dirt and solified carbon and had rough pivots and worn pinions.

I completely dismantled the clock to its component parts, and removed the oil, dirt, rust and carbon that had formed a thick, almost solid layer over the clock. It was then cleaned using various processes until it could finally be polished.

I then refaced all the pivots.  Significant wear was also visible on two of the pinions, one of which had already been addressed. This was done by unpinning the wheel and moving it on the arbour to run on a good part of the pinion.  The second one had not been and moving the wheel on the arobour was not an option. To fix this I turned down the shoulders on the bushes, producing the same effect of moving the pinion so it meshed with the corresponding wheel on an unworn part.

The clocks steel lines were very worn and damaged and hance replaced.

The movement was then reassembled, returned to barter books and refitted. The motion works had been disconnected and so had to be reconnected behind the dial. 

The station clock is now back to full working order and should have many more years of service ahead of it!