I left school in'64 and went straight into the 'ATD' at George Richards. When let loose in to the factory, I was installed in the horizontal boring section, run by a True Gent by the name of Alec Ellis. When the hammer fell in '67, I (still being an apprentice) was supposed to move over into the Kearns factory, but I left then and started at the Churchill Machine Tool Co. I stayed until late '69 when I went to Kearns and finished my apprenticeship. In 1973, The Ingersoll-Rand company had moved into the old 'Metropolitan-vickers transformer plant in Baguley. I mention this because it's workforce comprised mostly of ex-Broadheath engineers that moved on from the joining of Richards and Kearns in '67. I joined Ingersoll-Rand in '75, and over the next few years with the not so gradual winding down of the activites in Broadheath the shopfloor at I-R was a mix of Richards,Kearns, Churchill and Linotype. 45 years on, still Horizontal Boring and working with an ex-Kearns Borer . I've remembered a few names from the past, (in no particular order) -: Jimmy Eccles, Cliff Binder, Neville Thomason (stubbins!) Horace Heale, Ned Brownhill, Ken Pearson, Ken Naylor, Vic Youle,Ronnie Thomason, Fred Matley To name A few as they say......