Pylon-related organisations

Contents

• Overview
• Contractors
  • British Insulated
  • Callender’s
  • Balfour Beatty
  • BICC
  • Blaw Knox
  • GEC
  • J L Eve
  • Milliken Brothers
  • Painter Brothers
  • Pirelli
  • Watshams

Overview

A few vague details about a few organisations related to British electricity pylons. Extensive detail is not to be expected.

Contractors

British Insulated

British Insulated Cables joined with Callender’s Cable Co. Ltd. in 1945 to become BICC.

Responsible for:

• SEE PL2 DT

Callender’s

Named Callender’s Cable Company Limited during the design of SEE PL1(b), it was named Callender’s Cable & Construction Company Limited when it was selected as the construction contractor for SEE PL16. However, (per the PL16 specification) the company was voluntarily liquidated on 29/06/1945. It was then joined with British Insulated Cables to become British Insulated Callender’s Cables Limited or BICC. The SEE PL16 contract was amended to adopt British Insulated Callender’s Cables as the project contractor.

Responsible for:

• SEE PL1(b)
• SWE PL1/PL1(a)/PL1(b)

Balfour Beatty

The present-day Balfour Beatty is former parent company BICC.

Responsible for:

• L6 (variant)
• SSE400

BICC

British Insulated Callender's Cables (BICC) is now Balfour Beatty. BICC acquired Power Securities who themselves owned Balfour Beatty. Formed in 1945 from British Insulated Cables and Callender’s Cable.

Responsible for:

• L6 (variant)
• L6(c) (jointly with J L Eve)
• L7/L7(c) (jointly with J L Eve)

Blaw Knox

American-based firm Blaw Knox appear to be the most prolific organisation when it comes to tower design. Blaw Knox entered the UK transmission tower market through their acquisition of Milliken Brothers. Blaw Knox designed two of the most common tower types in Britain: the 132 kV PL16 type (still under the name of the Milliken Brothers branch) and the first major Supergrid type of L2. (The earlier L66 Supergrid type was also their design.) When the Supergrid was extended to quad-conductor lines, Blaw Knox provided one of the four L6 types. National Grid document TGN(E) 161 “Technical Guidance Notes - Modifications to L66, L2, L3, L3(c), L8 and L8(c) Towers” bears the summary line “A generic design defect exists in the layout of body extensions incorporated into Blaw Knox L66, L2, L3, L3(c), L8 and L8(c) towers.” The suggestion is that these are all Blaw Knox designs, and there seems to be no reason for this not to be the case.

Responsible for:

• CE PL3
• PL4
• K5735
• PL16
• L66
• L2
• L3 (variant)
• L3(c)
• L4(m)
• L8 (unconfirmed)
• L8(c)

GEC

Seemingly the actual designers of SEE PL1a, rather than (as the Tower Bible indicates) Pirelli.

J L Eve

J. L. Eve Construction was a London-based civil engineering company founded in 1930 by its late namesake John Leonard Eve. J L Eve characteristically avoided giving any of their tower designs names. Their implementation of the CEB L132 specification is variously known as “L16” (in England), “L55” (in Scotland) and L132 in general, and there is no evidence to prove that these three are all the same specification; in the Tower Bible the series name is given merely as “J.L. EVE.” Eve drawings for the Thorpe Marsh–Stalybridge line depict Eve L6 towers but again do not name the series.

Eve were jointly responsible with BICC for L7, L6(c) and L7(c), with each series being a mixture of Eve and BICC tower designs.

Responsible for:

• “Eve 0.125”
• “Eve 0.175”
• L16/L55
• L3 (variant)
• L6 (variant)
• L6(c) (with BICC)
• L7/L7(c) (with BICC)

Milliken Brothers

Milliken Brothers were an American firm who were the winners of a CEB competition to select a design for the pylons that would make up the original National Grid. (The present-day National Grid is what was introduced as the Supergrid, the 275 and 400 kV overlay onto the original 132 kV network.) (It’s worth noting that the organisation that won the competition could have been their UK branch, which is impossible to trace.)

Milliken Brothers was acquired by Blaw Knox in August 1927, as reported in the New York Times. Successive tower designs still bore the Milliken Brothers name on the drawings alongside of that of Blaw Knox, until the Milliken Brothers name finally disappeared.

Responsible for:

• PL1 suites for most regions (not SEE)

Painter Brothers

Painter Brothers’ exact involvement is unclear, and although they are still in business it has so far proved impossible to contact them. They are listed as one the two steelwork fabricators for scheme SEE PL16 (along with Horseley Bridge & Thomas Piggott Ltd). The L2 tower was fabricated and tested at Painter Brothers’ works.

Pirelli

Pirelli is an Italian tyre manufacturer who were also (allegedly!) the designer of PL1a, a fairly common tower type in the UK. However, Pirelli may have just been a cabling subcontractor. The Tower Bible gives Pirelli for SEE PL1(a) but the drawings name GEC.

Probably not responsible for:

• SEE PL1a

Watshams

Responsible for:

• PL7