Trafford Park: Westinghouse 1 Traditional Cache
Trafford Park: Westinghouse 1
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This cache is hidden at the edge of the old Westinghouse site, once a massive, thriving engineering factory.
This is another cache in what is increasingly becoming a series of caches around Trafford Park. It may be a large industrial estate, but that's no reason for it to be boring!
This cache is placed on the perimeter of what used to be the largest single employer in Trafford Park, Westinghouse - which went on to become Metropolitan Vickers, GEC, GEC Alsthom and then Alsthom. It was one of the most important and largest engineering factories in Britain for much of the last century. "At one time this 130 acre site employed 23,000."
The site for Trafford Park Works was bought in 1899 and building started in 1901 - the factory when completed used over 11m bricks and was finally demolished in 1996.
"The man who bought this [site] was G. Westinghouse; he was born in 1846 and fought in the American Civil War. He was a first class inventor and at the age of 23 had patented the Westinghouse railway air brake. He was extremely interested in electricity and AC machines and already had 5 factories in America."
This image shows the extent of the works in 1955. Watersmeet (where the Bridgewater Canal branch splits off towards Manchester City Centre) is a the bottom, with Mosley Road on the far left.
Westinghouse became Metropolitan Vickers which became well known for manufacturing industrial equipment such as turbines, transformers and switchgear, generators and the like. They took to producing the Avro Manchester bomber for WWII on a site on the Western side of Mosley Road (the top left of the picture above), but they suffered heavy losses in air raids; in the end they made 1080 Lancaster bombers in the region.
"The [cast iron water] tower proved to be a superb guide for enemy bombers. They lined up on the tower and caused tremendous damage to the works. Truly British, we removed the tower on the following day. Hardly any roofing was left and half the machinery was destroyed; yet in a month, we were back on full production. Trafford Park itself suffered greatly (7 out of 10 of the world’s biggest warehouses were destroyed)."
In the 1960s it merged with other engineering companies to become GEC. The site finally closed in the 1990s and is now used by many other companies - Kelloggs have expanded into the area for warehouse storage, and Biffa have a state-of-the-art recycling facility on the site.
There are lots of resources on the net about the history of Trafford Park if you look for it. Of particular relevance to this cache is http://www.wybunburynews.co.uk/tl-traffordpark and this PDF (http://www.mae.uk.com/Trafford%20Park.PDF) of a talk is quite comprehensive about the history of the Westinghouse Factory; all the quotes above come from this document. Other references are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Manchester and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan-Vickers.
This cache is located on a good shortcut - a foot and cycle path that goes along the side of the canal along the edge of the old Westinghouse site, linking Trafford Park station with the rest of Trafford Park!
You're looking for a magnetic micro with room for geocoins and possibly small travel bugs if you're lucky. It's accessible from the path - no need to venture into any greenery. PLEASE PUT THE CACHE BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT! - thanks.
EDIT: Congrats to phspid and MrBishi for the FTF!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N zntargvp zvpeb, ba gur obggbz bs gur srapr, ol gur yrzba fcbg.
Jneavat - gurer ner zhygvcyr yrzba fcbgf. Vg fubhyq or arnevfu gur ulqenag. Vs lbh fgvyy pna'g svaq vg, gel bgure arneol yrzba fcbgf...
Treasures
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