Park Gate Motor Rewind Dept Manager Donald Watt has retired from the company—50 years to the day since he started out at Park Gate as an apprentice armature winder. His remarkable “innings” came to a close on 21st September when Donald retired following a 5 decade spell at the crease.
Well known throughout industry in Cumbria and beyond for his un-flappable approach to any electric motor problems, Donald leaves with many happy memories of a working life which began at West Tower Street in 1962, before spending most of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s at Lancaster Street and finishing off with 12 years at Kings-town Broadway. His best memory though is that of meeting his wife Val-erie, who came to work in the Park Gate office. They have now been mar-ried for 39 years. In retirement Donald plans to spend more time with Val, their daughter Karen and their 2 grand-children .
Park Gate held a function at Carlisle Rugby Club to mark the occa-sion, where Frank Metcalfe, on behalf of all of the staff, presented him with his chosen gift of a lap-top computer.At the same function retirement gifts were presented by staff to John Wilson and Paul Towell, who both retired earlier in the year.
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New Apprentices
In this edition Juice says “welcome to Park Gate” to 4 new members of staff.
Left to right: Ollie Osgood, James Temple, Shaw Monaghan & James Shaw
New Apprentices
Park Gate have appointed 4 new Craft Apprentices in September & October. In the Motor Rewind Dept are Oliver Osgood, a former pupil of Trinity School in Carlisle who lives in the Dalston Road area of the city, and James Temple, who attended Ullswater Community College in Pen-rith and lives at Raughton Head. Both will train as Armature Winders and have begun block release training on the AEMT course at Loughborough College in the East Midlands.
Starting out as apprentice electricians in the Contracting Depart-ment are Shaw Monaghan, who attended King Edward V1 School in Morpeth in Northumberland, and lives in Newtown Irthington near Carlisle, and James Shaw, who attended Trinity School in Carlisle and lives close to Park Gate at Stanwix. Both will attend block release at Carlisle College under the JTL programme.
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Making His Mark
Taking over from Donald Watt as Motor Rewind Depart-ment Manager is Mark Robinson. Mark began his appren-ticeship at Park Gate back in 1983 and has been working on the shop floor as an Approved Armature Winder. Mark is new to the office side of things but he was keen to take up the challenge and during his first few weeks in charge has settled in very quickly. Mark’s contact details are: DD : 01228 552011. e-mail mrobinson@park-gate.co.uk |
Long Service
Park Gate made additional good use of the function held for Donald Watt’s retirement, by making long service awards to 4 mem-bers of staff. The company has traditionally made these awards to people who have been at the company for 20 years and re-cently 4 staff from different departments have reached this milestone. Firstly Nick Varah, an Approved Electrician in the Control Panel Department, who started at Park Gate in September 1992.
Nick started as an apprentice in the contracting department but has worked in panels for a number of years. Secondly, Graeme Williamson, an Approved Electrical Winder, who started on the same day as Nick, and works on a wide variety of complex AC and DC rotating machinery and does most of the in-house dynamic balancing work.
STAFF SNIPPETS
We are delighted to offer congratulations to Armature Winder Neil Dalgleish, and Claire, on the birth of their first child Lilly-Mae on 14th August.
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Ian Park presents (L-R) Nick Varah, Graeme Williamson, Dave Peacock & David Miller.
From the Contracting Department, David Peacock is an Approved Electrician/ Supervi-sor who came to Park Gate in October 1992 follow-ing an apprenticeship in the North East. Last but not least is David Miller, the Park Gate Electrical Break-down Specialist, who learned his trade at Smith & Co in Carlisle, but joined Park Gate in November 1992.
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QUALITY COLUMN
Our QA ISO 9001 : 2008 accreditation was renewed in September. This follows an annual audit by Mr Steve Sharples, Re-gional Assessor of inspection body NQA. ISO certification is now in place until 2013.
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