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Community & Business

13 September, 2024

Logistical puzzle for Historical Society

The Clifton & District Historical Society is faced with a logistics problem - how to move a heavy piece of equipment from the old Clifton Courier building on Clark Street to the King Street Museum.


One of the old Linotype machines at the former office of The Clifton Courier.
One of the old Linotype machines at the former office of The Clifton Courier.

There are two old Linotype machines in the building and The Clifton Courier has offered them to the Historical Society.

The Society is keen to get its hands on at least one Linotype as a similar unit previously on display at the Museum when it was housed in the old Clifton Butter Factory, was damaged during the transfer of exhibits our of the old factory, into storage and back to the Museum site.

Historical Society president Barrie Jones has done some research and has found that the old Linotype weighs about 1.6 tonnes.

It is also a sizeable piece of gear and probably won’t fit easily through double doors at the rear of the building.

There are several parts to the dilemma:

The weight of the Linotype coupled with the weight of a forklift to move it from its current concrete base inside the building will probably be too much for the old timber floor at the Clark Street site to bear.

The unit may be too large to go through the doors, which could require removal of part of the wall.

Since the machine was originally installed, there has been a house and several sheds erected on the same land title and some pretty deft manoeuvring would be required to move the machine if it can be taken out of the building.

While the Clifton Courier’s rental of the premises comes to an end this Friday, there is still some time for the Linotype/s to be removed in one piece, however if the building is
re-let, some urgent action will be required.

This may mean the machines would have to be dismantled and sold for scrap.

The Historical Society and the owners of The Clifton Courier are hopeful that a solution can be found as the equipment is part of Clifton’s history which would be lost forever.

The units were last used as a regular part of producing The Clifton Courier on August 11 in 1994.

Subsequent to that, then owner Douglas “Mick” Grayson occasionally ran one of the machines during visits by local school children, but that ended when his expertise on the old equipment went with him when he and wife Gloria retired from the business in 2007.

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