Line four at the Harrow gearbox plant has run two shifts a day since 1961. It is the last line in the building that still does. In March it gets its first new hire in six years, and the hire is a machine.

The surprise is who asked for it.

The vote

The plant's union branch voted 212 to 31 in favour of the robot cell in the spring. The convenor, who started on line four at seventeen, argued for it from the floor.

"We are not short of work," he told the meeting. "We are short of people who will lift forty kilos three hundred times a shift. I would not ask my own son to do it."

The average age on the line is fifty-four. Nine people retire in the next two years. The plant advertised their jobs for eleven months and filled one.

What the cell does

The machine takes over the two heaviest stations: loading raw castings and stacking finished housings. Everything between those two points stays with people.

• Nobody loses a job; two loaders move to inspection
• The line goes from two shifts to three, the third run by a crew of four
• Training starts in January, in the plant, on paid time

The owners say the cell pays for itself in five years if the order book holds.

The town

Harrow has one employer of any size, and it is this one. The cafe opposite the gate has already asked what time the third shift will finish.

The convenor is less certain about the cell after this one. "The first robot saves the line," he said. "Ask me about the fourth."

The castings arrive on the second of March.