Andy,
I first encountered babbited brgs as a young teenager when I helped my father restore a "T Model Ford" both the mains and bigend brgs are babbit type. I also learnt how to blue and hand scrape these brgs for fit, a skill I later required when working on a power station rebuild, all the exciter,generator, 2 low pressure, medium pressure and high pressure turbines had babbit brgs in sperical brg housings all of which had to be hand scraped for fit. Turned out I was the only fitter that could do the job in a reasonable time to the required standard -bludy boreing job tho
Stewart