MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Gloria]

Gloria is as near as we are going to get. "Insider information I think"?
An old Crossley gas / atmospheric engine.
http://www.mosi.org.uk/media/33871763/c ... engine.pdf

Wrong, not insider information.

[plaques]

Behind to the right is someone's leg with a brown brogue shoe on. Also, a Whitworth spanner in levitation mode.
The guess is therefore, Stanley making adjustments to a single cylinder steam engine. I think the "rack" is actually a fly wheel.

Gloria, frankly I was amazed that anyone got near to guessing the gas engine. Add an extra stripe to your qualifications.

[Gloria]

Is it a pump??

[chinatyke]

Is it a barring engine? Looks similar to the other ones Stanley has posted.

[Pluggy]

Behind to the right is someone's leg with a brown brogue shoe on. Also, a Whitworth spanner in levitation mode.
The guess is therefore, Stanley making adjustments to a single cylinder steam engine. I think the "rack" is actually a fly wheel.

I'm convinced we're looking at two different pictures. I downloaded the picture to my computer so I could enlarge it, I can't see someone's leg, a shoe or a spanner.

Ca't see much in the way of anything in the background.

Barring Engine could be right.

[plaques]

Pluggy. Did the same trick. I agree with you. No legs or spanners. It was some lagged piping and a bend in a supply pipe. Mustn't let my imagination run away with myself. Second thought. How about Stanley holding the camera?

[Stanley]

You've got there. The clue was the toothed rack on the flywheel. It's the barring engine on the Ellenroad engine.
Try this one, it's pulled out of a larger pic and is very hard!

[Gloria]

It is a governor possibly off Bancroft Mill tea making facility???

[Tripps]

I'm feeling inadequate here. Everyone seems to know what a 'barring engine ' is except me.

[Pluggy]

A little engine used to get a large steam engine to a position where it can start turning itself. A large steam engine will have dead spots in its rotation where it cannot start itself. Before the barring engine, the engineer would typically use a big bar on a tooth in the flywheel, to lever the engine to a position where it could start itself. Which is where the term 'barring' came from.

The new picture is certainly a governor of some description. Not Bancroft if my googling is up to scratch, it appears to be a different design.

[Stanley]

You're right Pluggy, it is a sort of governor and I'm feeling bad about it because it is so hard. Here's the full picture.

[Pluggy]

You missed telling what the big picture is Stanley.

Generic steam driven machine with governor.......

[Stanley]

That's why it is a mystery object dearie.....

[Gloria]

On the website for the Ellandroad Engine House Steam Museum, cover pic, furthest away on the right----- is that it????

[Pluggy]

I'll go with Gloria, Knowing Stanley, if its not Bancroft, it will be Elland Road.

[Stanley]

You've suffered enough.... It's the governor on the Yates engine that used to be at Jubilee Mill Padiham but is now installed in Masson Mill at Matlock Bath. But the original question wasn't about the governor itself, I asked what the smaller governor was for. It controls the cut off on the variable slide valves on the high pressure cylinder adjusting the input of steam to the load.



The jubilee engine in its new home at Masson in 2007. The governor is just to the right of the flywheel. A big job almost completed!

Next for shaving?

[David Whipp]

[PanBiker]

It's one of the braille plaques from the memorial gardens planters in the RNIB section.

[Marilyn]

From a drawer of a seed/bulb/horticultural cabinet...

[hartley353]

It's one of the braille plaques from the memorial gardens planters in the RNIB section.

There used to be a garden for the blind just outside of the open air swimming pool in Marsden park Nelson. Every flowering plant had a braille plaque fastened to the perimeter wall of the flower beds.

[David Whipp]

Ian got it in double quick time.

It's one of two remaining plaques that I rescued in the 'Garden for the Blind' created by BUDC and TocH in 1964.

When we held the recent event about the new planting in the gardens, one of the visitors was someone who helped plant out the original scheme as an apprentice in 1964.

Here's one of the walls on which the plaques were mounted.

[Stanley]

[David Whipp]

Feeder for literate birds.

[Stanley]

Close enough I think David. It's a small marker that came out of an old established pet food shop in York which I think specialised in seed for rare bird feed.

[David Whipp]