STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Whyperion]

Few links you may have seen before (or maybe not), following a quick search for Burnley Ironworks.

Burnley Ironworks Stationary Engine 1903 at Science Museum
(is there a better way of adding videos here ? I think I have read that the Science Museum have been not the best when it comes to taking advice on the running and display of some of
their objects, I think personnel have changed and that attitude might not exist now.

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Joseph_Thompson_(Colne) of Atlas Ironworks, Bridge Mill, Colne, Lancashire. Grace's Guide here is quoting from
’The Textile Mills of Pendle and their Steam Engines’ by Geoff Shackleton, Landmark Publishing Ltd, 2006 . From memory Landmark Publishing have specialised in some of the more 'Obscure'
Industrial titles , normally well researched and illustrated with photographs, but at quite high price - in both Hardback and Paperback editions, maybe available through the local library as a first call ?

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/ne ... _was_King/ Snippets of items from the lancashire telegraph, mostly around the weavers triangle area of Burnley, mentioning the ironworks and its inventions.

[PanBiker]

(is there a better way of adding videos here ?

You can insert YouTube videos by using the "Insert Web Video" icon from the post editor bar. It's the one on the right that looks like a film strip. Paste the YouTube URL in the box provided and it will display in a window. You need to copy the URL offered from the share tab below the video, not the one from the address bar.

As here:

[BBvideo 425,350]https://youtu.be/XmEc1wLCA2U[/BBvideo]

[Stanley]

I had quite a bit of input into running the Siberia Engine at the SM. Have a site search.... A chequered history. Brown and Pickles dismantled it for the museum but Newton refused to have anything to do with the re-erection when he found it was to be driven by 'clockwork'. A good firm from Heywood did a good job but were hampered by a bad brief which led to problems.

[Stanley]

I was talking to man who was a big wheel in the museum field and he told me a story about being in Neil Cosson's office at the Science Museum when a lacky came in, whispered something about 'water on the floor in the East Hall and Neil excused himself. My friend was puzzled, why should the Museum Director be consulted over such a small matter as some spilled water? I had an idea I knew the answer because Newton and I had been down to the museum to inspect the set up for running the Siberia engine in steam and we found several faults.....

[Stanley]

The day after my conversation with David Sekers about the incident in Neil Cosson's office I got a call from another friend, John Robinson who was keeper of navigational instruments at the SM in those days. I told him that I knew why he was calling and he said that wasn't possible. I said that they'd run the Siberia engine and the air pump had failed, the casing had cracked and they had water on the floor in the East Hall! He was gob-smacked and asked me how I knew. I told him about my conversation the day before and said it was an educated guess as Newton and I had predicted that this was possible when Rod Law invited us down to see the set up. The outcome was that Newton and I were invited down for an advisory visit and I agreed as long as we weren't part of a group of curators and engineers arguing about what had happened. He agreed and once more Newton and I set off for London.....

[Stanley]

When we got to the museum the first thing I did was ask for some spanners and I took the front lid off the air pump. As I'd suspected it was very badly corroded internally and had cracked almost right round the periphery of casting nearest the engine. The assembled 'experts' asked if it could be welded but I told them that any weld is only as good as the body of the casting and this one was rotten. They asked if a new air pump could be cast and I said yes as long as they could find a pattern maker to do it and even if they did it would be horrendously expensive. I told them the best thing to do was to get one fabricated, done properly it would be indistinguishable from a casting. They had another problem, they had a deadline because one of the royal princes was scheduled to do the completion ceremony in a few weeks.... I said that in that case they should get moving immediately! They got it running in time and I was asked if I wanted to attend. I told them the further I was from the set up when they ran it the better as they had not solved the fundamental problems that had caused the breakage in the first place.....

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz visited Bishops Lydeard mill, near Taunton, Somerset, with her local history friends yesterday. She took a photo of a model of a `boat mill'...

[Stanley]

Interesting Tiz, I didn't know we had used floating mills in Britain. See this Wikipedia article on 'Ship Mills'. (LINK). More common in Europe where the rivers are larger, they had many advantages, chief of which was that because they floated they enjoyed a constant water level on the wheel and were far more reliable than conventional mills which were at the mercy of drought and flood. They also dispensed with the need for expansive water management arrangements.

[Stanley]

To finish off the Siberia engine.... The mistake they had made was to assume that the 'air pump' on the engine was a pump! Contrary to the name, it isn't, it is an exhauster and the only pumping it is designed to do is lifting water from the lodge by vacuum not mechanical effort. In addition the air pump was designed to discharge by gravity back to the lodge. The system they had installed at the SM called for the air pump to pump water about 200 yards down an inadequate pipe run and then up vertically 30ft to a cooling tower on an adjoining building. This was too much for the old corroded air pump and that was why it failed. In the end they made the system work by modifying it and incorporating circulation pumps I think. I don't know because I never looked at the final result.

[Stanley]

The running of steam engines by enthusiasts who have very little or no practical experience worries me. One of these days there is going to be an occurrence and the regulatory roof will fall in on the heritage industry......

[Tizer]

Interesting Tiz, I didn't know we had used floating mills in Britain. See this Wikipedia article on 'Ship Mills'. (LINK). More common in Europe where the rivers are larger, they had many advantages, chief of which was that because they floated they enjoyed a constant water level on the wheel and were far more reliable than conventional mills which were at the mercy of drought and flood. They also dispensed with the need for expansive water management arrangements.

Of course there used to be a lot of tidal mills in our estuaries too. They disappeared but we are finally returning to tidal power using modern equipment. We've come across the remains of old tidal mills at Dale Fort in Pembrokeshire and at Point in Cornwall. The invention of the old tidal mills wasn't without controversy - mariners and fisher folk were none too pleased at the disruption and obstruction!

[Stanley]

I was aware of the tidal mills. The installation of flash weirs on rivers to enable water power played havoc with barge transport as well.

[Stanley]

There's a hydro electric plant at the mouth of Loch Morar where it discharges into the river Morar just south of Mallaig. If I remember right the flow reverses when the tide comes in and so to a certain extent is is a tidal mill. (I looked it up and found I was wrong, there is a small dam and the tide never reverses the flow.) It produces .8mwatt.

[Stanley]

I'm making simple slide valves for the two engines I am making at the moment. I've always said that building engines gives you insights into the history because you are doing exactly what the old makers did but on a smaller scale. You begin to realise that one of the reasons why the slide valve became universally popular before the days of improvements for greater efficiency is that, given the availability of casting facilities, they are so easy to make and fit. Actually they are more difficult for me because I have to chop them out of the solid but you can see the advantages if you had a shaped casting. This also explains why some makers persisted with variations on the simple slide valve to achieve expansive working even though other valves were available. It was easier to stick to what they knew.



This Meyer type expansion gear on the Yates engine at Jubilee Mill is a case in point. Other makers were going over to circular valves and Corliss valve motions but Yates stuck to the old ways.

[Stanley]

In later years, after amalgamations had resulted in the great firm of Yates and Thom, their designers seemed to favour doing everything they could on the lathe. They made circular trunk crosshead slides and even semi-circular slides for the tail rods.



The circular trunk slide on the Leigh Mills Yates and Thom engine, one of the last engines they made. Note that after the amalgamation they favoured circular valves and Corliss motion....

[Stanley]

Something that struck me when I was rebuilding the Whitelees engine was that as it was built in 1842, before planing machines were widely used, everything was made on the lathe. The flywheel in particular was beautifully made and when rebuilt all the parts fitted perfectly. The Jubilee flywheel was made in exactly the same way and that too was a lovely fit. Both, when re-erected ran perfectly true.



The flywheel boss on the Whitelees....

[Stanley]

Rebuilding something made as accurately as this flywheel was a joy. You were following in the footsteps of some good men!

[Stanley]

You also found their cock-ups!



The large cast iron angled pipe from the base of the valve chest to the top of the jet condenser is the eduction or exhaust pipe from the cylinder. It had been made slightly too long and rather than re-cast it the fitters raised the cylinder to accommodate it. This caused problems during the life of the engine at Littleborough and I had to find a way round it. The only course open to me for various reasons was to install the cylinder in such a way that I corrected the fault on the pipe. This got me into all sorts of trouble when I fitted the rest of the engine. I've told the full story elsewhere but for today's purposes it illustrates the fact that the engineers in 1842 were as fallible as we are today. They occasionally made mistakes!

[Stanley]

Another thing I found while rebuilding the Whitelees engine at Ellenroad was that with the exception of the replacement of the original CI flywheel shaft by a forged one early in its life, all the other parts were original except for one set of keys and wedges in one arm of the flywheel. I could tell they were recent because they had the shaper marks on them. Another notable feature was that the bucket in the air pump was a CI frame in-filled with wooden inserts and was still serviceable.
One matter of regret was that due to the very tight deadline (The opening ceremony had been arranged while we were building) and lack of funds, I was unable to complete a permanent foundation for the entablature support. The girder I used is adequate but not up to the standard I would have preferred. Funnily enough, almost 30 years later of successful running, though my rebuild has been criticised, nobody has ever mentioned this! As for the criticisms, of course there are mistakes! Try building an engine that size with no drawings, no funds and a very tight deadline. One thing I have learned is that everyone is a critic...... but none of them has ever done such a job.

[Stanley]

The general view of the engine tenter was that he sat there all day drinking tea and smoking and had the cushiest job in the mill. To some extent this was correct but what they didn't see was things like this, a Saturday morning strip down of the back HP dash pot on the Corliss gear in 1977 to rectify a small fault I had noted during the week. It was these little jobs which kept the engine running trouble-free during working hours.

[Stanley]

One of the steam valves out of the HP cylinder. I wasn't satisfied with how it was working and took it out to check it for damage. It was OK, all it needed was a bit of dressing with a smooth file on the edges.....

[Stanley]

Nothing to do with engines.... it's just struck me that at that time I was still getting Motor Transport each week.... Old habits die hard.

[Stanley]

Some of you may not read Shed Matters so it's worth noting that when I turned a piece of scrap shafting to make a pair of eccentric rods I ran into trouble because it was wrought iron! I know that prior to about 1870 all shafting was wrought iron but have never come across a piece before. It was full of slag inclusions in longitudinal striations and I've rejected it. I could have made a good job of getting a finish on it by using a cutting tool with plenty of rake and a round nose. This was what the old turners used and is the reason why my mate Newton always put plenty of hook on his cutters even when he was dealing with mild steel. When he and Bob Fort were turning shafting they used to have competitions to see who could make the longest continuous piece of swarf!
The scrap piece will be out of a local mill and fascinating to think it could have been water-powered or driven by a beam engine. Likely candidates are County Brook, Butts or Clough......
I've kept it and might have a play with it one day to see how good a finish I can get on it!

[Stanley]

When I was doing the Ellenroad engine I got a friend who was a very competent man on Non Destructive Testing, he did all the testing for REW on the boilers. (Dave. A good man but he died young) to test the major parts of the engine. The piston and con rods in particular are forged and have slag inclusions. I was a bit worried about what he would say but of course had to do it as part of my duty of care. His verdict was that despite the inclusions, the parts were fine. He said that he did the shafts of large turbine generating sets for the CEGB and they would be very happy if they got results as good as ours. Those shafts were of course forged just like our con rods.

[Stanley]

Dave, our NDT man at Rochdale Electric Welding in 1996. He's examining a repair weld on a small package boiler. A good man and he died young.