STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Bodger]

20mins.of an enjoyable saw mill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I1sgWKvIms

[Stanley]

Nice one Bodge. Corliss engine, trunk slide and running backwards in English practice. That system of try cocks on the boiler is antediluvian! They didn't have Hopkinson's at Huddersfield making good reliable water gauges until long after us.
The engine might possibly be a second-hand one as it could be a reversing engine. Often used in applications like steel rolling mills. The trunk slide allowed running in either direction if the necessary valve gear was fitted. The normal mill engine with a flat crosshead slide could only be run one way so that the pressure of the crosshead was always downwards into the slide. If you think about it, in reverse the forces act to lift the crosshead, the trunk slide allows this reversal of pressure to be accommodated.

[Stanley]

The ultimate reversing engine in the UK. The reversing engine at the River Don steelworks. (LINK)
There was a similar but bigger one in the States.

[Stanley]

The main feature of these rolling mill engines, apart from their power and the fact they were seldom compounded, was their ability to reverse instantly using steam as a cushion in the cylinders to stop and restart. This was a necessary function of the task they had, driving the mill rolls during repeated passes of the white hot stock to reduce it in size and shape it.

[Bodger]

At the other end of the scale , 5 mins. of a Tangye small steam engine, i thought they only made pumps :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WANgCtZRgo

[Stanley]

Tangye made a lot of smaller engines Bodge and always favoured a very simple design.



Here's one I found at Crowle Brickworks, Lincolnshire in 1988. The empty space at the rear of the bed is where the original air pump was mounted. This was taken off and the engine was run non-condensing, the exhaust steam being used for drying the freshly made bricks before firing in the kiln.

[Stanley]

They had this Belliss engine as well. Same treatment of the exhaust steam, straight into heating the drying sheds.

[Stanley]

Here's an interesting engine for you to puzzle over. The Pollit and Wigzell three rodder that drove Crowther's Mill at Slaithwaite. Clue, the outside rods are from a separate crosshead on the LP cylinder.....

[Stanley]

The engine was due to be scrapped so Robert Aram took it out and it is now dismantled but safe at Masson Mill. There was a good Belliss and Morcom in there as well with all the bells and whistles. It drove a generator and could either be used condensing or to provide low pressure steam as the exhaust could be diverted for process heating.



Here's the Belliss. All these pics were done in 1986.

[Stanley]

Not all high speed enclosed engines were small. This 1000hp Browett and Lindley powered Salford tramways.....

[Stanley]

Most of the engines in Barlick ran at around 80rpm, only one ran faster, the small BI at Clough. Some engines ran slower and what came out in the wash was that the most efficient and economical engines were the ones that ran fast. The slow running engines like the big Musgrave at Butts and the Furnival at Clough were, according to Johnny Pickles and his son Newton, wastrels. They would know because they maintained all of them. You might wonder why the engine manufacturers didn't take note of this and speed their engines up. The main reason was that they didn't trust the integrity of the flywheels. There was also conservatism among the mill owners, if an engine ran slow it gave less trouble and lasted longer. Not always true, the Butts engine for instance ran rough and there was constant trouble with the flywheel and shafting. When Newton and I were testing the Ellenroad engine we inadvertently got it up to twice its rated speed, about 100rpm and what struck both of us was how smoothly it ran! Mind you, we were at the limit for the 28ft diameter flywheel which weighed about 85 tons. We didn't let it do it again......

[Whyperion]

The timing for inlet and exhaust and movement of steam in the piston chamber must be part of the speed of the engine. I presume this is the efficiency bit, where the steam flows at the 'right'length of time.

[Stanley]

Sorry, much more complicated than that. It's significant that even in the days of steam increasing use was made of 'high speed' engines as soon as the primary role was generation of electricity. Modern designs of lighter engines running at far higher speeds. Leading ultimately to the high speed steam turbine running at many thousands of RPM, which is of course the main method of generation even now even if the heat source is atomic power.

[Stanley]

The view from the armchair in the engine house. Best job I ever had!

[Stanley]

I tripped over this image in the archive this morning.... I don't know where I got the image or why but Hayward Tyler is an old-established (1815) maker of pumps and engines and is still in business.

[Stanley]

One of the forgotten glories of the old days of steam engine manufacture was the quality of the engineering drawings. This Burnley Ironworks drawing of the Moss Shed engine in 1903 is a good example. They were works of art.

[Stanley]

Artist's drawings of engines can be very useful. They often highlight features that are not obvious in photographs. This drawing of Trencherfield engine, (Wigan Pier) by my late friend Alan Andrews is a case in point.

[Stanley]

I always say that if you want to really understand steam engines, build your own and surmount all the difficulties the old engineers and fitters had to contend with. I'm happy to report that these two have fulfilled all expectations and most importantly started and ran well the first time I put compressed air on them. This proves that I am at last beginning to get an understanding of the 'simple' slide valve. Like a lot of other operations, this is deceptively simple but in fact is devilishly complicated. I will freely admit that I have only scratched the surface of the subject but am content, they work!

[Stanley]

The thing I soon realised when I took over Bancroft engine and started to look for written sources on the practical running of steam engines, boilers and the associated plant in the mill like shafting and steam mains was that by far the biggest proportion of the books had been written by men with no practical experience as text books. There was plenty about abstruse matters like calculations for thickness of plate in boilers and even more on valve gears and indicating engines. Much of this was totally useless in the day to day running of the plant and some was plain wrong. Even Fairbairn, a notable engineer, fell into the trap when he talked about lubrication, he devoted two paragraphs to it. I found my source in Newton Pickles who set me on the right path, answered all my questions and never led me astray. That's why I think it's worth rabbiting on to you in these posts, you can be sure that what I tell you is from experience and will work. That doesn't mean I am always orthodox or right, simply that I have done the job and never damaged an engine by bad running or maintenance. I am also one of the last men left alive who has run engines commercially.....
And I still don't fully understand all the nuances of valve gear!

[Tizer]

A BBC News post says this engine was `launched' on the weekend at Midsomer Norton: LINK

[Stanley]

Sentinel had a lot more success with their road steamers than the small shunting locos they made. Probably the most innovative use of the standard Sentinel engine used in the road wagons I ever saw was at a farm on the West Coast of Scotland near Troon which used a Sentinel engine driven by an electric motor as an air compressor for the pallet-making business they had as a sideline. At the same farm they had a vertical engine said to be from the original 'Vital Spark' stood in the middle of the front field....

[Stanley]

It's important when we talk about Sentinel steam engines to differentiate between the engine design used in the road vehicles....



A very flat unit designed to sit inside the chassis of the vehicle, and the vertical engine used in the small locomotives....



Which was a completely different design. Here is one mounted with its boiler on a small shunting engine. Later on Sentinel went into diesel engines.....

[Stanley]

A Fowler ploughing engine at Utrecht with my friend Paul minding the shop. These powerful engines had a large winch mounted under the boiler and were used in pairs to draw implements across a field back and forth. They could easily operate 6 furrow ploughs and large cultivators and were very efficient. I went with this engine to Cheshire to work with its mate (They were built in pairs) ploughing and cultivating at a man's farm who had volunteered to let us have a go. He was sceptical until they started and was then amazed by how efficient they were. He had a new, very large diesel tractor and tried to pull the same implements but the tractor wouldn't even look at the job. I saw two working commercially in Warwickshire in 1953 dredging a lake at Compton Wynyates and they were equally impressive and quiet.

[Stanley]

Another use of steam power which is largely forgotten these days was on the farm. I'm not thinking about steam ploughing or threshing....



[Sorry about the quality but here's a chaff-cutting outfit in Australia]

But stationary steam engines in the farm buildings to power barn machinery. They were very common in Scotland. If you go to a farm like Lurdenlaw near Kelso you'll still see a stubby chimney poking up out of the farm buildings. Often wood or straw fired, they were a very economical and effective source of power before electricity and replaces the old horse wheel that was often used to turn shafting. (LINK)

[Wendyf]

Most of the farms around our home in Scotland had round barns which had been horse mills.