The 'Little'uns'
The engine room is infested with a number of little engines of various types, all capable of working from the main boiler, some have been built here and some form part of the Atthill collection which were built in a tiny garden shed by Tony Atthill of Norwich, using only hand tools and a foot treadled Drummond Lathe which originally saw service in a First World War mobile military engineers workshop, the lathe (or one legged jogging machine as it is now known) and patterns for the engine castings also reside here since Tony, then well into his eighties, was unable to continue his engineering activities. The majority of the engines are built around the Stuart Turner 2" x 2" cylinder casting, there are also a number of scotch crank pumps of varying sizes which were his particular interest, his proudest engineering achievement being that one of his scotch crank pumps was mentioned in the recent edition of Ronald H Clark's 'The Steam Engine Builders of Norfolk' Having been sold in the sixties to local steam engineer David King, this engine pumped boiler feed water for the Wells Beach 10 1/4" gauge railway locomotive 'Edmund Hannay' it was retired after about 54,000 miles service and came to the Old Engine House to feed a Newton Coil Boiler then under construction.
Many originate from or incorporate castings made by Stuart Turner Ltd of Henley on Thames (now operating from Guernsey) Stuarts were founded almost a century ago and are still very much in business (and on line), if you wish to have a little engine of your own click on one of the Stuart hyperlinks and have a look at their products.
They can supply ready made engines, kits of machined parts or raw castings which you machine yourself.
There are other suppliers or manufacturers of small steam engines and castings linked from Chris Heapy's Chris Heapy's model engineering page.
On the shelf at the top are left to right, a freelance single cylinder vertical engine reversing by slip eccentric, a Stuart 10V vertical, a Stuart S50 mill engine (the first 'proper' engine built by the author) and a Stuart 10H horizontal.
On the lower level in the front are two Stuart No 8 horizontals, one driving a Stuart dynamo (giving a staggering 1 amp at 4 volts !), rear left is a twin cylinder (or 'duplex') freelance mill engine, rear right a single cylinder freelance mill engine, extreme right a scotch crank feedpump. All these on the lower level are 'Atthill' engines.
This is one of four 2" x 2" single cylinder 'Atthill' horizontal engines (Tony's and my favourite), using a Stuart No 1 cylinder casting, all other parts were either machined from the solid or (flywheel, boxbed and governor body) from castings poured locally to patterns made by Tony. The heavy flywheel, counterbalanced crank (not visible) and governor keeps this powerful little engine (about 1/2 hp) running to speed.