The Old Engine House
Thanks for dropping in - the Old Engine House is situated in a little village in Norfolk, England.
The Bysteam traction engine rally at Bawburgh in the late 1960's often featured the (then) strange object pictured above, owned by a Mr Palmer of Papplewick near Nottingham who moved it around on a lorry and steamed it from an adjacent boiler, it fascinated me, this I soon discovered was a hitherto unknown to me type of steam engine - a stationary, made by Ruston in Lincoln and originally used for driving factory equipment. I was in love and just had to have one - or at the very least a working model of one, if was several years before this actually happened in model form and many years more before I started working with the real thing but the seeds were sown, the bug was growing, soon it was to become an incurable disease.
My hopeless addiction to steam powered and other ancient machinery which once operated in factories, farms or workshops, means that the family are forced to co-exist with numerous examples of ancient mechanisms which 'grace' the immediate area, either restored to full working order or in various stages of dereliction awaiting future restoration. I am fortunate, they are tolerant, they have to be ! Occasional trips out are often planned around engine sites or rallies. Thankfully, the neighbours are also OK and range from the bewildered, through the tolerant, to the interested, who are now so well trained that they sometimes bring the odd gift of something old, interesting or just rusty to keep me quiet !
The 'Phoenix Engineering Works & Foundry' is a re-sited Victorian railway signal box (a very early act of preservation as it was moved here in the 1934 as a garden shed !) and now acts as workshop for restoration projects or building new engines from castings in all sizes. Equipped with a number of hand and machine tools both ancient and modern, few parts of restoration jobs need to be 'put out'. Sometimes an engine comes in for overhaul or repair from 'outside' - it is always hard to let these go back to their owners as they seem to want to stay here after their 'hospitalisation'.
A few Internal combustion engines (petrol and paraffin / kerosene) by Petter (A2), Wolseley (Pre WD, WD1 and WD2) , Fairbanks Morse (3.5 hp Z type) and International (1.5 hp M type) live here - having sneaked in unseen
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The 3½ HP Fairbanks Morse Z type single cylinder Petrol/Paraffin (Gasoline/Kerosene) engine (See Fairbanks Morse history on line at http://www.xnet.com/~jamesk/fm/index.shtml ) drives a very early 2 pole gauze brushed dynamo which charges a 24 volt battery of NIFE (Alkali Nickel Iron) cells providing Engine Room lighting, standby lighting for the house during power cuts and operating a radio, a Gents Synchronome pendulum master clock and a number of slave dials. The dynamo is reputed to have been the first electrical generator in the nearby market town of Aylsham and was the treasured posession of their last blacksmith (and relation) Jack Pilch who resisted all offers by many to purchase, borrow or just play with it during his lifetime - it now resides here on the same terms.
The Engine Room contains both full size and miniature working stationary steam engines, all capable of being steamed from a central main boiler which has been converted from burning gas to 'Black Diamonds' (coal firing for the uninitiated), smaller gas and solid fuelled portable boilers can be used for 'off site' demonstrations of the smaller engines.
The main exhibits are two Riches and Watts vertical steam engines (these engravings show this type of engine from their catalogue of 1875), both built in Norwich, the 2½ nominal horse power somewhere between 1870 and 1875, the 1 nominal horse power a little later between 1875 to 1880 and both are of a type which won the First Prize Medal as being the best in its class at the Great Exposicion in Santiago, Chile in 1875.
These are rare survivors of this firms products, which, until 1899 / 1900 when the firm became defunct, were known to have been exported to South America, New Zealand and Australia as well as throughout the UK. Sadly only the two single cylinder vertical engines here, one horizontal engine, a steam pump, a 6nhp condensing tandem compound vertical (thought to be makers number 456) and a tandem compound portable (both in New Zealand), a belt driven waterpump, a sawbench and a linseed cake breaking mill are known to have survived.
Very little of Riches and Watts History is known so ANY information about R & W, any surviving products, advertising literature (such as this Catalogue Illustration showing the medals won for their machinery) or anything else connected with the firm would be gratefully received.
The 2½ nhp engine was acquired in 1986 as a pile of broken and corroded bits, having been removed the previous day by scrap dealers using a very large hammer a gas axe and no respect for engineering history, fortunately enough parts survived to be rebuilt.
After a long period of restoration, where a number of major components such as the bedplate, A frame, the 'two piece' crankshaft and the completely rotted piston and valve rods were repaired or replaced, the engine was reconstructed using basic engineering principles as at that time no picture of how it originally looked was available. It is now in good working order and fit for at least another century.
For any model makers looking for a nice little prototype - here is a drawing you may be interested in.
The cast Makers Plate is a fine example of the brass founders art.
Once again the engine drives its original three throw water pump, also made by Riches and Watts.
The 1 nhp engine had been gently deteriorating in a private collection in North Norfolk for many years until purchased at auction in October 1998, restoration has yet to commence, here it is some years before the auction.
The third full sized engine was restored from a solid rusted lump of scrap and is a 'Banjo' steam waterpump made by Frank Pearn of Manchester - this may have the distinction of being the only (or one of very few - you tell us) steam engines to have been recovered and delivered by steam railway breakdown crane. Having been located outside a farm building, unused for a considerable number of decades it was corroded badly and rusted absolutely solid. After being at the centre of a number of large, hot bonfires it was eventually dismantled without serious damage, however everything was so badly corroded that all the crankshaft journals have been rebuilt by welding and the valve and piston rods replaced in stainless steel, the rest of the engine has been left with a very pitted surface to show just how bad it was.
Sharing the engine room with the full sized engines is a collection of miniature or 'small' engines (as these are working engines of no particular prototype we tend to refer to them as small engines rather than models) these have either been built by myself, are currently in build (a Stuart Turner Victoria, a Grasshopper beam engine, a duplex non dead centre engine on the Musgrave pattern and a Robinson Hot air engine are presently on the stocks) or form part of the 'Atthill Collection' which arrived to live here amid very mixed emotions during 1997.
The Dodman is a long term project to produce a steam driven 'fun' vehicle to terrorise the neighbours and take to rallies or fund raisers.
A library of old engineering books often provides the solution to modern day problems during restorations.
Engineering engravings are gradually being scanned into the PC for digital re mastering - who knows maybe one day a 'steamy' CD ROM can be published containing these.
A Series 1 80" SWB Landrover of 1950 vintage, a 1948 M4 TVO Nuffield Universal tractor, 24" cast iron framed ATCO Mower, Allen Scythe and various ancient belt driven water pumps 'enhance' the mechanical collection.
I'm sorry but due to the fact that we are situated in a residential area we are not able to open to the public, however, there are a number of museums or other sites where stationary steam engines can be seen, check the links out for some of my favourites
Whistles
The Millennium Whistle Project had the intention to build the largest whistle that the main boiler would sustain, to be blown at midnight on 31st December 1999 to usher in the new Millennium - unfortunately, for various reasons mostly relating to available time, this did not happend and a number of smaller whistles ushered in the new Millennium on compressed air.
However, if you want to see the design for a really fearsome whistle (55 dB at 12 miles is mentioned !!) look at Richard Weisenberger's US Patents 4429656 and 4686928
If you have a sound card you can try these .wav whistle files Whistle and Hooter if not then you will just have to whistle yourself at this point to keep in the spirit of things. there are some very evocative steamboat whistles to be found at http://www.steamboats.de/audio - and make sure you try the calliope selection.