Staying on the theme of steam I thought I'd post a photo I took of the beams of the Crofton Beam Engines.
These are the oldest working steam engines in the world – working in the sense of still performing their original intended task. On this particular visit they were not running but when I went back a year later I went on a Steam Day where a group of volunteers fire up the boiler and operate the pumps – I'll get to those photos one day!
If you look at the hub of the older beam on the left you see 4 of the 12 wedges used to center the beam on the axle. 24 years later for the beam on the right only 3 wedges were needed to center the beam on the axle. Machining and manufacturing tolerances had improved significantly. Indeed, the theory for the steam engine existed long before the manufacturing capability existed and this frustrated James Watt as he set about building his designs. It was through his partnership with Matthew Boulton who owned a metal-ware manufacturing business that he was able to improve his designs.
When the pumps are running they each lift about 245 gallons (1.1 tonnes or 1100 liters) of water per stroke. Where there used to be two boilers, now there is only one so there's not enough stem to run both concurrently for a long period so on Steam Days they alternate the two on an hourly schedule with a five to ten minute period at each change when both are running.
What really struck me was how quite it all was. For some reason I thought it would be noisy but there's no metal banging on metal so nothing really to make a noise. And even given their great age, there's far less steam escaping the system than you'll see in any Bruce Willis movie!
You can learn more about the Crofton Beam Engines here.
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