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karlelden
Regular Member


78 Posts
Posted -  03/01/2007  :  15:06

I'm just beginning to explore this amazing website, and I put "engine" in your search engine and came up with a BUNCH of hits.  I started looking around and decided you people are living in the tall corn compared with us in the US.  I have maybe 2 decent larger stationary steam engines to look at in a 200 mile radius.  At first glance I thought you were in Hawg Heaven.  Looked to me like you had MANY significant preserved engines.

However, I then came upon a picture of the Leigh Mill engine, went to Google to check it out, and came up with this from 1995: 

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba1/ba1news.html


Down past the news about how skulls used to contain brains is this bit of stuff about the Leigh Mill:
"A rare example of an intact traditional spinning-mill, near Wigan in Greater Manchester, is under threat from a proposal to remove the original mill engine from the building.
The early 20th century, listed Grade II* Leigh Mill, with its surviving engine house and engine, is still used as a factory and now manufactures carpets. The owners, Leigh Spinners Ltd, applied for permission to remove the original engine to create more storage space.
Their application went to public inquiry in November, and John Gummer, the Environment Secretary, is expected to decide the matter later this year.
Speaking at the inquiry on behalf of the CBA, Ron Fitzgerald, an industrial archaeologist, said the importance of the 1923 engine was enhanced by its `extremely rare' survival in its original context. `Out of 238 listed mills in the north, only six engines survive,' he said. "

So, does anyone know if this is true?  Are there only 6 surviving mill engines?  And does anyone know what finally happened to this engine in the Leigh Mill?

Karl



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Invernahaille
Regular Member


669 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 15:50

Hi Karl. I am an ex pat Lancastrian. It is difficult to answer your question there are a lot of engines that are in Industrial Museums in the UK. Such as Beamish etc. However I think it is fair to say that there are only a handfull, that are operational and in their original location. An example is the Ellenroad Engine House. It has a web-site just put: Ellenroad in your search engine browser. The problem was that when all the cotton mills closed down in Lancashire there was an excess of Engines and the majority of them went to the scrap yard.

I have a feeling that Stanley, Tom and a few others will add to your question.




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TOM PHILLIPS
Steeplejerk


4164 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 15:55
The engine is still there ,as far as i know Karl,the excuse they need the storage space beggers belief as there are two empty floors on each mill they can use,I think it was about 7 years ago when i worked on the chimney there,i saw it through one of the windows on the roof.


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Invernahaille
Regular Member


669 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 16:00
Hey Tom. What condition is it in?


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TOM PHILLIPS
Steeplejerk


4164 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 16:42
I think its all there,just hasnt  run for many years,iam not sure but i believe there was an identical engine for no2 mill that was scrapped.


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Gloria
Senior Member


3581 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 17:07
"Peace" is still working in Queen's St Mill, Harle Syke, Burnley, Lancashire. Must be piccies on a web site somewhere.


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Invernahaille
Regular Member


669 Posts
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 17:37
Karl. There isnt a shortage of working engines in the UK. There is just a shortage of funding. You may have as many volunteers as you can get, but the problem is that it cost money to maintain and run these engines. Generaly, they have to be self fnancing, unfortunately in the UK, there are not enough people interested in "Old Mill Engines", and they certainly dont want to pay for the privelege of seeing one working. I dont want to paint too much of a bleak picture, but it appears that the ones that have survived are barely balancing their books. It's sad I know, but you have to keep a balance on what is viable and what isn't.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 04/01/2007 : 06:26
Karl, there are more engines about than you think.  best source of news is ISSES.  Go to the site and note that there is a US branch.  Join and get the journal.  Good organisation and knowledgable men.  Robert is right about funding but a lot of work has been done and engines made reasonably safe in legal terms. 


Stanley Challenger Graham




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karlelden
Regular Member


78 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 02:36
Well, after considering things a while, I think there are pros and cons about both sides of the pond regarding engines to see. Here almost everything is privately funded too, but most often the nice engines are part of a bigger show which is financed by an association of members or something like that. Usually the association has been formed some years back and then someone spots a nice engine they'd like to preserve, and the association decides yes or no, and they proceed. Almost 100% of the preserved operating engines have been uprooted and re-erected on the association's property. There are a few individual collectors who have a nice stationary engine in their collections, but they are rare now. My father had a collection of steam and IC traction engines beginning in the mid 1950's, and we found a 20 X 42 simple corliss engine and sawmill that we dismantled and brought home and re-erected, but lack of manpower and funds soon put an end to all that. We had to close our show in 1972 and auction the collection in 1978. There are a few sites which have preserved pumping engines or power plants in situ, and i know of one very nice mine hoist in upper Michigan, but almost invariably any large operating engine is part of a larger associaton's display. They present one big show each year and entrance ticket fees contribute a significant amount of money for financing their collections. Naturally they draw from a bigger audience when they have a more diverse collection.

In the UK, I do think there is a greater concentration of good engines in a smaller area than here, partly because of geography. Here, we need to travel for a day before we get anywhere. We may have as many engines or more, but they are scattered over a large area. I think we don't have anything on the grand scale of the Ellenroad engine. I think the mine hoist in Michigan is 2500 hp, and only compound. There may be a large triple expansion engine static display in Boston, but that's about it in this country. Almost everything is simple, and almost all plain vanilla Corliss Reynolds valve gear with single eccentrics. There is one interesting vertical Allis compound at Western Minnesota Steam Threshers in Rollag, Minnesota. I"ve been involved with that group off and on for 40 years or more. You have a greater variety of types of engines--I think we have one static display beam engine. You have a greater variety of valve gear.

Yes, I'm aware of what ISSES has been doing, and I know of a few nice websites that have links to many preserved engines in this country, but barring a few exceptions, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. A year ago I was scuffling around the London tubes going from Gatwick to Luton and Stansted and back, and i thought I was all finished with England. Now I'm not at all sure of that. I think those engines (and the Dorset show) might draw me back again. And Sentinel Waggons. And Garretts. Kew pumps And Yorkshires. Mann. Fowler plowing engines. Guess I'll just sell up and move house.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 06:51

Here's a bit from me memoir that'll get you going Karl.  Sorry about the length.

STEAM PLOUGHING

In the previous chapter I mentioned that I had helped Richard Metcalfe use his Fowler engine for some serious steam ploughing. This use of steam engines was very important in the early days of mechanisation in agriculture but very little is known about it nowadays and I suppose that in the future, some of you reading these memoirs might never have heard anything about it. For that reason, I thought I’d describe what Richard and I were doing, how we went about it and what the results were.

First a little bit of the history of steam to set this story in its proper place. The advent of the stationary steam engine as a method of powering factories and mines in the late 18th century revolutionised industry and by the mid 19th century steam power was common, well understood and developing rapidly until, in the early 20th century it had reached the peak of its development and was to be superseded by the individual electric motor. As the 19th century dawned, agriculture, because of the rise in population, was under pressure to deliver faster and more efficient methods of cultivation than single implements drawn by the horse. The progressive farmers and inventors saw what was happening in industry and looked for ways to apply the power of steam to agriculture.

The first successful use of steam in agriculture was the use of portable steam engines, that is a boiler and firebox mounted on wheels with a small engine mounted direct on the boiler driving a flywheel which could be used as a pulley to drive a belt which could then be used to apply power to a machine like a chaff cutter, a grinding mill or a threshing machine. These early engines had to be dragged by horses when they had to be moved and were, in essence, a ‘portable’ stationary engine, hence the name. It didn’t take long to work out systems of gearing which could be applied to transmit the power of the engine to the wheels and the traction or hauling engine was born. The traction engine survived in road transport until superseded by the internal combustion engine after the Great War.

The concept of using traction engines to replace horses suggested an easy way to apply steam power to field cultivation simply by dragging the implement but the problem that arose was that an engine big and heavy enough to do useful work was too heavy to travel on the land. Fertile minds were brought to bear on this problem and by 1850 a system was evolved whereby the steam engine worked on the headland, or limit of cultivation and dragged the implement across the field by a wire rope. Many complicated systems were evolved using movable anchors, snatch blocks and double cables to allow one engine to draw the implement both ways across a field. These were partially successful but eventually a system whereby two engine were used, one at each end of the field, evolved and by the late 19th century this was the standard method of cultivating large fields by steam. The system wasn’t economical for small fields or light jobs and the horse was never totally superseded by steam. They survived until, like the steam engines they were replaced by the internal combustion engine in the late 1930’s. Direct haulage of large implements on the land by steam was successful in other parts of the world such as the prairies of the Mid-West in America because the ground was not deep cultivated and was much firmer. They never needed to develop cable hauled cultivation and it was essentially a European system.

By the end of the 19th century a specialised form of steam engine had evolved for use in steam cultivation. It was a very heavy and powerful traction engine with complicated gearing systems driving a large winch drum under the engine which could hold up to 800 yards of light steel rope. In practice, this was not usual, 450 yards of heavy steel rope was the most common length. There were complicated mechanisms for ensuring that the rope wound evenly on the drum of the winch and, as the engines developed, implements were improved until by 1900 there was a complete system of tried and proven steam tackle available. Because of the expense, only large estates could justify the expenditure on a full set of tackle and the steam contractor was born. This was an operator who invested in steam tackle and spread the cost by working for different farmers. The majority of steam ploughing sets were operated by contractors and the engines could be used for other jobs such as dredging lakes and driving seasonal machinery as a stationary engine. Many firms manufactured machinery for this market but the most successful was John Fowler and Co. of Leeds. It was one of their ploughing engines which was owned by Richard Metcalfe of Macclesfield.

I’ve already described how we met Richard and Delia on the Holland trip and I think Richard came to the conclusion eventually that I was a pretty useful bloke to have around where steam engines were involved. He rang me up one day and asked me if I’d like to have a couple of days ploughing with him as his usual mate wasn’t available. I jumped at the chance because I wanted to see exactly how a pair of engines operated and get an idea for myself how efficient they were.

I should say at this point that Fowler engines were made in pairs, right and left handed. In other words, one delivered cable on one side from the drum and the other on the opposite side. This was so that they could work together and be both facing in the same direction so that they could move forward easily for the next pass over the field when they were pulling. The mate to Richard’s engine lived in Ireland and he used to go over there once a year to plough with both of them working together. This particular year he couldn’t go but knew a man with an engine the opposite hand to his own at Dunham Massey near Altrincham in Cheshire and had arranged to do some ploughing and cultivating with him. I went to Macclesfield and stayed with him and Delia and we went across to Dunham the following morning. He had taken Annie there beforehand so all we had to do was turn up with the toolbox and get going.

We arrived on the Saturday morning and lit a fire in Annie and oiled up. It was beautiful weather and our job for the day was to plough about ten acres using a six furrow plough. The field was a barley stubble and was just right for working. The plough was what is known as a balance plough. It was in effect two six furrow ploughs mounted so that they faced each other. When one set of shares was in the ground the other was cocked up in the air out of the way and the idea was that when the plough reached one end of the field it was tipped so that the opposing shares were on the ground and did the work as the plough was pulled in the opposite direction. It weighed about 6 tons and was an impressive piece of kit. When at work it had to be steered by a man sat on a seat in the middle.

We set up at one end of the field and the other engine was across the other side. I suppose it was about 400 yards across the field. We dragged the plough into position with a tractor and then fixed the cables from each engine on to it. We had the first pull and after a couple of blasts on the whistle, this was to warn the other driver and the man on the plough that we were about to pull, Richard put the winch in gear and opened the throttle. With no fuss or noise, the plough immediately started towards us turning six furrows. The steersman kept a straight line across the field and we hauled it until it was as close to us as was safe. Richard then threw his winding drum out of gear and gave one blast on the whistle, an answering two blasts from the other engine and the opposing cable tightened, overbalanced the plough so that the correct shares were in the ground and away the plough went back across the field. As the wire was drawing off the drum, Richard put the driving wheels in gear and drew Annie forward to a position where she would be in line with the plough to give a straight pull back over the field. This sequence of events was repeated until we got to the far end of the field. No fuss, no noise except for the soft bark of the exhaust, the whirring of the gears and the occasional blast on the whistle.

I was fascinated and very impressed. All the ploughing I had done was with paraffin and diesel tractors and the one thing that overlaid everything was the roar of the engine and the exhaust, many tractors didn’t even have silencers. This was entirely different. If you walked across to the middle of the field and stood waiting for the plough, the only sound you could hear was the hissing of the cable as it ran through the stubble. When the plough came up level I heard the sound that soil makes as it rolls over the mouldboard for the first time in my life. Apart from that and the occasional clank as play was taken up in a wheelbearing as the plough lurched over a hummock, there was no other sound except for a distant soft chuffing of the exhaust on the working engine. I thought it was magic.

The other thing that impressed me was what a good job the plough was doing. Every time it passed over the field six furrows were turned and it was travelling faster than walking pace. The engines weren’t even pulling hard. I should say they were producing about half their rated horsepower. Back at the engine it was very relaxed, all I had to do was keep my eye on the steam pressure and the water level. An occasional small shovelful of coal was all that was needed to keep a good fire and steady steam. The whole operation was so relaxing I couldn’t believe it.

Another bloke who was impressed was the farmer who owned the land. I was standing there watching the plough at work and he came and had a talk with me. He said that when Richard and his mate had asked if they could come and plough for him he had agreed but wasn’t sure what sort of a mess they’d make or how much they could get done. He pointed out a large modern tractor parked near the outbuildings of the farm. “I’ve just paid £38,000 for that machine and you lads are making me look daft. There’s no way I could plough as fast as that!” He too was fascinated and spent most of the weekend watching and asking questions.

Of course, it was perfect conditions but even so, it was an immensely impressive demonstration of the power and economy of the old Fowlers. Once we had got started, there wasn’t a single hitch all day, the job progressed like clockwork! We finished the field, dragged the plough away and sheeted the engine up for the night.

The following day we went through the same preparations but moved to the next field where we were to work the land with a big tine cultivator. Down at Lionel’s we would have called it a scuffle. The difference here was that we weren’t working land that had been ploughed, we were cultivating directly from the stubble. Looking at the big machine I couldn’t imagine the power that would be needed to drag those huge tines through the ground. I asked the farmer how he thought his new super tractor would cope with it. He said they could just about pull it flat out but that if they stopped with the tines still in the ground there was no way they could get it moving again. This was to be a far harder test than the plough.

We got set up and Richard started the first pass. There was absolutely no drama at all, the big Fowler coughed a bit as the tines dropped in but then settled down into the collar and pulled the cultivator at better than walking pace across the field. Admittedly, the exhaust was barking a bit more and we burnt slightly more coal but the engine was not under any strain whatsoever. Occasionally, the cultivator driver signalled for a stop while he made an adjustment, the engines had no trouble at all starting again from rest with the tines in the ground. This was a dead pull and the only evidence from the tackle was a couple of good hearty cracks from the exhaust and the obvious tension in the hauling wire. Unless they had previous experience, nobody could have guessed at how much work was being done. It all looked so easy. I was reckoning up the amount of fuel we had used and was making some rough estimates about wear and tear on the tackle and the only conclusion I could come to was that it was far cheaper than diesel haulage and faster as well! The farmer agreed with me, he said that apart from any other consideration he was thinking about the wear on tyres because of wheelslip. He reckoned that that was the major difference apart from the better performance.

I told him about my experience running Bancroft engine. In the later days there was a chance that the mill would be bought by a man who wanted to run it as an engineering works, using the engine to make electricity. I was asked to give some comparative figures and worked it out that for a given load we were well under half the price of electricity bought from the mains. Funnily enough the prospective buyer was a bloke I later got to know at Ellenroad, it was Malcolm Dunphy.

You might ask why, if it was so much better and cheaper, didn’t steam power survive on the land. The main reason was the capital cost of providing the plant in the first place, the tighter regulation on the maintenance and insurance of the steam boilers and the higher skills and increased labour force needed to run the operation. In addition, a large tractor could be used for a wider variety of jobs than a ploughing engine and was more easily repaired if there were any faults. In other words, the diesel, while not being as good at these particular jobs was good enough and, in the end, more economic despite the higher day to day running costs of fuel and tyres.

At the end of the day we sheeted the engine up and I took off for home as Delia had come down for Richard. It had been a wonderful weekend and I had learned a lot about steam power. My main impression was the quiet and undramatic way the old Fowlers had delivered quite amazing power. Not only that but once again I had realised that the main advantage of a steam engine as regards the way it delivers power is the immense torque or turning power it delivers right from scratch. An internal combustion engine only delivers it’s peak power when it has attained its running speed, this is why you always have to have a clutch in the drive chain so that the load can be gradually applied while the engine is revving. A steam engine delivers its maximum torque on the first stroke, this is why it could start the scuffle up from rest even though it was embedded in the ground. You don’t need a clutch when you can deliver power like that.

Right, I’ve got steam ploughing out of my system! We can get back to boilermaking now.


2718




Stanley Challenger Graham




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belle
VIP Member


6502 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 09:11
I was sorry to read that the surviving Mill engines are struggling to break even. i don't thiunk they are well enough advertised. I came onto this site, it must be a year ago now, to find out where I could see one. Even though I have lived in the North of England nearly 6 years I had never seen any promotion for anything like that and began to think they had all been scrapped.


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TOM PHILLIPS
Steeplejerk


4164 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 09:33
Belle,I think the Ellenroad engine is in steam this Sunday,or the first Sunday of every month if you cant make at short notice,just off junction 21 of the M62,cant miss it ,big chimney that says Ellenroad on it,they have a bit of a website to check the dates.


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belle
VIP Member


6502 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 09:47
Thanks Tom , will check that out, but it won't be this Sunday.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 10:08
First Sunday in every month.......


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
belle
VIP Member


6502 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 10:45
Good to know.


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Invernahaille
Regular Member


669 Posts
Posted - 05/01/2007 : 15:44
Stanley. Talking of cost's, do you know what  Lloyds charge for a boiler inspection these days? I would think that it would not be inexpensive. Does Ellenroad get a discount because of it's "Trust" status?


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