This is a steam engine!

Took babygoode to Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield at the weekend. I haven’t been since I was about 10 and it was great to see that the mighty River Don Steam Engine is still going strong.

12,000 HP of steam awesomeness. The main gear weighs in at 51 tonnes and the whole thing can reverse direction in 2 seconds (a swift reversing action was required to prevent the steel plate cooling too much as it went back and forth through the rolling machine) – see around 1.45 for the reverse.

Built in 1905 and still going strong. If you are ever in Sheffield it is well worth a visit.

Please excuse the slightly shaky footage – first time filming with my 5D mk3 and never used a video editing package before either…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whhu_ljh1A8[/video]

I’ve seen this, it’s massive and incredibly impressive when it changes direction.

That’s a beast and no mistake.

The engine was last used for commercial work in the 1970s, to roll out reactor shield plates for nuclear power plants.

Love it, nuclear power stations being built using steam engines 🙂

Nuclear power plants use steam to drive turbines, they are basically steam engines.

Apparently there were 4 of these types of engine built, but they can only find records for where 3 of them went, no one seems to know where the fourth one ended up. How can you lose an engine like that 😀

Yeah, but a turbine’s not a proper steam engine.

Used to run at 120PSI but these days for the demos it only runs at 5PSI. Amazing what such low pressure can drive…

@meee yes – would be quite hard to misplace. Not the sort of thing that would fall down the back of the settee 🙂

Bolton steam museum is also great to visit, lots of stationary engines, all powered by gas to heat the water to make steam.

And to think all those castings had to be made in wood to high tolerances to make those castings /moulds.

And to think all those castings had to be made in wood to high tolerances to make those castings /moulds.

Plus the wood versions of the final casting have to take into account shrinkage, etc in the final product, IIRC from my metalwork classes when we cast stuff.

We had special 3 foot steel rulers called contraction rules we used , diffeent scales for Cast iron, steel and aluminium and brass, you had to remember what [pattern you where working on as you could seriously screw up if wrong conmtraction was used. machineing allowances also had to be factored in along with tapers so the pattern could be withdrawn from the sand bed.

Happy days.

wayhey, what a great bit of kit. Glad to see it’s still going strong. I love the noise of the main gear/flywheel thingy. Pretty sure there’s one in japan and one in the states – did we do this before, or am i getting vuja de? (not complaining like)

Nice video, cheers! Awesome bit of kit, too.

For those of us in the south there’s Kempton Steam Museum. Anyone been there? Also has Britain’s newest narrow gauge railway, I think.

Crofton’s lovely, too – smaller and older and a great place

@project – they had a contraction rule on display as well as a pig bristle rule, a billiard ball gauge and a glove measure.

They also had a Turkish Monkey Saw – now that I want…

Yeah, but a turbine’s not a proper steam engine.

Spent several months in another, previous, life on a steam ship with PAMETRADA steam turbines and it is a pretty mind-boggling branch of engineering… the fact that the HP steam turbine, once you remove the lagging, could easily sit in a small bath yet generate a couple of dozen thousand horsepower.

Oh, and the fact that a superheated steam leak would, most considerately, cauterise the wound/amputation it caused.

But, yes, either way – there is a nostalgic romance to steam.

Beautiful, exposed big ends. Whats it running on now, compressed air?