So, its been a really fun long weekend - I went up and spent the afternoon Friday at the Waterworks Museum in Boston, where they have several huge old steam powered pumping engines. Then, on up to the Logging Museum in Maine, where I spent several nights staying in the museum caretakers house out in the woods (about 1-1/2 miles to nearest road), a very quiet spot in the middle of the museum. On Saturday, several of the museum people and I went over to Kingfield Maine to the Stanley Museum where they got out three of the Stanley steam cars, and took us all out for the afternoon in them. Very exciting - I've never even seen one run before, let alone ride in one! On Sunday I took a drive way up to the northern end of the Maine coast to Lubec, also hitting the Quoddy lighthouse at the easternmost point in the continental US. Monday down to Fort Knox (no, not the one with the gold and the Bond villains, this one is an early coastal defense fort) and also the Penobscot Narrows cable stay bridge. Quite a fun weekend!
So, time for some photos and videos. Here is a compilation of clips that I put together at the Stanley run (a little long)
[youtube1]https://youtu.be/-y34iUjB8Zg[/youtube1]
And a set of pictures from the Stanley day:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/26BXUuw5jSTm6j46AFor the short version, here are the three cars we rode in:
Here is what the engine from one looks like, two cylinder with reverse, directly geared to the rear axle with no changeable gears, capable of speeds in the 40 to 70mph range (we got up about 40 max, mostly we were on side roads). This is like the model engine that I built.
This is the boiler under the hood
and what it looks like inside - outer cylinder is wrapped in 3 layers of piano wire so they could use thinner metal and make it light weight. It runs at up to 600 psi. Many vertical firetubes, low water volume, has a kerosene burner.
All it needs is a driver!
And no, I did not get to drive, it takes a bit of training to operate these, lots of controls! Did get to spend several hours out riding around in them though.
As for the waterworks museum, it has several engines including this huge Allis triple pumping engine - pumps are under the floor:
The director there gave me free access all up and down the engines, from the pumps in the lower level up to the top catwalks. We spent hours going over the engine, he took lots of notes on how things worked and I got lots of detail photos and a chance to climb around. I found a number of details that I had missed on the plans, and explained a number of things that they did not know about.
Even spotted the boiler feedwater pump over on one wall in the lower level, same type as used on a locomotive - they had been wondering what it was.
Fascinating to see the pumps down on the lower level in person, very helpful for completing the 3D CAD model I am drawing up based on the original blueprints he gave me. Unfortunately the plans for the other engines there were lost years ago in a building collapse.
They have a pair of spare beehives for the check valve plates - there are patterns of these on the check valve plates inside the pumps on both the intake and output sides of the pumps - 1520 individual valves altogether. The round discs are hard rubber, spring loaded. That beehive is almost 2' tall, quite heavy, the pump chambers have lifting cranes built into the sides.
From there we worked our way all the way up all the levels of the engine, till we were standing on the top, 60' up from the base
Along the way got a lot of detail pictures of things like the governor and valve assemblies, will be useful on the CAD model since the plans show all the pieces but not much on how they go together!
One thing he pointed out was the damage on the valve guides for the poppet valves on the LP cylinder (most are Corliss, the IP exhaust and all LP are poppet)
You can see the broken piece at the bottom center of the curved part - looks like it metal fatigued the cast iron and cracked. Some were worse than this, and had been repaired at some point with a bolted on surrounding piece. These engines ran from late 1800s till 1970.
At the logging museum, this was my front yard - mist is coming off the mill creek early in the morning:
and I just had to stop in and see my favorite machines, the herd of Lombards in the machinery hall:
Lubec is a very pretty little town on the border of Canada. This lighthouse is on the Candian side:
Lots of lobstering there:
Quite tall pilings, the tide is over 15 feet
Just down the coast is the Quoddy lighthouse, easternmost in the US
Fort Knox (the Maine one) is a large coastal defense fort from early 1800s
Great overview of it from the top of the cable stay bridge there, it has an observation deck (with elevator, fortunately) that is 420 feet up
The bridge from below