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Shifting Sewage by Steam in Suburban Shrewsbury (Shropshire)

Asquith

Diamond
Joined
Mar 3, 2005
Location
Somerset, UK
This thread will feature photos from a small sewage pumping station close to the centre of the historic town of Shrewsbury, England. It can be seen running on steaming days. See:-

Home - Coleham Pumping Station

I'll also be featuring a few other things seen in Shrewsbury.

There are two beam engines, made by W R Renshaw of Stoke-on-Trent in 1899. Nothing big or fancy. Nice, though.

As far as I know, Renshaw's didn't make many steam engines, but they did make 70 railway freight and passenger cars for Barnum & Bailey's Circus tour of Europe!

The boilers were made by Galloways in 1899. They are of the Cornish (single flue) type. These tended to be smokier than the Lancashire (twin flue) type, so it seems surprising that they were chosen for use in a residential area. Mind you, I don’t suppose smoke was the residents' main objection.
 
Coleham20_zps9291b479.jpg


Coleham21_zps787b78ae.jpg
 
Coleham24.jpg
Barring gear: single cylinder steam engine driving onto flywheel rim via tumbler gears. When the flywheel starts turning the barring gear, this will tend to throw it out of engagement, but some means must be provided of taking the final puinion clear and holding it out of the way.

Coleham18.jpgColeham03.jpgColeham04.jpg
 
Asquit, thanks for posting this, complete with your excellent photos. Interesting that these engines have the Meyer gear on the HP cylinders - accomodating changes in daily load (no pun intended)? These being manufactured in 1899, I wonder when centrifugal pumps started replacing reciprocating (plunger) pumps for sewerage applications?

Al
 
Asquith,

Thanks very much for showing us another interesting old engine.

Do you think the beam is made from steel plates?

I am a bit lost with the valve gear. The valve? with the Meyer? adjuster seems to be operated from above. The camshafts are under the floor I think, so what is this valve connected to I wonder? And why isn't it repeated on the other end of the HP cylinder?
 
I can now answer some of my own questions because this engine is described briefly in George Watkins Stationary Steam Engines of Great Britain, Volume 4.

Although the LP cylinders use drop valves, the HP cylinders use slide valves. "Unusual" says Mr Watkins. I read that steam pressure was only 75 psi.

So although the drop valves seem to be in separate chests at either end of the LP cylinder, the slide valve(s?) look to be in a single chest on the HP cylinder.

The shaft below the floor drives the LP drop valves via cams and rocker arms, but the HP slide valve via an eccentric (photo No. 25) and above the floor, a rocker arm (photo Nos. 19 & 22). Although I can see the HP eccentric on the shaft and an angled operating rod coming through the floor, I can't see how they connect to each other.

The Meyer valve is driven from the beam, so that answers my question about it being "operated from above".
 
Peter,

Thanks - I was hoping someone wouldl unravel the valve gear for me! I’ll see if I have any more photos worth posting. I did take a snap of a drawing showing part of the valve gear.

Al,

The George Watkins book mentioned by Peter tells us something about the load. I should say that the station is right by the River Severn, and I feared that the river might have been the dumping ground, but no, the stuff was pumped to a sewage farm. I don’t know how far away this was, but the pump head was 35 ft. GW says that the entire town drainage system depended on these two engines for 70 years. At times of low demand, the speed could be as low as 8 rpm, but on the other hand the storage capacity of the sewers was limited, so flooding soon occurred, the other engine was always held in readiness (GW says 'always in steam ready for any heavy demand').

Xunil, Peter,

I don’t know whether the beam plates are wrought iron or steel. The use of cast iron for beams always carried some risk. The biggest plate beams I’ve seen are at Abbey Pumping Station, Leicester. Thread here:-

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ive-machinery-shifting-s-ewage-photos-183752/

At the far end of the River Severn was the Severn Tunnel Pumping Station, whose engines were made by Harvey's of Hayle, Cornwall, and one of the wrought iron beams has been preserved in Swansea:-

Swansea Museum - beam from Cornish beam engine:: OS grid SS6592 :: Geograph Britain and Ireland - photograph every grid square!

A particularly large steel plate beam (55 tons) was made for Marriott's Shaft mine in Cornwall. A photo of this appears in Mining in Cornwall, Vol 1, by J Trounson. This was made by (I think) Alex Findlay & Co in Motherwell to replace the original plate beam which was breaking up.

I suspect that the danger of cast iron beams breaking was greater on non-rotative engines than rotatory ones (shock load if the pump lost prime), but the latest Old Glory magazine (April 2013) has an interesting article by Alan McEwen about engine failures. He includes a photo of a broken beam on the engine at Roach Mill in Lancashire. It broke just off centre, and one section 'then back-jumped to smash its way through the engine house wall'.

In passing, another Cornish connection is that the engine is a Woolf compound, Arthur Woolf being a Cornishman whose achievements deserve to be better known.
 
Hello Asquith, that bevel gear looks as though its made in 2 pieces bolted together, interesting from a maintenance point of view. By the way, are you anything to do with the Westonzoyland pumping station, near Taunton ?.If you are, it would be nice to meet you some time. I've been there many times. Regards, Roger.
 
Roger,

Yes and yes. I'll send you a PM.

Peter,

Thanks for getting me thinking about the valve gear. The photo of the drawing just shows details of the LP valve gear, not the HP, so I've looked at my photos, and offer a selection in this and the next post(s). There seems to have been plenty of scope for things to go out of adjustment!

Coleham35.jpgColeham28.jpgColeham29.jpg

Here we see the eccentric which works the slide valve, and also the eccentric rod coming through the floor to the slide valve spindle (photos show the LH and RH engine). I don't know what the second eccentric does.
 
Coleham31.jpg Coleham32.jpg

The slender photo shows the bell crank that operates the Meyer valve spindle. Unfortunately I don't have anything showing the connection to the beam. The other photo shows its relation to the confusion of HP and LP valve spindles and parallel motion.
 
Coleham34.jpg Coleham30.jpg Coleham33.jpg

It appears that the Meyer valve spindle below the trunnion can rotate. The worm and wheel drives it round via a sleeve with a pair of feathers (I wouldn't like to have to translate these sentences into another language!). The rotating spindle will doubtless have a LH and RH thread at its lower end to work the Meyer valve.
 








 
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