Kempton Park Engines

simond

simond

Western Thunderer
For those, like me, who were unaware of this,

kemptonsteam.org

Home - Kempton Steam Museum

Kempton Steam Museum is the home of world's largest working triple-expansion steam engine which pumped London's water between 1929 & 1980.
kemptonsteam.org kemptonsteam.org

there‘s also Kew

waterandsteam.org.uk

Summer Steam Up

Discover the fascinating world of water and steam at our Summer Steam Up! Learn about the history of the Kew Bridge Waterworks and marvel at the amazing pumping engines that helped make London the city it is today. There's something...
waterandsteam.org.uk waterandsteam.org.uk
 
oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
As this is clearly a rather unknown feast and a bit "out there" for WT I'll attach a link to a little wideo wot I dun. It's the first I've ever tried on my phone and should have done the whole thing landscape format - I'll know for next time.

The engine is started using a steam driven bar engine. It's turned over twice before steam is introduced to the main engine. The first start of the day needed five goes before it eventually started. Once it's going the bar engine drive is removed and it runs on its own. The "all up" weight of the engine is 800 tons and each flywheel weighs 32 tons. Mrs D was given the honour of stopping the engine.

If you want to go make sure it's a steaming weekend.

www.dropbox.com

Kempton Park.mp4

Shared with Dropbox
www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com

To follow up Simon's post I'll endorse Kew as well. Quite a few engines and the big beam engine is a beauty, particularly to see the driver controlling it on start up.

Brian
 
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Joe's Garage

Joe's Garage

Western Thunderer
Nice to see the diversity in this group, thank you for sharing.
Can I recommend the Westonzoyland Pumping Trust Museum just outside Bridgwater in Somerset, smaller than the above places but worth a visit on a Sunday if you are out that way on the Levels.
I can smell the oil and steam.......
Cheers
Julian
 
A

Allen M

Western Thunderer
That engine at Kempton is massive. I was working on the site for Thames Water must be going on 25 years ago when it had just been taken over for preservation. When I showed an interest I was invited in an climbed up to the top but have never seen it working.
It's not just the engine but the building itself is from an age of master craftsmen.

Regards
Allen
 
oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
You're right there, Allen. The interior of the building (as you'll know, of course) is entirely glazed tiles with quarry tiled floors. The exterior, just touched on in the very last sequence, is classical.

Utterly lovely!

Brian
 
mickoo

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Rob R said:
For those of a you north of Watford Gap
Mill Meece
Click to expand...
Crikey, that's a memory jolt from the past, I did several engineering courses at Yarnfield over the years, spent most early evenings spotting the WMCL then down the local pub to be honest.

Lovely area it has to be said but never went to the pumping station, probably wasn't a public attraction 30 years ago.
 
Focalplane

Focalplane

Western Thunderer
For completeness, the Midlands offer two sites, Thinktank in Birmingham and the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley. Most of these engines are older and smaller. The Thinktank collection used to be at the Museum of Science Industry on Newhall Street, along with 46235 City of Birmingham, probably the place where my interest in all things mechanical was born.

Which makes me think that without these working museums where can children get their enthusiasm for becoming hard core engineers these days?
 
J

J_F_S

Western Thunderer
Great to see that there is interest here in preserved stationary steam! It has always been an interest of mine and I saw both Kempton Park and Mill Meece in their working days in the seventies. Along with over a dozen colliery winding engines!

Beyond those already mentioned, the list of further sites well worth a visit - mostly pumping stations - is actually quite lengthy - just off the top of my head:-

London and the South:-
Tower Bridge
Crossness
Crofton (with Great Western connection!)
Eastney, Portsmouth
Twyford
East Pool, Cornwall
Levant, Cornwall

East Midlands:-
Abbey, Leicester
Clay Mills, Burton on Trent (8 large beam engines between these two sites!)
Papplewick, North Notts
Cheddars Lane, Cambridge
and some more modest examples:-
Lea Wood, Cromford
Pinchbeck, Spalding
Stretham Old Engine, Cambridge
and a couple smaller examples from the pottery industry:-
Jesse's Bone Mill Etruria,
Gladstone Pottery, Longport
and a colliery winder:-
Bestwood N Notts.

West Midlands:-
Bratch, Wolverhampton
Sandfields, Lichfield
Coleham, Shrewsbury

North East:-
Ryhope

In the North West, there are a few impressive examples remaining from the textile industry:-
Trencherfield Mill, Wigan
Ellenroad Ring Mill, Newhey
Queenstreet Mill Burnley
Wiseman Street Mill, Burnley
Nutters Shed, Barnoldswick
And also a huge colliery winding engine at Astley Green near Leigh, and one at Haig Colliery near Whitehaven

A few museums worth a visit for staionary steam
MOSI, Manchester, (Power Hall being refurbished until next year)
Wollaton Park Nottingham
Markham Grange Nuseries, Doncaster
(Science Museum London also stole a mill engine from Burnley!)

Appologies to the many which have slipped my mind!

Not every one of the above runs under steam but a web search will fill in the details. They all need all the support they can get - I have often thought it ironic that in railway preservation, we have been building "replicas" of steam locomotives whilst, at exactly the same time, we were scrapping a number of large and impressive stationary engines.

Hope that is of interest,
Howard
 
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oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Thanks all for expanding my knowledge of interesting industrial archaeology sites - particularly Howard. There's a many there about which I never knew so further visits will be planned. Thanks Julian for your comments too. Personally, as long as posts such as these can be easily identified, I reckon WT benefits from looking outside the model railway nest. For those who don't agree I apologise now and simply remove this from your reading list.

Paul - I've never been to the Thinktank in Birmingham (if it's actually a Museum of Science, Technology and Engineering why not simply say so? I'd not go out of my way to visit something called the "Thinktank".) I'll take a punt that it's along the lines of the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester which, with its working engines was an eye opener for me in the 70s. I'd never seen such an engaging museum with so much working previously (much as I enjoyed the Science Museum in London which by comparison was quite stuffy) and I suspect was an early example of realising that it's important to let people see how things work and come alive. On the other hand I've been to the Black Country Museum a few times - it's a great day out and can be reached easily from London. We should perhaps mention Ironbridge, Amberley and Beamish too. In fact I've just looked up Best open air museums in Britain and there are many great opportunities about of which I have little or no knowledge for those of us with an engineering bent.

There's one which fails to live up to its potential - I suspect there are others - and that's the Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills. Loads of stuff but much remains derelict. I suppose it has to be said that it's better that it wasn't scrapped but it sort of lacks a cohesiveness. In mitigation my last visit was a year or two before Covid so things may have changed hugely between times.

'Nuff said!

Brian
 
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J

J_F_S

Western Thunderer
oldravendale said:
There's one which fails to live up to its potential - I suspect there are others - and that's the Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills.
Click to expand...

I rather have to agree. The only change you might see is that a lot of the derelict stuff has been either scrapped, or loaned-out. They do have a rather nice Newton, Bean and Mitchell mill engine which is/will be run on steam days. I did some work for them several years ago and the engineering staff told me that when it opened, there were eleven of them looking after 2 sites. By 2010 there were 2 of them looking after 11 sites!
I think the council would rather demolish it all and sell the land - which is worth several tens of millions, being between the canal and the river. And with the financial pressures that Councils face, who could blame them? A couple of other industrial museums worth a mention would be Moorside Museum, Bradford which has a number of smaller engines, and New Lanark in Scotland though its Petrie tandem compound is a non-runner.
Should anyone be thinking that significant museums should never close, I would point out that Leicester Council closed Snibston discovery park, and the brave charitable venture at Chatterley Whitfield colliery near Stoke had to close in 1993 when they could no longer meet the cost of maintenance - despite 70,000 visitors a year. The site still exists (unless it has collapsed from decay in the last few months!) and public tours are occasionally available but the rather nice winding engine at the Hesketh Pit (which was over 2000ft deep) is innacessible and sadly decaying. I saw this engine run on its last day in 1976.
www.28dayslater.co.uk

Report - - Yet Another Report on Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke-on-Trent - 2019/2020 | Mines and Quarries

"Ughh not another Chatterley Whitfield report" I hear you all say! I'm sure that most on here will be familiar with Chatterley Whitfield and a lot will have given it a visit over the years. There have been numerous excellent reports over the years, not least AndyK's outstanding effort a couple...
www.28dayslater.co.uk www.28dayslater.co.uk

On the preserved railway front, I remember visiting both Dinting and Southport!

Just back to the original post (!) here is a photo I took of one of the Kempton Park engines at work in 1975. Nearly half a century ago - good grief!

36 Kempton Park.jpg

Best Wishes,
Howard
 
Rob R

Rob R

Western Thunderer
Could I expand the topic slightly and plug the small rural (read layout sized!) Gasworks museums at Fakenham and Biggar?
If the gasworks aren't allowed I will have to mention a very nice sewage pump in Northwich, Cheshire.....
Rob
 
Yorkshire Dave

Yorkshire Dave

Western Thunderer
Interesting report on Chatterley Whitfield Mining Museum.

During my student days in the early 1980's I managed to visit this and fortunate enough to go down the Winstanley shaft - dropping 700' to the seams as part of the museum.

Following the closure of the nearby Wolstanton pit in 1981 (who was as responsible for pumping at Chatterley Whitfield) the pumps were turned off in 1984 after which water and methane began to rise and in 1986 Chatterley Whitfield Winstanley shaft was capped.
 
oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Thank you Howard. That engine was clearly well loved and looked after when in regular use. We were told on our tour that, when it came out of use in 1980 "they just walked away and left it". We were so lucky that "they" did. The value in scrap cast iron would be significant.

It's sad to visit and hear about museums like Armley Mill. (I was aware from talking to the curators there that the number of staff was very small. It'd be a great shame to lose the building though. Good news that some of the derelict exhibits appear to have gone elsewhere.) I suppose the Chatterley Whitfield story was terminated by circumstance, and thanks Dave for your input on that one. Some of the exhibits from the Snibston Discovery Park have gone to the Mountsorrel Branch with its physical GCR connection and the very active group there are restoring.

I've never done a gasworks museum, Rob but that's on my bucket list. As for sewage pumping, definitely worth a mention.

I just love the way an innocent subject can take wings and fly away on WT. It's one of the great strengths.

Brian
 
Focalplane

Focalplane

Western Thunderer
Brian, you mentioned Thinktank in an earlier post. It took me several years to summon up the courage but as I am modelling 46235 I eventually had to go. Everything there is crammed in to a modern building, nothing can stand alone, not even the City of Birmingham, which used to sit inside its own building on Newhall Street.

I can only assume that the Cty felt compelled to keep the museum in the city centre and the East Side needed some attractions (it will one day have the HS2 terminus). How much better it might have been if located in suburban area with ample parking and space to spread out the priceless exhibits where they can be seen properly.

The name is typical modern speak. Growing up in an electroplating family I imagine an Aldous Huxley world where children are put on a conveyor belt and dunked in a tank full of political rhetoric!

Paul
 
oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Thanks Paul - a kindred spirit!

I sort of understand why an attraction was needed in the city. I'm saddened that they feel it has to be entitled with a name which means nothing to anyone and is jammed in to a poor location. Who is it meant to attract with a name like Thinktank? Not us and few enough of our children, I suspect.

I reckon most of our children are already dunked in political rhetoric. Our son questions everything and singularly fails to follow the politically acceptable. On the other hand our daughter is immersed in correct thinkers and fails to question pretty well anything. She's very PC and so are most of her friends. The battle is lost, my friend!

We're now getting inappropriately political so will put a line under this now.

Brian
 
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