[PW] Machinery ID?

[jtg]

Begin quote:

It seems to be a no-flywheel steam pump, with the engine enclosed in nifty
varnished wooden lagging (i.e. insulation) on the left and the pump itself
on the right.  The big dome screwed to the top of the pump is probably an
air chamber--it has a gauge glass on its left so they can see if the thing
has completely filled with water, which they occasionally do--and what the
air chamber does is to smooth out the surges associated with piston pumps.

There's some writing around the periphery of the big medallion on the dome,
but I can't read it.  The leftmost of the pictures in the room seems to be
just another picture of this very installation, and the other might be of a
locomotive, but I can't see it well enough.

My guess is that this is a city waterworks somewhere, and that we're looking
at a standby pump that maintains pressure in the water mains if the other
pumps fail.  They do this by maintaining steam pressure in the steam
cylinders on the left-hand machine, but not enough to operate the pump
unless and until the water pressure in the pump's cylinders drops.  If that
happens, the pump will start pumping immediately.

For all the decoration on the machines, no-flywheel pumps look fairly
horrible when they're operating because there's no flywheel or crankshaft to
provide the nifty sinusoidal motion we like to see in a steam engine.  The
rods just sort of ooze back and forth with harsh clack at the end of each
stroke as the valves reverse.

End Quote


Quoted from another List in response to ID query.

Updates (if received) will follow....


John Germain

Jersey
British Channel Islands

-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-open-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-open-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On Behalf Of
Kevin O'Kelly
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 8:49 PM
To: list at project-wombat.org
Subject: Re: [PW] Machinery ID?

All:

I was sorting through boxes of photos in my library's special collections
Saturday and found this photo:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgpcw9h_2df5kdnfc


The photo is not labeled at all. Does anyone have any idea what it is a
photo of?

Thanks,

Kevin

       
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