CHICAGO RAILROAD FAIR, 1948

     Shot on 8mm, right there in 1948 -- and what a collection of vintage transportation hardware!

HAROLD STARK, MASTER STEAM ENGINEER

At the Indiana State Fair this year, Tam and I saw an amazing -- and, I suppose, twee -- miniature steam traction engine, about half-scale, plenty big enough to ride aboard. It was steaming gently, clearly functional.

It turns out to be the work of Harold Stark, Master Steam Engineer, who's been a major part of the working antique farm machinery exhibit at the fair for the past 31 years. He's quite a guy. You'll find the short video and a little biography at Artisan Ancestors.

WHAT'S MORE RETRO THAN MODEL TRAINS?

Just about nothing could be more of a harkening-back, especially the classic, three-rail "O" gauge. And yet something seems just a little...different about this fellow's layouts:

And not just the everything's-moving endless loop in the foreground -- have a gander at the classic Christmas tree in the background! (Just the thing for a South Pole Christmas). There are a few more views at Trainfacts, too. --And even more.

I stumbled onto this delightful invention (and the pleasant, highly-talented fellow responsible for it) researching a high-end component for work.* For years, I've claimed the only thing that kept me from having a model train layout was the lack of space; I've looked with interest at some of the very small-scale setups, especially the "mountainside" ones that are more vertical than horizontal (much too tricky for a beginner, I'm told, as it's a delicate balancing act between grade and traction) . Well, those excuses have been shot right down if I could be running my own rail line on the living room ceiling.

(It just occurred to me that some fan of The Fifth Element is probably planning a vertical building-side passenger express already. Can't find an example online but it would be very fine).

I'm going to add this to the "Live Steam" category; sure, the models are (mostly) electric but many of the originals were not.

P.S.: Speaking of train layouts in interesting places...! Wow.
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* A Penny + Giles conductive plastic rotary fader, a "volume control" to us mere mortals, but a well-nigh indestructible one. There's one operating position on the ol' Starship Lupine local Skunk-Workings where the guys keep wearing out a speaker-volume control and it would be nice to only have to replace it once. Now, to convince the boss. And the boss's accountants.

TOY STEAM

I only know what I have seen on their website, but MiniSteam has me totally enthralled: more tabletop steam (and everything from Stirling to internal combustion) engines than I have ever seen in one storefront, from a huge variety of makers. Even steam robots -- see for yourself.

There and elsewhere, my dream toy for the summer, a Stirling-engine fan.

Prices on many of them are not for the faint of heart -- but it's wonderful stuff to see.

I WENT TO THE RADIO SWAPMEET AND I GOT A BOOK ABOUT STEAM

I got radio parts too; but this kind of thing happens to me a lot -- it helps to be eclectic.

That book is pretty fascinating stuff (updated, it remains in print!) and Babcock and Wilcox is not just another rustbelt industry vanished in the mists of a previous time; they are very much still around and about as modern as next week. At the time this book was published, their little Boiler Division plant in Mt. Vernon, IN had not yet been completed; now it's rather vast and in another division altogether.

Nevertheless, a pressure vessel is a pressure vessel and steam power is the same, no matter how it's generated and they've been good at both for a very long time -- which is probably why they got tapped for this project:Yes, it says "World's first nuclear-powered merchant ship" and no, it's not some artist's-conception dream, either. It sailed, er, steamed. Intended more as proof-of-concept and designed to look good in the doing, it never turned the profit a conventionally-driven freighter of like size would have. Withal, the power plant ran without trouble, unless you count the time it shut down, automatically and safely, in heavy seas -- exactly as it was designed to.

There have been four reactor-driven freighters, only one of which remains in service; in addition to the U.S., Japan, Germany and the former Soviet Union built them. The biggest issue appears to be the need for additional crew training and a few more specialists, along with some dedicated service vessels. Reactor waste was a particular challenge early on. NS Savannah -- named after the first steamship to cross the Atlantic -- came to the end of her working days in 1972 and spent a few years as a floating museum exhibit. Presently in the process of having her reactor decommissioned, with a bit of luck she will emerge from the process as a museum ship again.

You may wonder, "is this retrotechnology?" I believe it is. To a very great extent, modern civilization continues to run on steam. Much of it is still produced by burning coal in boilers that, other than scale, would not be terribly unfamiliar to men who designed and built the SS Savannah's boilers around 1818. Even NS Savannah's reactor has become, at the age of 50, "retro."

Will we see her like again soon? Possibly not. Between real fears of proliferation or piracy and irrational ones about the power plant itself, probably not. On the other hand, the Russians are still running a handful of atomic icebreakers; so don't write it off just yet.

BIG STEAM

It looks like a cross between a castle and a mechanical spider; if I had been shown an uncaptioned picture, I would have been convinced it was a movie prop.

But it's real: Cruquius, the largest single-cylinder steam engine ever built, a Cornish Engine far from Cornwall. And it's big: the primary piston is 144" in diameter. On the official site, there's a page with a video that follows a reporter inside the main cylinder.

Restored but not under steam (the boilers are long gone), nowadays, the engine is moved by hydraulics; but move it does and it's an image you're not likely to forget.

What did it do for a living? Why, it helped drain the Netherlands!

WORTHINGTON TRIPLES

It's not a baseball report. It's something that staggers the imagination. Let's say you needed a prime mover for a waterworks -- a really large waterworks, 19 million gallons a day -- and let's say it's 1926 and you live in a country with a lot of coal and a strong engineering tradition. And let's say you wanted it utterly reliable.

Of course you'd build a matched pair of 62-foot tall, 1000-bhp, triple-expansion steam engines atop directly-driven piston pumps, wouldn't you? The Brits did -- and at the time, the mammoth installation really was the best choice.*

But it is stunning. Staggering. All the more when you consider the pair of engines remained in service until 1980! And why not; they worked.

Best of all, after the engines were honorably retired, steam enthusiasts adopted them! It took a new boiler and an enormous effort, but one of the engines runs again, under steam -- and yes, they have public demonstrations.

I have been a big admirer of steam enthusiasts ever since I met the crew who rescued the old locomotive from Broad Ripple Park; but this effort is on a truly heroic scale.

...And in a few days, I'll link to another engine, earlier but just as ambitious and built, in its unique way, in a similar scale.
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*This was to change, soon after -- and they followed the technology, as you'll see.

MR. TOWER'S SPHERICAL STEAM ENGINE

No, it's not the title of a fanciful novel; it's a real thing, a sort of 3-D Wankel engine and if the site describing it didn't have a cutaway animation, I would still be puzzling over the drawings. How about 2.5 bhp at 500 RPM from a four-inch sphere? Inside, two quarter-spheres and a disc, assembled in a sort of universal joint and driven by steam -- we should not be surprised that the same man who conceived it was the first to puzzle out hydrodynamic lubrication (and not the hard way like most of us did, on bad tires in the rain).

Long ago, these little engines were used (per my sources, especially on British merchant ships) to spin dynamos, since they didn't need gearing. Turbines eventually took over that job, leaving Beauchamp Tower's fascinating engine an historical footnote. But what a footnote!

Another link, good in August, 2010: External view and description.

DELIBERATE RETRO

The Edison, an amazing-looking bar in Los Angeles, has a website. It's in what was an early private electrical generating plant. (And it has a dress code requiring customers to, at least, dress up a bit -- T-shirts, sandals and athletic shoes being Right Out). It's something of a steampunk speakeasy.

TRAIN-CHASING

Chase a steam locomotive with a Ford Model A and catch it? It doesn't get better than that! My heart was in my throat a couple times.

'Scuse the small image, we're saving up for a bigger Philco.