Learn, Tinker, Build

I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Childhood

While my family did not own a steam tractor for me to be around growing up we knew many of the families that do and I was able to ride along multiple years. There is nothing quite like being in the staging area as multiple engines blow their whistles as they ready to get rolling. Watching the machinery of these antique mammoths come to life is awe inspiring to say the least. On most of the engines nothing is hidden or covered, every moving part can be seen. As you approach them you begin to feel the heat from their boilers as if they are some large beast of steel.

The Third

From my early childhood up until mid-high school most of my interactions with steam engines were during those Fourth of July parades. Once I was able to drive however I was able to go see them on the third. Where the fourth is the main event where the engines are on full display for the public, the third is when the real work happens. This is when the engines are moved from the shed to the start of the parade in preparation. It was at this event I was able to spend time asking questions, helping to build the fires, grease gears, anything to get me close to being able to run one of the engines even for a few minutes.

• 

• 

I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a chance to run an engine, but I learned a lot just being around. Watching how the fires are monitored and fed, how water is kept at a safe level, what the various parts do and how to use them. It’s an experience I would trade for nothing, and at one point would even lead to me skipping a family vacation in order to not miss it. I was also able to become acquainted with many people who have helped me later on with my journey in steam.

Running an Engine

Once in college I had two major milestones in my steam career. The first happened as part of me starting to work at the sawmill at the yearly Country Fair in Cumming. It was at the sawmill I was able to run my first engine, a 1927 slab burning Frick Portable. Not only did I get to run a steam engine, I was running a working steam engine. There is a large difference between the engines driving in the parade and pulling a sawmill. In a parade you can let your pressure vary over a fairly wide range since the gearing gives you such a high torque on top of what you already get from steam that you are barely working the engine. Contrasted with pulling a sawmill where you need to keep pressure up within five pounds of the safety lifting since more pressure means more energy, which means more power to the saw. The other major difference is when and how much wood you can add, in a parade you can get away with adding at most points except traveling downhill and very little is usually needed, but when the engine is working it’s a different story, wood can only be added while a log isn’t against the saw, and it usually always needs another piece.

That portable was probably the best engine for me to get my feet wet on. Being a slab burner meant there is no crown sheet to worry about unlike most traction engines. The crown is usually where inexperienced engineers have a problem as they let the water get too low and the metal turns to jello. Instead of a crown sheet the slab burner has a large fire tube that runs the length of the boiler. This is ideal at a sawmill since wood up to eight feet can be fed into the tube from either end, the normal candidate being the slabs from logs currently being milled. Another advantage provided by the design of being a return flue boiler is that it is fairly easy to kill the draft and introduce cold air if steam is building too quickly. That in addition to having high enough water pressure to just open the spigot to add water made maintaining pressure once raised fairly easy. The final simplification provided by nature of being a portable was the controls being limited to just the steam valve, which removed the complications of a clutch or reverser.

Even with the engine being less complex than the traction engines and providing me with “cheats” to make water management easier it was still quite a chore to run. Up until running the engine I had been an off-bearer, which amounts to taking the slabs and fresh lumber from the saw and stacking it into piles. That job usually has three people working together so that you have some breaks and help. As an engineer breaks weren’t much of a thing. I was at the mill an hour or two before our first demonstration to begin the firing procedure for the engine, done in a very fast/slow style, you want pressure to be built just before the first demonstration, but also don’t want to hit the safety or need to drop pressure on the way there. I’m sure back in the day that was less of an issue since you would want pressure fast to get started as soon as possible, I had to hit a scheduled time. Also in the to-do list as part of firing was checking for leaks and checking the various oil and grease points.

Once the mill started the real fun at the engine begins. You have to be in multiple places at the same time all while paying attention to the saw, the steam pressure, the water level, and keeping an eye out for errant sparks. As the engine starts working it helps increase its own draft which makes the fire hotter, needing more wood, that leads to creating more steam, needing more water, in a balanced dance with the saw. You don’t want to add wood while a log is in the saw, nor do you want to add water, as the log is being rolled back for its next cut is when you can adjust, but rarely can you do both water and wood so you judge based on what you see. Then you work to balance the amount of air going through the fire vs past it to control the heat. It leads to enough moving around I once clipped my hat on the belt between the engine and saw. Finally you have to watch the sparks. My coat has more than a few holes from sparks coming out the stack, and I had to stamp out a few small fires. It’s almost like a sawmill has a large amount of flammable materials.

In the way that running the engine at the sawmill gave me practical appreciation of a steam engine my second experience gave me a technical appreciation. While in college working on a degree in physics I ended up involved in doing demonstrations at open houses for the department. In order to try to make the open houses more appealing to prospective students we began showing off various simple displays among which was a small model steam engine. When we first found this model it had not been used in an unknown amount of time and required quite a bit of work to get back running. Once running I could connect it to various test equipment and actually see how various parts of the engine effect each other. I could see pressure buildup in relation to temperature; I could see the torque and horsepower from even a small steam engine in comparison to small electric motors.

My First Steam Engine

After a few years running the portable we stopped using it due to a string of very dry summers. By that point I had also graduated college and no longer had access to that model engine. This lead to a stretch of many years where I was only able to help on the third and fourth but not run an engine. It was during this time that I met and eventually married my wife. It was quite a surprise when one of the gifts she got me was a model steam engine. In this case it was a Jensen Model 65 which is set up like a small factory engine. I finally had an engine I could run when I wished. I could take and light the fire under the boiler, build pressure, blow my whistle and let the engine spin along.

While my little engine may not be able to pull a sawmill or run in a parade it can bring a smile to my face every time I start seeing the pressure rise. There’s nothing quite like watching the needle start moving on the pressure gauge. It’s the point at which the engine is starting to come to life, even on a small model it’s a big moment. Up until that point my model doesn’t differ much from a small camp stove, but at those first few pounds of pressure it becomes something more.