Cathedral of Steam

Today we met up with fellow blippers Houblon and Storksrock at the London Museum of Water & Steam (aka The Kew Bridge Steam Museum).

For the steam aficionado this place is heaven on Earth. They have a variety of different engines from tabletop size to monster Cornish pumping engines three storeys high. This Easter Sunday was a steam day so all the working engines were steamed up throughout the day.

This water pumping engine is the Boulton & Watt 'Cornish' style beam engine, built in 1820 and it worked up until 1943 which is a pretty astounding life cycles for any man-made machine. It is the oldest working beam engine in the world.

Tech Specs
Date of manufacture 1820
Cylinder Diameter 64 inches (1.62 metres)
Stroke 96 inches (2.4 metres)
Weight of Beam 15 tons (15.1 tonnes)
Water output per stroke 130 Gallons (590 litres)
Water output per 24 hours 2.5 M Gallons (8 M litres)
Strokes per minute 6 - 6 1/2
Last worked 1944
Returned to steam 1975

P.s. If you take a look in LARGE you may spot the face of somebody behind the machine through the valve gear. Just a chance line-up but quite funny.