Wasp Mill Tandem Compound Steam Engine

This is "Elsie" (many textile mill engines were named, often after members of the mill-owners family), a 180 IHP tandem-compound engine built by J & W McNaught Ltd of Rochdale in 1902 for the Barchant Spinning Company This is probably the most common design of "mill engine" with both the high and low-pressure cylinders on a common piston rod driving a single crank. Hundreds if not thousands of engines of this type were built by a large number of different makers and saw service mainly in weaving mills where one engine could drive up to 1000 looms. The cylinders are 13" (high pressure) and 24" (low pressure) with a stroke of 36" and the engine ran at 75 rpm. The 12ft flywheel weighs about 8 tons and is grooved for 8 cotton ropes of about 1.5 ins diameter. Rope drives were almost always used in the textile industry after about 1880 to transmit power from the engine into the mill since they proved to be both quiet and long-lasting.

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Science & Technology

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• tandem
• compound
• steam
• mill
• engine
• northern
• society
• museum

[DAKOTA56777]

All your videos are great but can you try to make them just a bit longer.