OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Collectors Corner Pictures of Antique Equipment Steam Related Engines Steam Era - Yesteryear Rally

I just visited the Yesteryear Machinery Rally 25km north of Bundy on the weekend. Very interesting, all sorts of farm , machinery etc etc, collections of chainsaws, mowers tractors ...etc.

I realised that the age of steam was pretty quiet . Those small steam engines just purred. It must have been a shock when the infernal combustion engine came along and boosted the noise levels up everywhere......

Bring back steam.
speedy

The only thing Speedy is that once the internal combustion engine came along, progress really started to happen, but has that progress taken us too far. Problem is we can never go back and the EPA would be all over us if we tried burning all that wood to fire the steamers. Maybe we could try and develop a nuclear powered steam engine

The first low compression internal combustion engines were far noisier than anything you could imagine from what I've read. It was only when high compression IC engines were developed that they started getting quieter.

Trev, a mate of mine is big in steam, keeps quite a few of the staemers on the Murray running and he always says the steam engine was the breeding ground for the internal combustion engine using the piston/conrod idea, all they did was was put petrol and a spark above the piston instead of injecting steam in there

Hi speedy, AT and Norm

Trust me to link the story back to lawnmowers!

I loved Speedy's observation that the steam engines 'just purred'.
There is something mesmerizing in watching those flywheels, cranks,
and the like move in a slow rhythmic fashion. And the smell of
steam and burning coal or wood is aromatic.

The steam age of lawnmowers never lasted long - no more than a decade.
Here is an extract from a book I am quite fond of:-

�The first step towards a power-driven mower was obvious: steam. In 1893 James Sumner, a Lancashire blacksmith, patented a steam powered mower, using the engine from a motorized tricycle he had devised. It was fired by petroleum or paraffin, and after various adaptions was manufactured by the Leyland Steam Motor Company, which was eventually to metamorphose into British Leyland.

In 1897 two models were offered for sale � a 25-inch machine at �60, and one of 30 inches at �90. Green and Shanks followed the same route, both companies marketing steam powered mowers at or soon after the turn of the century. But their considerable cost, great size, massive weight (around one and a half tons) and unweildiness combined to make them more than impressive curiosities, whose clangings and puffings and enormous turning circles were confined to a few sports grounds and country estates. Their time never came, for the flair and imagination of one of those Ipswich Ransomes made them reduntant before they were properly born.�

The Grass Is Greener, Tom Fort, 2001, p145

Here's one of those Leyland behemoths:-


The Americans persevered with steam just a little longer:-


For me, the steam age is both romantic and nostalgic.
It also represented a slower, more relaxed world, rather than
the high revving, noisy, non-stop, modern age. I find steam relaxing.

Letting steam off.
-------------------------
Jack

Great idea Norm but they already have, it's called a nuclear power plant. The reactor simply replaces the fossil fuel furnace and heats water to steam to turn the turbine to generate the electricity.

Obviously there are nuclear powered watercraft, the Americans (and USSR) toyed with the idea of nuclear powered planes too but even they thought it was just too dangerous! I think missile technology also made them somewhat redundant.

Not quite pistons and rods, of course.

Originally posted by Patrick

"Great idea Norm but they already have, it's called a nuclear power plant. The reactor simply replaces the fossil fuel furnace and heats water to steam to turn the turbine to generate the electricity."

But Patrick this idea has been tried and was not successful because we then need to use electric mowers.