Nortonthorpe Mills - steam engine, crosshead
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Nortonthorpe Mills - steam engine, crosshead by Chris Allen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Nortonthorpe Mills - steam engine, crosshead
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 7 Oct 2006
Part of the Pollit & Wigzell horizontal tandem compound mill engine that once powered this former woollen mill. The crosshead connects the piston rod to the connecting rod and runs in guides that constrain the piston rod to move in a straight line while the far end of the con rod describes a circle. The pot of oil lubricates the little end. This is a Pollit 'three rod' design with three piston rods. The thicker middle one that is cottered to a Y shaped piece is the high pressure rod while the thinner rods flanking it are the low pressure rods and they attach to the slide blocks with horizontal cotters. The light diagonal rod on the right drives the reducing gear that is used for taking 'indicator diagrams' to calculate the indicated horsepower. Steam engines are apparently simple - until you get down to the details.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
53.586371
Longitude
-1.629113