Kew Bridge Steam Museum - Bull engine
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Kew Bridge Steam Museum - Bull engine 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
Kew Bridge Steam Museum - Bull engine
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 1 Jan 2014
The museum has now been rebranded as the London Museum of Water & Steam. This is a view of the bottom end of the site's unique workable Bull pumping engine that was built in 1857. This view shows the engine at the top of the stroke with the pump plunger (bottom) about as close as it usually gets to the bottom of the main steam cylinder (top). The green beam does not transmit main pumping power but merely serves to operate the auxiliaries (air pump, feed pumps, valve gear and cataract). This is the only workable Bull engine in the world and the museum has done its best to ensure the public can see as much happening as it feasible to allow. Ordinarily the lower workings would be hidden behind sliding screens or below the floor. This is the only engine that works as hard now as when it was in use. The weight of the pump plunger could not be reduced, so it pumps against a head that is the same as when in use.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.488575
Longitude
-0.290744