IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Snakey Lane, FELTHAM, TW13 6XH

The tops of the twin chimneys at the Kempton Waterworks. The nearer one was built at the time of the expansion of the pumping facilities in the 1920s and is subtly different in its mix of stone and brick.

The 1928 Worthington-Simpson engine house. Boiler house to left. Shooting across the filter bed gives a better angle but the building is less dominating than when close up.

I'm sure that many will recognise this as a labyrinth packing. This is the main turbine shaft at the exhaust end of the turbine and the shaft has a series of very finely machine concentric grooves with a knife edge finish. These are designed to keep steam in or (at the exhaust end of a condensing set) air out. They work on the principle that as the gas trying to move along the shaft passes from space to space it expands until is quite literally runs out of pressure and can go no further. This gland was actually steam sealed with a little visible wisp of steam at the vapour pipe to show that all was well. There is an oil thrower on the shaft to the left to stop lubricating oil ingress. This is all incredibly elegant (and invisible) engineering.

A 1933 Fraser & Chalmers steam turbine with reduction gearing to a pair of centrifugal pumps in parallel. The surface condenser and its tube bundles are seen running transversely beyond the last stage of the turbine. Extreme right top is the water turbine driven dynamo that could be used to run the pumping station in the event of a loss of mains power. Although badged as Fraser and Chalmers, the company was by then part of the General Electric Company and the original drawings are now with Siemens at Newcastle upon Tyne.

Although better known for the two enormous reciprocating steam engine pumps Image, the site also possesses two much smaller steam turbine driven pumping sets. These are of the same capacity but physically smaller and also had a higher steam consumption. Small turbines are relatively less efficient because of relatively larger blade tip clearance losses. These are impulse turbines (the first two stages are a velocity compounded Curtis wheel, followed by stages of reaction blading) reduction geared to centrifugal pumps. The square ended green box-like structure is the surface condenser while the vertical cylinder nearer the photographer is the steam jet air extraction and intercooler assembly.

This is the Lilleshall engine house that housed five Lilleshall inverted vertical triple expansion pumping engines. Scrapped in the 1970s to make way for the new electric pumps that replaced the big triple expansion engines in the building just visible on the right. The stopped late 1980. When the picture was taken one chimney had lost its ornamental cap but this was later reinstated.

This is a Scammell Ballast Tractor, formerly owned and operated by Metropolitan Water Board. The vehicle is now privately owned having been rescued from a fairground operator and restored to the original livery. It is seen standing outside the Pumping House at Kempton Park.

This is the 200V DC switchboard as Kempton had a variety of DC motor driven auxiliaries from the days when variable speed control was easier with DC. The two purple glowing objects are mercury arc rectifiers converting AC to DC and are ex-Royal Opera House. A friend informs me that a mercury arc rectifier was used to depict an alien's brain in an earlier episode of Doctor Who!

Number 6 is the restored one of the two 'Great Engines' at Kempton Park, they are of the inverted vertical triple expansion type, are 62 ft tall from basement to the top of the valve casings and weigh over 800 tons. These engines are thought to be the biggest ever built in the UK and date from 1926-1929 and were the last working survivors when they stopped in 1980.