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Kew Bridge Road, BRENTFORD, TW8 0EF

The tall tower and buildings alongside it are former water works, now redeveloped as a steam museum.

"Wren" class locomotive No.3114, dating from 1918, on loan whilst the resident locomotive undergoes extensive maintenance.

This was installed here in 1838 by Maudslay Sons & Field of Lambeth at a tender price of £7550. The engine was converted to the higher pressure Cornish cycle in 1846-7. The engine has been extensively rebuilt over the years and was retired in 1944. It was restored to working order in 1985 and was the site's third Cornish beam engine to be returned to steam. The next major project was to be the Bull engine that is alongside in the same building.

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.

This is the museum's next new gallery and due to open in 2015. The house was built in 1908 and originally housed Worthington non-rotative steam pumps. The electric pumps were installed in the 1930s and this is the sole survivor. The motor is by the Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd and the centrifugal pump is by Hathorn, Davey. The two devices against the wall to the right are water ejectors used to remove air from the pump casings for priming.

This building originally housed a Worthington horizontal triple expansion pump but in the 1940s housed electric pumps that remained in use until the 1980s. It has now been successfully re-imagined as the Museum's electric house to illustrate the use of electricity in waterworks. This beautifully restored exhibit is an E Reader inverted vertical compound (enclosed) steam engine driving a Siemens dynamo (DC). It came from the Bifurcated & Tubular rivet Company at Aylesbury. See - Image and Image

This is part of the Museum's new display demonstrating the use of electricity in waterworks. In addition to electrically driven pumps, this part of the display includes generation (the Reader steam engine driven dynamo), rectification (a mercury arc rectifier in the grey cabinet) and switching (old open switch gear on the end wall and a 1980s control panel to the right). The layout and interpretation of this room is exemplary. It was the first time I had seen this in its completed state and I was most impressed.

Technology moves on apace and not everything worthy of a place in a museum is all that old. This big red motor driven vertical spindle centrifugal pump is a case in point. It was built by Weir Pumps Ltd of Cathcart near Glasgow in 1985. It was one of ten in a new pumping station at Kew Bridge that replaced the 1940s electric pumps in this room. The new pumping station lasted a mere 26 years and was closed in May 2012 and demolished in September 2012. Water is still pumped at Kew Bridge but it is now by remotely operated pumps deep underground in association with London's water ring main.

This is the electric pump house that was converted from a steam pump house in 1944. This is the original No. 1 horizontal axis centrifugal pump that was built by Hathorn, Davey & Co of Leeds and was one of six in this room. It was retired in 1986 when a new pumping station was built nearby. That too has now been retired and replaced with pumps in a shaft associated with London's ring main. The electric house is now a new Museum gallery illustrating the use of electricity in waterworks.