Hamilton, Ontario Canada
Museum of Steam & Technology
Brian, our guide through the museum, explains how
the flywheel was turned manually when the engine was being started up. A
heavy bar is placed in pockets o the wheels perimeter and levered downward to
move the wheel in small increments. Sadly, as can be seen here, the
cameras adds about 10 to 12 pounds to my profile. Yeah, right!
That's Brian showing how in 1859 when starting the engine
they actually had to "bar" the flywheel. The reason they did this
was because we only pumped water about 12 hours a day in the beginning years
because there was not a lot of people in Hamilton (about 25 thousand) and not
everyone gets pipes to their house right away. So every night
the cylinders would get cold therefore in the morning to
avoid water hammer you had to manual bring the steam in to the engines, which
would turn into water because the engines were cold and so then you had to
move the water out. The only way to do this was to open and close the valves
of the engine. Our valves are controlled by our cams and our cams are
connected to the flywheel. So if you turn the flywheel then you turn the cams
thereby opening and closing the valves which bring the steam in.
773KB
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