Old Boiler Rooms

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Steve Bratina
Posts: 1061
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:39 pm
Location: Cambridge Ontario

Old Boiler Rooms

Post by Steve Bratina »

I am planning to build a 1920's era powerhouse in my back yard. It is a twenty year project as I thought it would take about 15 years to gather the equipment and about five years to build the boiler room and engine house. However, I had all the equipment from boiler and pumps to engines to electrical gear to open feedwater heater in three years. Now I have 14 years to finnish the buildings.
My situation is that the boiler that I have to drive this stuff is a Waterous locomotive type boiler of about 100 BHP. Would anyone know of a plant that used a locomotive type boiler in an industrial setting. I need some sort of reference so I can set this up in a logical manner. I remember seeing a picture of a creamery along the D&H Railroad that had the smokebox and chimney outside the building which seems to be a good way. This set up keeps the soot outside when brushing the tubes. I have never seen anything about how it was set up inside. Could anyone help me out with this problem?
Thank You
Steve Bratina
Rwilliams
Posts: 1046
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:45 pm
Location: Central California

Post by Rwilliams »

Interesting project.

Many of the railroad shops in the days of steam would recycle smaller older boilers from locomotives to supply shop steam. Many of the food processing facilities that required large amounts of steam years ago also had locomotive style boilers and would lease locomotives from the local railroads to give aditional steam at peak season. They would also use a steam locomotive to replace a boiler down for repair or if a boiler blew up, the local railroad would come to the rescuse and keep the customer/shipper in business.
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LVRR2095
Posts: 1688
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Maine, USA

Post by LVRR2095 »

The Magor Car Company of Clifton, New Jersey built 60 cm gauge rolling stock for the trench railroads in Europe, during WW-1. The U.S. Army Transportation Corps gave Magor a Baldwin steam locomotive to use at the plant testing and switching the 60 cm gauge cars they built, prior to shipment. In the 1970's, before the Magor Co. was closed, I was there while working on the railroad, and had a chance to visit the woodshop on the premises. There in one of the buildings was the Baldwin boiler, still with its builder's plates! They used it for heating kilns and factory heat.
And no....I was not able to acquire the builder's plates before the factory was gone.
Keith
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