The Steamtug Blog

Weekly Rant!

Before writing this, I was watching one of those old movies from 1960’s England. Why is it that I find these type of movie more entertaining than the modern American ones? They had not invented the super fancy visual effects that they can do now, so in those days they instead relied on things like an interesting and believable story line, some great acting (sometimes over the top to get the story across), eccentric characters and some wit thrown in to keep you interested! The modern American movies seem to be about some great special effect that they just invented so they build a flimsly, corny story line to demonstrate it. What ever happened to movies based on “Pulitzer” prize winning novels?

Boiler woes…

I normally try to keep a back row seat at our annual show. I have been burned too many times with the petty politics of the place, which is another long story that I will tell you about some other time. John normally runs the boiler house, and I don’t always agree with his theories, or what he does, but he puts in 100% and does a great job anyway. So I usually hang around and take a secondary role and just fill in where required. But this year, John busted his knee and could not do it, and so asked me to run the boilers during the agricultural show.

We have 2 boilers, a 20 hp Trevor UFMT, which is grossly overworked to supply the steam needed to display all the antique steam engines that just tick over for the 4 days. Then there is an enormous marine ship engine of 1000 hp which makes keep up the steam supply a real challenge. The committee their decided against my will to install an old 1950’s oil fired packaged boiler which I hate for the following reasons. It’s modern (like an HQ Holden in a vintage car display… sure it’s old but not that old, and the technology is the same as used today). It’s noisy, with a loud fan on the front providing combustion air. It’s expensive to run (1500 litres of diesel! Most vintage people would convert this to run on waste oil). It is fed with cold water instead of taking hot water from our hotwell/feed tank. Despite sitting in a prime position in the shed, It’s completely uninteresting (all visitors just walk straight past it as there is nothing to see… except the noise!). You can find this type of boiler in many factories across Geelong, even today! So basically I hate it!

This silly oil fired boiler broke down the day before the show and was fixed by a local boiler contractor, even though it could have easily been fixed by some of the people there had they been asked. The man who came to fix it, told me… “Hey we could modernise this whole burner system. We could replace it with a modern burner that does away with all this unnecessary  valves, switches and levers.” I told him that we could also replace that old Jelbart tractor standing outside the shed with a new John Deere. That old tractor is hard to start and bad on fuel and high in maintenance and a new John Deere would be much easier to drive. He looked at me like I had too heads, not understanding what I was talking about. Then I could see the little light go on and he said “Ok… I get where you are coming from now” and just left it at that.

Full steam ahead

So we started up the oil fired boiler and pressured he up to 70 psi, then without even opening the steam outlet valve, I shut it down leaving it on hot standby. And that is all that boiler did. I put on my gloves and stoked up the old wood fired boiler, pushing it to the limit. With a chimney temperature of 315 degrees, showing me how hard it working the boiler steamed like a train! I even had enough to run the marine engine every few minutes if somebody wanted to see it run.

I worked my arse off to keep up the steam, but with the opportunity to run the whole display my way, I was determined not to use that crappy oil fired boiler. Usually the boys sit in front of the wood boiler talking with a boy scout campfire glowing in the box while the oil boiler does all the work. But not me! Several people commented “Did they not get the oil one fixed?” I told them it was all ok and  on standby. So for the 3 days I ran the boiler, I burned 5 litres of diesel, and 12 tons of firewood! When it comes to the rally on the 7^th and 8^th January, they will put money aside to buy more diesel then realise that the tank is till full! Then they will look around and see the wood box almost empty! It was hard work, but a challenge I really enjoyed!

With the marine engine running on an “as needs” basis, I decided to make up a sign to put on the front. I then thought about how in England, they promote themselves so much better than they do here. They say things like “The oldest engine in England painted this shade of green” so I thought we should do the same. I wrote “Australia’s biggest working steam engine, 1000 hp!” I then said how the Scienceworks museum has a bigger engine but it runs on air. I also wrote how it makes it’s 1000 hp in silence and you should ask the boilerman for a demonstration.

Well I had many challengers to my claim which developed into an interesting rivalry.  Somebody told me the big beam engine in the Powerhouse museum in Sydney is bigger and I responded that it’s physically bigger but not as much horsepower. Then somebody told me about the main engine in the steam ferry South Steyne and I answered that although it’s 2000 hp, it’s not going! So my claim stands!

This week I’m planning to sail out in the open ocean to a new foreign port! So watch this space!