Thornewill & Warham Engines
Built, in 1884, by Thornewill & Wareham, Burton-onTrent, for Greenall Whitley & Co. Ltd, Wilderspool, Warrington for use at their brewery.
The engines were last used to drive the brewery machinery in 1962. They were maintained in good working order until the brewery closed in 1990.
Each engine can be run independently.
The driving line shaft was situated above the cylinders and had a 12 ins wide flat belt. The drive to the brewery line shafting was controlled by moving the belt sideways, from a fixed pulley to a free pulley and vice versa.
Hence the 25 ins wide flywheel!
The owners donated the engines to the museum in 1997.
There is an interesting article, describing the removal of these engines from the Wilderspool Brewery, on the website of The International Stationary Steam Engine Society.
Technical details
| Type of Engine | Single cylinder, horizontal. The engine is really two single cylinder engines, Nos 524 and 525, which were built side by side with the flywheels in the middle ie. one engine the mirror image of the other. |
|---|---|
| Builder & Year | Thornewill & Warham, Engineers, Burton-on-Trent 1884 |
| Cylinder Sizes | 18 ins. Diameter |
| Stroke | 36 ins. |
| Valves | Slide valve with an expansion valve on top |
| Flywheel | The flywheels are 8 ft. - 6 ins. diameter, 25 ins. wide and are bolted and keyed, in two halves, to the crankshafts |
| Governor | A Porter governor controls the maximum speed of the engine through linkage to a steam throttle valve |
| Other Information | The slide and expansion valves are driven by two eccentrics, |