Steam Traction on the Road : From Trevithick to Sentinel: 150 Years of Design and Development

202 Pages·28.268 MB·English

by  Anthony Burton

STEAM TRACTION
ON THE ROAD
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STEAM TRACTION
ON THE ROAD
From Trevithick to Stanley
Anthony Burton
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
PEN & SWORD TRANSPORT
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire - Philadelphia
Copyright © Anthony Burton, 2018
ISBN 978 1 52670 151 0
The right of Anthony Burton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in
writing.
Typeset in 10.5/13.5 pt Palatino
Typeset by Aura Technology and Software Services, India
Printed and bound in India by Replika Pvt. Ltd.
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Contents
Introduction 7
Chapter One Beginnings 9
Chapter Two The Steam Omnibus 22
Chapter Three Down on the Farm 40
Chapter Four Ploughing by Steam 60
Chapter Five The Steam Roller 73
Chapter Six Road Haulage 92
Chapter Seven The Fun of the Fair 122
Chapter Eight Horseless Carriages for Gentlemen 135
Chapter Nine The Steam Car Comes of Age 145
Chapter Ten The Steam Waggon 169
Chapter Eleven The End of the Road 184
Appendix Locomotive Acts 194
Select Bibliography 196
Steam on Road Credits 197
Index 198
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Introduction
When anyone thinks about the development of steam power in the
world of transport, the first thing likely to come into the mind is
the steam railway. This is perfectly understandable, for it had an
immense impact on life in countries all round the world. Yet steam
vehicles appeared on the road before they took to the tracks. It has
to be admitted that the road vehicles did not have quite as dramatic
an effect in changing society as did the railways, but they did bring
great changes to many aspects of life, not least in agriculture. The
potential was there for greater development but time and again the
attempts to develop an efficient steam transport system for the roads
was hampered not by technology, but by a series of often absurdly
over-cautious restrictions imposed by government. In this book, we
shall be looking at all these different manifestations of steam on the
road. But why should anyone be interested in a form of transport
that had a limited effect and was more or less redundant nearly
a century ago? There are several possible answers, but for many
of us it is simply a matter of a fascination with these magnificent
machines.
I am writing these words on that modern technological miracle,
a computer. But if I were to dismantle it, there would be nothing in
the components that would help in understanding how it works.
We can read about how the computer works, even learn how
to programme it for ourselves, but the physical machine gives
nothing away. The same is true of many modern machines we
take for granted. But if we look at a steam engine, even the most
complicated version, it is still possible to work out exactly what
does what and how. It may take a bit of time, but even without
specialist engineering knowledge, the general principles are easily
understood, from even a quick inspection. Here is a fire that heats
water to make steam, and that steam will try to expand. If we allow
it into a cylinder with a piston, it will push that piston along until
the vapour can escape the cylinder. And if it cannot escape, the
cylinder will burst; the power of steam should not be underrated.
Add mechanical connections to the piston, and its backward and
forward movement can turn a wheel – and if you can turn a wheel
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8 • STEAM TRACTION ON THE ROAD
you can make something move. Of course, the machines themselves
are far more complex than this short description might suggest, but
the idea is simple. And we can actually see it happening.
The steam engine is elemental, and somehow has a very human
feel to it. We have to feed the fire that makes the steam ourselves
if we want to make a traction engine work. And when it moves,
we can watch the fascinating interplay of the different linkages. It
is immensely satisfying and, of course, for those lucky enough to
have a chance to work with these machines it is even more of an
exhilarating experience. I shall always remember my first trip out
on a traction engine, when I was entrusted with the steering and
that great lover of all things steam, Teddy Boston, was driving.
We charged around the narrow country lanes near his vicarage in
Leicestershire and what surprised me most was how what appeared
to be a cumbersome beast responded so readily to the controls.
It brought home to me that this was in fact a very sophisticated and
beautifully engineered machine. I had been involved with steam in
other forms over the years, particularly stationary steam engines,
but this provoked my interest in road vehicles and their history,
hence this book. Over the next few pages we shall be looking at the
development of steam road power over a period of over a century
and celebrating the ingenuity of the engineers, some well-known,
others anonymous, who gave us the great variety of these road
vehicles, many of which still steam for our pleasure and delight.
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C O
hapter ne
Beginnings
Almost a century had passed since the invention of the first successful
steam engine before engines went on the move. The story of steam
began with the need for more efficient pumps to drain water from
deep mines. There was an early device, known as ‘The Miner’s Friend’
designed by Captain Savery in 1698, but it did not lead to any further
developments and was never widely used. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, however, a Dartmouth man, Thomas Newcomen,
began experimenting with a different idea and the first of his engines
was installed at a coal mine at Dudley in the Black Country in 1812.
Pumps were worked by means of an up and down motion of the
pump rods – in its simplest form by working the handle at the village
pump. Newcomen’s pumps were on an altogether grander scale.
The pump rods were hung from one end of a pivoted overhead
beam, and dropped down under their own weight. What Newcomen
supplied was a force to raise them up again. At the opposite end
of the beam was a piston fitting snugly into a cylinder. Steam was
allowed in under the piston and then condensed by spraying with
cold water. This created a partial vacuum under the piston and air
pressure forced it down, pulling down that end of the beam and so
lifting the rods at the other end. Pressure equalised, gravity took over
again to pull the rods down, and set in motion the see-sawing of the
beam and the rise and fall of the pump rods.
Newcomen’s engine undoubtedly did the job it was designed to
do, and soon the massive engines were nodding over shafts from
the tin and copper mines of Cornwall to coal mines in Scotland. The
engine was, however, extremely inefficient, thanks to the energy
needed for constantly having to reheat the cylinder after each
stroke. This was not particularly important at coal mines where fuel
that might not have been good enough for sale was quite adequate
for feeding the boilers. It was far more troublesome in Cornwall,
where fuel was mainly imported across the water from South
Wales at a great cost. The Cornish engineers did their best to try to
improve the engine, but gains were only marginal. It was a young
Scottish instrument maker at Glasgow University who spotted the
nature of the problem and saw a solution.
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