This is the oldest piece of industrial equipment made in Stockton that is still in operation, it was built in 1895 by Worth Matravers Ltd. It is a permanent fixture at the Waterworks Museum in Hereford, where it was used for water pumping. Photographs taken October 2013.
Photographs and details courtesy of Fred Starr.
This is a somewhat more complex engine than that of a steam crane. It has three separate cylinders high, intermediate and low pressure. The steam is dry saturated on entering the engine, hence water condenses out after each cylinder. This has to be drained off to prevent the pistons trying to compress water and damaging the engine. Even so, after the IP cyclinder thae steam has to be reheated todry it as much as possible in a heat exchanger using high temperatre steam from the boiler.
Correct Fred, the invention of the condenser then heat exchangers made the modern steam engine what it was. ICI boilers had a full control room and the water pressures gauges were the ones you did not take your eye’s off.
Water could cause massive damage to turbine blades but a boiler running dry was calamity.
Sorry! It was Worth Macenzie… I must have spent too long in the West Country!
The original website is
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8#q=Picture+Stockton+Worth+Macenzie
I researched the Worth Mackenzie Company Limited of Stockton all last winter and put most of the results on Picture Stockton under a old photograph of the works titled – The Railway Sidings at the Phoenix Works, Stockton. Just search Phoenix on this site.
Worth Matravers is a village in Dorset to the west of Swanage. I think you’ll find the nameplate reads Worth-Macenzie, which prompts the questions who were they and where was the factory? Over to you, Stocktonians.
The nameplate reads Worth-MacKenzie and they were on Phoenix Sidings, there are a few photo of them on this web-site.
Any one who worked with boilers will tell you the most important gauge is the water, without water a boiler blows up or melts down. When I tested a steam crane after re tubing I watched the water gauge as the tank was not very large requiring frequent filling.
The Phoenix sidings were the Perseverance Boiler Works and among the many such works in the Stockton Thornaby area.
The Perseverance Works belonged to Riley Bros, Mary Street, Oxbridge. Phoenix Works was at Phoenix Sidings near Vicarage Street/Avenue.
These pictures are from October 2013. The characters in front are from a “steam punk” group of alternative history, science fiction, enthusuasts based in Bristol. The engine is put into operation about once a month along with other Worth Matravers equipment.
The dials, which are part of the original instrumentation, supplied by Worth Matravers, show that the engine was under a very modest load. The gauge on the left is for the inlet steam pressure to the engine and has two scales. The inner one is in pounds per sq in. The outer scale shows the pressure in terms of the feet of water, which might have made more sense to the older type of boiler man of the time. The middle gauge shows the vacuum in the condenser in inches of mercury, and the right hand gauge shows the steam pressure into the low pressure cylinder. The design output is 118 hp, about that of a medium sized car engine.