Preserved Cornish Engines
Several Cornish engines are preserved in England. The Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London has the largest collection of Cornish engines in the world. At Crofton Pumping Station, in Wiltshire, a Grade 1 listed building houses two Cornish engines, one of which (the 1812 Boulton and Watt) is the "oldest working beam engine in the world still in its original engine house and capable of actually doing the job for which it was installed", that of pumping water to the summit pound of the Kennet and Avon Canal. Two examples also survive at the Cornish Mines and Engines museum on the site of East Pool mine near the town of Pool, Cornwall.
The Cruquius pumping station in the Netherlands contains a Cornish engine with the largest diameter cylinder ever built for a Cornish engine, at 3.5 metre diameter (144 inches). The engine, which was built by Harvey & Co in Hayle, Cornwall, England, has eight beams connected to the one cylinder, each beam driving a single pump. The engine was restored to working order between 1985 and 2000, although it is now operated by an oil-filled hydraulic system, since restoration to steam operation was not viable.
The Trevithick Society, a forerunner of Industrial Archaeology organizations that was initially formed to rescue the Levant winding engine from being scrapped was named for Richard Trevithick. They acquired another winding engine and two pumping engines. They publish a newsletters, a journal and many books on Cornish engines, the mining industry, engineers, and other industrial archaeological topics.
Read more about this topic: Cornish Engine
Famous quotes containing the words preserved and/or engines:
“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)