The Portable Steam Engine

The portable steam engine is closely related to the traction engine but is not self-moving, requiring to be towed. It was designed to drive machinery such as threshing machines, saws and pumps. Less attention has been paid to portables than their industrial significance warrants and this book gives an overall picture of their history and development, dealing with portables at work and in preservation. Technical features are examined in some detail, especially where portable engine practice differed from that of tractions. The introduction of portable engines into agriculture was a major advance not readily appreciated in these days of diesel and electric power. Their use spread into the forestry, construction and manufacturing industries. Portables were still being made after traction engine building had ceased and the author describes some old working machines.

This practical, instructional book describes the construction of a model of the Lampitt portable steam engine, which dates back to 1862, and which provided rotative power to drive threshing machines, circular saws, feed mills and other farm machinery. The construction of every component is described in precise detail and the text is supported by many helpful step-by-step photographs. In addition, useful advice is provided about obtaining materials and about the tools that are required to equip a model-engineering workshop. Accordingly, the information provided in this fascinating book will enable the reader to construct not only the Lampitt engine but also many other engineering models in the future. When the reader has finished building 'the Lampitt' he will, in effect, have completed an engineering apprenticeship, and will have a model engine of which he can be proud and which fully reveals the skills that he has learned. Fully illustrated with 142 step-by-step colour photographs.

Excerpt from The Portable Engine, Its Construction and Management: A Practical Manual for Owners and Uses of Steam Engines Generally This engine, it seems, was furnished with a blast pipe, but whether or not this was made use of to cause an artificial draught does not appear. At any rate it is described as puffing so loudly that it could be heard for miles. In the account of another of Trevithick's engines about the same period, however, it is explicitly stated that the steam puffed up the chimney. These were not, it will be understood, actually movable engines upon wheels, but they were un doubtedly a considerable advance in the direction of portability upon the engines of Watt, Hornblower, and others, which were in most cases dependent upon the masonry and walls of the engine-house for the connection between the beam and the cylinder. Trevithick's engines above referred to were, more over, direct-acting so that we have at this early date (about 1803) the essentials of a portable engine - high pressure, direct action, and forced draught. The boiler appears to have been of cast iron, cylindrical, with a single wrought-iron tube passing through it, and to have been quite independent of brickwork foundations and setting, and the engine was attached to the boiler. The pressure would seem to have been about 30 lbs. Above the atmosphere. The next step in the history of the portable engine is represented by a machine designed by Messrs. Tux ford of Boston in 1839, the year of the establishment of the Royal Agricultural Society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.