spitfire
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15 years ago


🔗Personal-Album-1228-Image-48130[linkphoto]Personal-Album-1228-Image-48130[/linkphoto][/link]
Steam driven Californian stamps ( three heads )
Let's face it such a plant would be useful today in an area remote from fuel oil and where wood may be plentiful
spitfire
Morlock
15 years ago
Nice bit of kit. 🙂
ICLOK
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15 years ago
That is well clever... back when they thought of everything! 😉
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
Graigfawr
15 years ago
Looks like it also broke down into one-mule or one-horse loads too!
spitfire
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15 years ago
"Graigfawr" wrote:

Looks like it also broke down into one-mule or one-horse loads too!



That would be some mule! ::)
spitfire
Graigfawr
15 years ago
Animal welfare was still in the future when that photograph was taken I suspect!

I'll try and dig out information I have somewhere in a colonial mining book on just how enormous horse and mule loads were considered to be in the late C19 and early C20.

The plant in the photo unbolts into relatively small sub-assemblies and parts - it may well have been intended to break down into horse/mule loads. Quote from Williams' Perran Foundry Co catalogue (undated but prob 1870s; republished by Trevithick Society 1974) when describing stamps "The whole is cast in small pieces for facility of transport over mountain roads" and quote from Harvey's Hayle Foundry catalogue 1884 when describing kibbles " for convenience of transport over mountain roads, and in new mi ning districts, we send the plates and gear, &c., bent, punched and fitted, ready for rivetting together at the mines" and describing stamps "the working parts are sufficiently light to be taken on the back of a mule" (the accompanying engraving shows substantial timbers and castings).

Mules were much abused - who would grudge them their well-known stubborness?
spitfire
  • spitfire
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15 years ago
Graigfawr wrote:- Animal welfare was still in the future when that photo' was taken I suspect.

I have no doubt that it was, but without quoting from books, I can remember sets such as these in scrap yards during the fifties.
The boiler alone would be about 5' tall and that does not include the height of the chimney, also it would be about 2' dia', just imagine strapping that to the side of a mule with another load of corresponding weight the other side to balance it!
I would also be very wary of quoting the outrageous claims of manufacturers that existed right up to the introduction of the Trades descriptions act, e.g Craven A cigarettes will not harm your throat

spitfire
Vanoord
15 years ago
Is it related this this?

🔗Furnace-Creek-User-Album-Image-45181[linkphoto]Furnace-Creek-User-Album-Image-45181[/linkphoto][/link]
Hello again darkness, my old friend...
spitfire
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15 years ago
"Vanoord" wrote:

Is it related this this?

🔗Furnace-Creek-User-Album-Image-45181[linkphoto]Furnace-Creek-User-Album-Image-45181[/linkphoto][/link]



It is indeed but that set is far smaller than the one depicted in the original photo'
spitfire
Graigfawr
15 years ago
Found the book I was looking for: R.Peele (ed) 'Mining Engineers' Handbook', New York, 1927. Unfortunately it did not give loads for mules and horses. Instead it limited itself to comparing their relative advantages for underground rail haulage.

Going off-topic, its comparison (p.1024) stated:

'Horses vs mules. Mules avearge smaller, require less headroom, endure heat and neglect better, and are less liable to foot lameness than horses. They will eat roughages which horses refuse, but are less apt to overeat, and hence less subject to colic or founder. Horses are heavier, better built draft animals than mules, average more reliable, haul larger loads, and require little or no more fooed per 100lb live wt than mules on similar work. They are more spirited than mules, and a nervous horse is apt to rear and injure his head against roof. Mules are more generally used underground than horses but, where haulage ways are large enough and the duty sufficient for heavy horses, the advantages of mules are debatable, and where there is headroom many coal operators now use large horses in preference to mules.'

An unromantic view of horses and mules!

Looking afresh at the image that started this thread, Spitfire is perfectly correct in stating that there are some major components that were certainly not mule-packable - e.g. the solid cast flywheel which looks to be about 5 foot diam.

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