The first ever Golden Mule Award

Well here we are, the last post of 2018, where did the year go? This seems like a good time to look back at the events I visited and choose an exhibit that best represents the spirit of innovation that made the Industrial Revolution possible. With that in mind, I’m pleased to present the winner of the first ever Golden Mule Award for Innovative Excellence.

You can do a lot of things with steam. You can heat your home most effectively with it, you can cross oceans and continents with its power, you can make things in factories with machines that run on steam, you can even press your trousers with it. Of all the things steam can do, perhaps the most useful is generate electricity.

Unless you live in an area with abundant hydro, wind or solar, chances are the electricity powering your home is generated by steam. More electricity is probably generated by steam than by all the other methods combined. Nothing unusual about it. Gregory Deal’s “Portable Historical Display” however, is the first self contained steam powered electric generating plant mounted on a trailer, that I have ever seen.

The two key historical elements are a 1957 vintage Lookout boiler and a Engberg’s vertical steam engine. The boiler is a vertical fire tube type that has a maximum rated working pressure of 100 psi. If you’ve been visiting this site for a while, you might remember seeing the Lookout Boiler in an earlier post. The steam engine was built by Engberg’s Electric and Mechanical Works, located in St. Joseph, Michigan, most likely sometime from the early 1900’s to 1921. The data plate mounted on the mechanical oiler offers that it is machine number 5842, frame: C, with a bore of 5”  and stroke of 5” turning at 500 rpm. No date of manufacture given.

One of the very few tidbits of information I’ve been able to glean about Engberg’s came by way of a small classified ad in a publication called “Power: Devoted to the generation and transmission of power.” Vol. 28 issue 17, April 28, 1908 available courtesy of books.google.com . On page 107 there is an advertisement for an Engberg’s generating set with an illustration of one of their steam engines connected to a dynamo. The ad copy reads, “ Will maintain with perfect steadiness, from 30 to 500 lights, requiring very little steam and less of your attention.”  

Mr. Deal’s generator seems to be having no difficulty maintaining the lights strung around his trailer. Note also the box fan that’s available for use on hot summer days. 

What else he could power up is limited only by your imagination. So there you have it the winner of The Golden Mule Award for 2018. Look for his trailer at the Western North Carolina Fall Harvest Days next year to see what he’s come up with for 2019. 

Resources:

Books.google.com

www.vintagemachinery.org 

Lookout Boiler

Sometimes you just draw a blank. It's amazing how little information you can glean from the web about Lookout Boilers like this one that was displayed at the 2014 WNC Fall Harvest Days Show. It almost seems like the Lookout Boiler Company formerly of Chattanooga, Tenn. was stuffed down the ole memory hole like one of those pesky conspiracy theories. Go ahead, try a search ; you'll find more listings for law firms specializing in mesothelioma cases than the info you're looking for. Maybe that has something to do with it.

The vertical boiler design had it's share of advantages. It was relatively compact and light compared to horizontal boilers. It got up to operating temperature faster and was considered to be safer to operate than the locomotive style due to the design of the water jacket that precludes the crown sheet being exposed to the fire without water covering it, a condition that resulted in many boiler explosions. It was widely used to power small stationary engines and portable applications like fire engine pumpers that used vertical boilers almost exclusively.

On the down side a limited heating surface reduced the amount of steam available to convert to the horsepower needed for traction engine applications. The D. June & company was one of the very few to manufacture a vertical boiler traction engine. It was reputed to be a very effective road locomotive.

Located behind the boiler is a vertical steam engine bearing a reproduction Sears, Roebuck & Company decal that reads: 5 hp. 1904 600rpm B & OB steam engine, Southwest Michigan in the black border at the bottom. A web search result at www.ehive.com yields an ad from a Sears catalog offering Kenwood brand vertical steam engines that look very similar to this one that ship from a factory in Southwest Michigan. The listed horsepower ratings however jump from 4 hp. at 325 rpm to 6 hp at 250 rpm. The catalog says it's a "center crank type with throttling governor. Each engine furnished with governor, governor belt, governor pulley, oil cups, throttling valve, cylinder lubricator, belt pulley and a flywheel. Steam and exhaust pipe not furnished unless a boiler is ordered with the engine." The ad doesn't say what type of boiler. A Lookout maybe? The ad copy concludes by adamantly stating that under no circumstances will mounting bolts be furnished. In that regard you were on your own.

Resources: Encyclopedia of American Steam Traction Engines by Jack Norbeck

Farm Engines and How to Run Them by James H. Stephenson