The power of Steam

On youtube as usual watching steam engines tonight. Saw this one of a tractor pulling 35 tons up a hill. Amazing power.

Steve.

Hillclimbing a tractor

It's certainly a good advert for torque multiplication through gear reduction!

awesome

The railways used steam cranes a lot even in the 1970s because of their power, you would see them on the news after an incident

Anybody else notice that on the tractors being towed, the flywheels were revolving but the cranks were stationery?

He mentioned in his commentary of the clutches being engaged or something like that. Not sure what he meant.

Would it be so they could stop on the hill if the line broke. ??

Steve.

On many US made traction engines there is a clutch to decouple the rear wheel drive gearing from the crankshaft. This is used when the engine is "in the belt" driving a threshing machine or sawmill, etc. What you see spinning in the video is the clutch spider, a two or three legged affair that expand wooden shoes inside the flywheel for road drive, or retracts the shoes for work in the belt. When in tow, and when the engine crankshaft / flywheel is not spinning, the spider spins inside the stationary flywheel, driven by the road wheel gearing.

This how olduns do it kiddies.

Note the sled is on max weight + extra junk as well.

Proper job!

So this is what is meant by, take a hot shower.

Steve.

Have just spotted that Fred Dibnah's "Industrial Age" series is being repeated on Channel Four in UK, as first transmission of the day. Am using On Demand to catch up the preceding episodes of the six.

Howard

And only 110hp!

This one is a bit smaller 650bhp at the crank and a tiny 3400ft/lbs

Modern verses old guess who gets the red face (it's not the Burrell)