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The world's largest working steam engine |
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Thanks to volunteers who worked tirelessly to restore it, the world's biggest working steam engine is back in steam after 23 years.
On the morning of Tuesday 12 October 2004, it came into life at an opening ceremony that thrilled enthusiasts and volunteers. Completed in 1928, the steam engine pumped 16m gallons of clean water daily to Cricklewood, London, right up until 1980, when the engines were replaced by electrically driven pumps. Now one of the engines has been restored to its full original glory. Visitors can stand in awe beside the massive beast.
With the engine turning at 15rpm, visitors can experience its giant warmth and power, the smell of hot oil, the polished metal gleaming as it moves, and enjoy that sense of marvel that this was the leading technology of its day. The volunteers who restored the engine over several years posed at the opening ceremony for a spectacular photograph on the engine itself There is a programme of open days, when volunteers are on hand to answer any questions. Under the patient and hard-working attention of members of the Kempton Great Engines Trust, one of these magnificent machines, constructed in 1927 at a cost of £94,000, has been brought back into working operation. At 62ft high and weighing over 800 tons, the No.6 engine produced 1008 horse power using steam at 200psi, superheated to 150'F.
It was the destination of a remarkable narrow gauge railway that ran from the wharf opposite Platt's Eyot on the Lower Sunbury Road in Hampton, where it loaded coal from river barges, through the Hampton Water Works and up to Kempton. The track bed remains almost entirely intact and its route has now been recognised by the planning inspector and given protection under Richmond's Unitary Development Plan. Open
weekends when the engine is in steam and working are: The museum, which also contains many other artefacts, is also open for viewing every Tuesday and Thursday from 11am to 4pm. See
the Kempton
Steam Museum website Photography
John Inglis
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The
Sir William Prescott Engine No.6 fills the Kempton Steam Museum in
the great engine house, now a national monument containing two triple
expansion steam engines and two steam turbines. 
The
monumental engine house itself, in all its ornate and classic municipal
magnificence, is now registered as a National Monument - the highest
listing for a building and the same status as Hampton Court Palace.
