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  • The End of a Revolution: The Last Days of Stationary Steam
  • John Bowditch (bio)
The End of a Revolution: The Last Days of Stationary Steam. By Colin Bowden. Ashbourne, Derbyshire: Landmark, 2008. Pp. 207. £27.50.

This book has a misleading title. It gives the impression of being about the end of the era of steam power, and yet the large steam turbines used in coal and nuclear plants are still an essential part of energy production today. The real subject is the disappearance of reciprocating steam engines from commercial use in the United Kingdom in the period between 1960 and 2000.

This is a supplemental volume to earlier works documenting surviving examples of reciprocating steam engines in the United Kingdom—a collection of photographs and short descriptions of 218 different engines in situ. The photos show the engines as best they can (given that they are often very dirty and located in tight and dark spaces) and yet they can yield a wealth of information. The book is organized geographically, with the engines being sorted by counties and then alphabetically by the town or city where they were located, and there is an index that allows the reader to quickly find a particular builder. From the reader's perspective, however, it might have been better to group them by type—having all the beam pumping engines in one section, say—or perhaps by date of manufacture.

While each engine is unique, the comments relative to example No. 39 (p. 48) are typical:

Photo taken/Reference: 5.9.1980/232-5

Type: Horizontal single cylinder

Maker and Date: Vernon & Guest, Smethwick. c. 1880/1900?

Cylinder dimensions: c. 12 ins x 2ft. Slide valve

Flywheel diameter: 7 ft 6 ins

Service: Driving brickworks machinery, making tiles, artistic pottery etc—from four direct-coupled belt pulleys of varying diameters

The works was established in 1894 by Cash, Massey & Co., and only later taken over by Horace and Fred Mansfield. The engine had, it was said, come second-hand from Sustene's flour mill, c. 1920–1921, a year or so after its destruction by fire. (The Sustene Ltd. cattle feed mill, in Castle Gresley, had indeed been destroyed by explosion and fire on 22nd September 1914.) It was a slide valve mill engine of the most basic type, believed to have been built by Vernon & Guest of Smethwick (this was the name said to have appeared on the plate—stolen), and dated from perhaps the final twenty years of the 19th century. The works closed in 1976, but the engine was said to have stopped work c. 1970. Kilns and drying shed were still more or less [End Page 259] intact, but demolition elsewhere had reduced most of the works to ruins. The engine remained, surrounded by much demolished brickwork, and also remaining amid the wreckage was a grinding pan by Whitaker & Co. Ltd., Accrington and a Patent Acme Victor Breaker. The site was expected soon to be cleared.

My main criticism is that The End of a Revolution is supplemental to other previously published works, primarily those written by George Watkins. It can serve as a useful addition, but on its own becomes too eclectic, missing examples one would normally expect. For example, there is no mention of a wonderful pair of mid-nineteenth-century walking-beam engines still driving Young's Brewery in 1971. On the other hand, engines are included that seem to be very minor indeed, such as No. 86 (p. 93), an inverted vertical engine with a slide valve, which simply did not warrant a full-page photo and citation. The book is like reissue albums of popular music artists that include duds as well as hits.

This reviewer anticipated a volume showing how and why commercial use of reciprocating steam engines came to an end as the twentieth century drew to a close, but this is not the case. He also wished for a book covering more than the United Kingdom, inasmuch as there were a substantial number of reciprocating steam engines still in commercial operation in the 1970s throughout the world. Although this work documents many industrial sites in the United Kingdom, it...

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