Goulburn Pumping Station, Marsden Weir & Appleby Steam Engine; Goulburn Steam Museum Pump House
Type
state heritage (complex / group)
Designated
2 April 1999
Referenceno.
356
Type
Water Pump House/Pumping Station
Category
Utilities – Water
Location of Goulburn Pumping Station in New South Wales
Goulburn Pumping Station is a heritage-listed former municipal water supply system and now museum at Wollondilly River, Goulburn, Goulburn Mulwaree Council, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1885 to 1886. It includes the historic Appleby Steam Engine, which is contained in the pumping station.[1]
The facility is the only complete, workable beam engine powered municipal water supply left in its original location in the Southern Hemisphere. It now operates as the Goulburn Historic Waterworks Museum. The property is owned by Goulburn Mulwaree Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.[2][1]
History
Marsden Weir, 2012
The steam-operated pumping station was built in 1885 on the banks of the Wollondilly River at Marsden Weir, providing Goulburn's first reticulated water supply. It became operational in January 1886. The pumphouse still contains the original Appleby Bros. Beam Engine pump and Lancashire Boilers. The pumphouse was powered by timber – wood piles fired the boilers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.[1]
Before 1886 the residents of Goulburn would have collected water in tanks or wells, or purchased supplies from a carter. The demand of the growing city resulted in the Rivers and Harbours Board installing a waterworks on the Wollondilly River at Rocky Point powered by a steam operated beam engine. Water was pumped from the river to a filtration plant and reservoir, then gravity fed to residents of the city.[1]
Appleby Beam Engine
The original 1883 Appleby Bros. steam engine situated inside the pumphouse was one of four installed in Pumphouses around NSW. The others were at Wagga Wagga, Albury (both scrapped in 1936) and Bathurst. The steam engine is known as a beam engine because of the large overhead rocking beam that transmits motion from the pistons to the cranks.[1]
This great beam engine, of the type first invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, is an example of the powerhouse that drove the Industrial Revolution. Originally designed for pumping water out of mines in the UK it was improved by Watt, Smeaton, Maudsley and other engineers of the steam age until it became a very efficient and reliable engine.[1]
Apart from mines and water supplies, many thousands were used to drive factory machinery in the 18th and 19th centuries – some four operated in factories in Goulburn – until they were superseded by electric motors in the early 20th century.[1]
Goulburn's Beam Engine 1883
The Goulburn Waterworks engine is of medium size and produces 120 horse power. It has compound cylinders and a jet condenser. The fly wheel is 5 metres in diameter and at 18 r.p.m. the pumps delivered 660,000 litres of water per hour.[1]
The two boilers that produce the steam that powers the engine, are located in the western wing of the building.[1]
Fired by wood or coal, they produce high temperature steam that is piped through to the beam engine in the central part of the building. Only one boiler would have been operational at any one time. The other being shut down for regular cleaning and maintenance.[1]
Steam from the boilers enters the valve chest on the cylinders from where it is transmitted to the cylinders by means of a valve mechanism. The action of the steam on the pistons causes them to reciprocate. Rods connect the pistons to the beam at one end, and to the crank at the other. This converts the "rocking" motion to rotary motion which makes the flywheel turn, giving a smooth and continuous action[1]
By 1918 the beam engine had become obsolete when electric motors were installed.[1]
Idle for many years, Goulburn's Beam Engine was restored in 1958.[1]
The Pumphouse
The east wing of the building houses a horizontal steam engine, the Hick Hargreave and the early dynamo room with its electric pump.[1]
The Waterworks is notable not just for its historic steam engine, but for the elegant Victorian building that houses the beam engine and boilers. Only metres away further up the hill stands the original fireman's cottage, also of Victorian design.[1]
Horizontal Engine by Hick, Hargreaves & Co., England, c 1860.
From 1968 the Goulburn Waterworks operated as a museum of engines. It was during this period that a grant was made available under the Regional Employment Development Scheme (1975) which saw some of this funding used for the installation of the Hick Hargreaves engine now on display and operational on steaming days, in the annexe of the pumphouse.[1]
The single cylinder horizontal engine measures 9 metres in length, weighs 17 tons with the flywheel being 4 metres in diameter. It was originally used to power equipment in a Sydney tannery, becoming discarded in 1961. It was reported that it had been acquired to represent the nest stage of steam engine development after the beam type engine.[3][1]
The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is often referred to as the Newcomen fire engine or simply as a Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating a partial vacuum which allowed the atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder. It was historically significant as the first practical device to harness steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines. Hundreds were constructed throughout the 18th century.
The Watt steam engine design became synonymous with steam engines, and it was many years before significantly new designs began to replace the basic Watt design.
Goulburn is a regional city in the Southern Tablelands of the Australian state of New South Wales, approximately 195 kilometres (121 mi) south-west of Sydney, and 90 kilometres (56 mi) north-east of Canberra. It was proclaimed as Australia's first inland city through letters patent by Queen Victoria in 1863. Goulburn had a population of 23,835 at June 2018. Goulburn is the seat of Goulburn Mulwaree Council.
A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall. The efficiency of the engines was improved by engineers including James Watt, who added a separate condenser; Jonathan Hornblower and Arthur Woolf, who compounded the cylinders; and William McNaught, who devised a method of compounding an existing engine. Beam engines were first used to pump water out of mines or into canals but could be used to pump water to supplement the flow for a waterwheel powering a mill.
The Crossness Pumping Station is a former sewage pumping station designed by the Metropolitan Board of Works's chief engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and architect Charles Henry Driver. It is located at Crossness Sewage Treatment Works, at the eastern end of the Southern Outfall Sewer and the Ridgeway path in the London Borough of Bexley. Constructed between 1859 and 1865 by William Webster, as part of Bazalgette's redevelopment of the London sewerage system, it features spectacular ornamental cast ironwork, that Nikolaus Pevsner described as "a masterpiece of engineering – a Victorian cathedral of ironwork".
The Pejar Dam is an earth and rock-filled embankment dam with an uncontrolled spillway across the Wollondilly River, located in the Southern Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. The principal purpose of the dam is to supply potable water for the city of Goulburn. The impounded 9,000-megalitre reservoir is also called Pejar Dam.
Blagdon Lake lies in a valley at the northern edge of the Mendip Hills, close to the village of Blagdon and approximately 10 miles (16 km) south of Bristol, England. The lake was created by Bristol Water, when it dammed the River Yeo, starting construction in 1898, to designs by Charles Hawksley, and completing this in 1905. The Wrington Vale Light Railway was constructed primarily to bring building materials for the lake.
B. Hick and Sons, subsequently Hick, Hargreaves & Co, was a British engineering company based at the Soho Ironworks in Bolton, England. Benjamin Hick, a partner in Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell, later Rothwell, Hick & Co., set up the company in partnership with two of his sons, John (1815–1894) and Benjamin Jr (1818–1845) in 1833.
London Museum of Water & Steam is an independent museum founded in 1975 as the Kew Bridge Steam Museum. It was rebranded in early 2014 following a major investment project.
A Cornish engine is a type of steam engine developed in Cornwall, England, mainly for pumping water from a mine. It is a form of beam engine that uses steam at a higher pressure than the earlier engines designed by James Watt. The engines were also used for powering man engines to assist the underground miners' journeys to and from their working levels, for winching materials into and out of the mine, and for powering on-site ore stamping machinery.
Arthur Woolf was a Cornish engineer, most famous for inventing a high-pressure compound steam engine. In this way he made an outstanding contribution to the development and perfection of the Cornish engine.
Mount Crosby pumping station is a heritage-listed pumping station and weir at Stumers Road, Mount Crosby, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is located on the Brisbane River and extends into Chuwar on the other side of the river. The facility supplies water to Brisbane and nearby cities and towns within the SEQ Water Grid. It was originally designed by Charles H McLay and built from 1891 to 1892. The historic parts of the facility were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 25 October 2019. It is also listed on the Brisbane Heritage Register, together with numerous associated facilities which were not included in the state heritage listing.
Walka Water Works is a heritage-listed 19th-century pumping station at 55 Scobies Lane, Oakhampton Heights, City of Maitland, New South Wales, Australia. Originally built in 1887 to supply water to Newcastle and the lower Hunter Valley, it has since been restored and preserved and is part of Maitland City Council's Walka Recreation and Wildlife Reserve. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
The British Engineerium is an engineering and steam power museum in Hove, East Sussex. It is housed in the Goldstone Pumping Station, a set of High Victorian Gothic buildings started in 1866. The Goldstone Pumping Station supplied water to the local area for more than a century before it was converted to its present use. The site has been closed to the public since 2006, and in March 2018 the entire complex was put up for sale.
Tees Cottage Pumping Station is a Victorian pumping station complex at Broken Scar on the A67 near Low Coniscliffe just west of Darlington. The site dates from 1849, and was built to provide drinking water for Darlington and the surrounding area. It is a scheduled monument housing two completely original pumping engines in fully working order: a 1904 beam engine, built by Teasdale Brothers of Darlington, which is still steamed using its original 1902 Lancashire boilers; and a rare 1914 two-cylinder gas internal-combustion engine, the largest such engine surviving in Europe. Both engines can be seen in operation on certain weekends through the year, using their original pumps to pump water from the River Tees.
A return connecting rod, return piston rod or double piston rod engine or back-acting engine is a particular layout for a steam engine.
A cataract was a speed governing device used for early single-acting beam engines, particularly atmospheric engines and Cornish engines. It was a kind of water clock.
Worthington-Simpson was a British pump manufacturer. Many of their pumps were used in municipal waterworks in Great Britain.
The Hamilton Waterworks, also known as the Hamilton Waterworks Pumping Station, is a National Historic Site of Canada located in Hamilton, Ontario. It is an industrial water works structure built in the Victorian style, and a rare example of such a structure in Canada to be "architecturally and functionally largely intact". It is currently used to house the Museum of Steam and Technology.
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