Steam on the roads and rails

STEAM ON THE ROADS AND RAILS

Through the 1920s there was much street construction and surfacing underway in my hometown. The city owned two steam rollers, an Aveling and a Fowler whose workings greatly affected my journeying to and from school. They broke up old surfaces, rolled new foundation courses and rolled the new tarmac. They replenished their water tanks from street horse drinking troughs.
Two steam lorries were frequent visitors to a nearby timber mill. These had under-mounted engines and vertical boilers up front and rumbled along on solid rubber tires accompanied by a clatter of gears.
The North Island main trunk and East Coast railway lines crossed the end of our street so I was an avid train watcher. Some of the old Wellington Manawatu Railway Company Baldwin locomotives that the government railways had inherited when they bought the private company out were still in use. Among them were the 4-6-0 high-wheeled "Ub" class with their see-through frames and high pitched brass adorned boilers. Other ex WMR engines vaguely remembered included representatives of the 2-8-0 class "O" and 2-6-2 class "N" variants. Some of these that emitted a muffled exhaust noise instead of the more staccato beat of the simples I learned were Vauclain compounds
The widely heralded "Ab" 4-6-2 Pacifics and much admired "A" class 4 cylinder DeGlenn compound Pacifics were widely distributed throughout the government railway network. As well as working the regular goods and mixed trains, the former worked the Wellington-Auckland expresses while the latter worked the provincial expresses. Members of the 2-6-2T "Wa" class shunted the marshalling yards and served one train a day branch lines.
In those times too I enjoyed rides behind the all-over cab steam locomotives that worked on the Takapuna Tramway. I always felt frustrated that so much of their machinery was hidden from view, but had no difficulty associating their high toned whistles with such modest locomotives. Over the years I experienced many trips on the suburban trains that served Auckland and its suburbs and was to note the dignified ease with which the big 4-6-4 "Wab" tank engines handled their loads with subdued blower at each stop. On the other hand the smaller 4-6-4 "Ww" tank locos seemed to use each stop to recover steam pressure with lots of assisted draft from the chimney blower. Later I learned that the larger engines had 33 sq. ft of fire-grate area while the smaller were 16.9 sq ft.
Double ended passenger and vehicular ferries plied the Auckland harbour and their centrally located boiler and engine rooms were closely observed from easy access viewing decks. So at home and on holiday it was a steam world.

INTRODUCTION TO STEAM ENGINES ARE ALIVE BLOG

The steam engine bug had hit me by the age of eight years by which time a number of memorable events had impacted upon me. One was the result of visits to the Palmerston North Summer and Winter Agricultural and Pastoral shows where among the many food and refreshment stalls there was one that prepared and sold popcorn and candy-floss. The popcorn oven and the candy-floss spinner were rotated and spun by a beautiful little chrome plated single cylinder horizontal steam engine served by a gas fired matching horizontal boiler.
In the fair ground were the usual merry-go-rounds powered by their centrally located vertical boilers and open frame steam engines. A little later came a 15 inch gauge circular railway track with its Cagney 4-4-0 coal fired steam locomotive and riding trucks.
The city model engineering club always had an indoor stand with a fascinating array of vertical and horizontal small and large model steam engines ticking over on compressed air.
At this time my father owned a small factory producing fancy cheeses for local markets. Part of the plant was a semi-portable four horse-power horizontal boiler that I was allowed to tend in raising steam and maintaining the water level with the feed-water injector.
On an open day of the Palmerston North Technical College I was taken to visit the engineering workshops. Wonder of wonders! Here was my first revelation of how it was done. There were forges, anvils, drilling machines, lathes and shapers. There was even a model steam engine crankshaft set up in a lathe.
I knew then where I wanted to go, and I went. But there were still five more years of primary school and three years of the above mentioned technical college from which I gained an engineering preliminary qualification. Steam engines of many forms were met with on the way.