Built, in 1884, by Thornewill & Wareham, Burton-onTrent, for Greenall Whitley & Co. Ltd, Wilderspool, Warrington for use at their brewery.
The engines were last used to drive the brewery machinery in 1962. They were maintained in good working order until the brewery closed in 1990.
Each engine can be run independently.
The driving line shaft was situated above the cylinders and had a 12 ins wide flat belt. The drive to the brewery line shafting was controlled by moving the belt sideways, from a fixed pulley to a free pulley and vice versa.
Hence the 25 ins wide flywheel!
The owners donated the engines to the museum in 1997.
Single cylinder, horizontal. The engine is really two single cylinder engines, Nos 524 and 525, which were built side by side with the flywheels in the middle ie. one engine the mirror image of the other.
The flywheels are 8 ft. - 6 ins. diameter, 25 ins. wide and are bolted and keyed, in two halves, to the crankshafts
A Porter governor controls the maximum speed of the engine through linkage to a steam throttle valve
The slide and expansion valves are driven by two eccentrics, mounted on a small separate shaft.This shaft is driven by drag links from a 46 ins diameter x 6 ins wide disc crank. The amount of cut off is adjusted by turning a wheel manually. This alters the position of the eccentric rod in a slotted link and has the effect of increasing or decreasing the length of the stroke of the expansion valve.
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