Vintage work crew photos

[12bolts]

Work crew with a horizontal single tandem gas blowing engine. Mesta Machine Company.

Single Tandem? Bit of a confusing misnomer there?

[hemmjo]

Single Tandem? Bit of a confusing misnomer there?

I was thinking the same thing, but then I remembers you can have a trailer with single axle , double axle, triple axle, etc, each with a single tire or dual tires. So that would be single single, single tandem, single triple, dual single, dual tandem, or dual triple.

That thinking led me to investigate axle configurations, that exposed this study which I found interesting;

Effect of Heavy Multiple Axle Trucks on Flexible Pavement Damage Using In-Service Pavement Performance Data
Hassan K. Salama1; Karim Chatti2; and Richard W. Lyles, P.E.3
Abstract: Truck axle configurations and weights have changed significantly since the AASHO road study was conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Emerging concerns about the effects of new axle configurations on pavement damage, which is unaccounted for in the AASHTO procedure, have prompted several researchers to investigate the impacts of different axle and truck configurations on pavement performance. However, there is still a need to strengthen the mechanistic findings using field data. In this paper, actual in-service traffic and pavement performance data for flexible pavements in the state of Michigan are considered. Monitored truck traffic data for different truck configurations are used to identify their relative damaging effects on flexible pavements in terms of cracking, rutting, and roughness. The analysis included simple, multiple, and stepwise regression. The results indicated that trucks with multiple axles tridem or more appear to produce more rutting damage than those with only single and tandem axles. On the other hand, trucks with single and tandem axles tend to cause more cracking. Pavement roughness results did not show enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion.

http://www.nlcpr.com/DamageMultipleAxle.pdf

[hemmjo]

I was wondering what a blowing engine is... found this;

National Museum of Industrial History

Where does the blast for blast furnaces come from? For many furnaces, the blast of air was supplied by “blowing engines.” This presentation will describe how massive engines once ran around the clock to pump the requisite two tons of air required for every ton of iron produced. We will trace the evolution of air pumping devices associated with blast furnaces and do a deep dive into the “Gas Blowing Engine House” in Bethlehem, Pa, which is the largest surviving facility of its type in the world.

Found this video. Pretty long to watch but you can fast forward to get an good idea.

[the harmonious blacksmith]

Not really, if you understood older large engines. It was a single rod on one side of crank with inline double acting cylinders (inline - tandem) . Some tandem steam engines were compound, meaning a smaller primary high pressure cylinder and secondary larger diameter cylinder in line which used the lower pressure exhaust steam from the primary cylinder.

At the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, MI, they have one of Ford's 9 "gasteam" engines which he had built to power all the machinery on 250 volts DC at the Highland Park Model T factory. Ford moved it there and more or less built the museum around it. I'd love to have seen the boiler room that fed those engines.

Ford and Thomas Edison were both big promoter of DC in the early years, but fortunately George Armstrong and Nicola Tesla's alternating current won out.

Those huge engines had steam cylinders on one side of the flywheel (which was a huge generator) one 36 inch diameter (primary high pressure) cylinder then, tandem on the same rod a secondary low pressure cylinder of 72 inches diameter both, of course the same stroke of 72 inches. On the other side they had two double acting 42 inch cylinders in tandem running on coal gas. Once again, 72 inch stroke. The main inline rods were about a foot in diameter past the cross head. They ran on huge sliding shoes between cylinders and at the far end of the cylinders to support the huge weight of the pistons.
Good videos of it are at:

.

They claimed the coal gas cylinders were harder to govern so they used the steam side for control. Each engine/generator station was rated 250 volts at, if I remember correctly, 4 megawatts a total power rating of about 6000 horsepower each. My mind might be incorrect on some of the numbers. The Henry Ford is worth a visit just for the steam engines on display. Plan on spending a week there if you're interested in machinery, etc.

I don't understand everything I know about things, grin.