Last month I mentioned our anvil family. This month it’s the boilers. We have at least 11 members of this family in our collection. All but one are riveted boilers. The newest of our collection is welded. All, I believe, are fire-tube boilers. Fire-tube boilers consist of a large strong walled tank with one or more tubes going through them that carry the heat to the water, producing the steam. Some of our boilers are vertical boilers. These were more common in the timber industry. Vertical boilers take up less space and are more easily moved. Those that were used in the forest had to be moved from, for example, landing to landing where they were used to power winches that pulled logs onto rail trucks. Or there were those powered spot mills, where the mill was taken to the timber rather than the timber to the mill, which were also of this nature.
A number of our boilers came from the West Australian Government Railways (WAGR), particularly the Midland Workshops. Here they were used to power machines like steam hammers or lathes, or just produce heat. Others came from the timber industry and powered the machines that often drove that entire sawmill.
When the landscape architects produced their plan for the site after the Fire they revealed three large steel tubes mostly hidden by bush and outside the parameter fence. On investigation we found that one of these was a very large boiler, larger than the Cornish Boiler that had been exhibited in the original Workshops’ Engine Room. Research identified that it is probably a Lancashire Boiler. It has two fire-tubes that run its full length. The other two steel tubes next to it were its smokestack. On questioning two of our very senior members, they said that these objects had been there when they were boys and they used to play on them. The site is very close to where Millars’ second mill was situated. This could be the boiler from that mill.
Each of our boilers, like our other exhibits, have a story to tell. Our quest is to find their stories.[1]
A vertical boiler
The Cornish Boiler
The Lancashire Boiler
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[1] From ‘The ‘Phoenix Rises Very Slowly’ Part 10, by Allan Ward.