Steam Gauge
Steam Gauges vs. Glass Cockpit: 7 Factors Compared. I have trained in and owned several different airplanes over the years with both types of avionics and each of them come with pros and cons. About a third of my time is on glass panels and the rest either on steam gauge or partial glass panels. Shop pressure gauge siphons to use with your pressure gauges. Work with hot pressure media; our siphons allow you to rest assured knowing that your pressure gauges are protected. Choose from steel, carbon steel, stainless steel, brass and iron siphons. Use them with steam service gauges and reduce rapid pressure surges and withstand hot pressure.
Around 1900 the Netherlands had an intricate network of regional steam tramways. The North-Holland Tramway above Amsterdam was one of the first tram companies to actively advertise at the end of the 19th century. Domestic and foreign tourists were made aware of round trips to Marken and Volendam.
The early posters and the first wooden tram stations were designed by H.P. Berlage, who would become one of the most famous Dutch architects. He was the associate of the tramway's founder. Later posters were created by other designers, as was the tram boat station in front of Amsterdam Central Station, which became known as the North-South Holland Coffee House.
First stations
Since December 1888 the North-Holland Tramway (NHT) connected the northern part of Amsterdam by narrow gauge with the villages Broek in Waterland, Monnickendam and Edam. The 21-kilometer route was covered in 70 minutes. In addition to passengers, the tram also transported dairy, fish and mail. The five small, closed steam locomotives were supplied by Machinefabriek Breda.
Supported by the mayor of Edam, the NHT was founded by Theodoor Sanders (1847-1927), a civil engineer as well as an architect. Since 1883 the young H.P. Berlage was the associate of Sanders' architectural office in Amsterdam. In 1885, for example, they designed the sanatorium hotel at Baarn. Over the years Sanders increasingly focused on tramways, while Berlage became responsible for most of the architecture.
The architectural weekly of last Saturday provides in picture the neat waiting house, designed by Messrs. Sanders and Berlage for the terminus of this company in Amsterdam, in other words: the departure station of its steamboat there, located on a jetty at the corner of the Damrak and the extension of the old bridge alley on the south side of the remaining water surface.
The small building is divided into a waiting room for the public measuring 6 by 4.5 m, and an office large 2 by 3 m. It is built entirely of white American pine wood, while the base is filled with colored and glazed bricks and there is also extensive use of colored glass and decoration with faience tiles.
The starting station of the North-Holland Tramway was on the north side of the IJ waterfront, not far from the Tolhuis and near the current IJplein square. Private ferries picked up passengers in the city, initially at a waiting house on the Damrak, which was soon moved to the water directly in front of the new Amsterdam Central Station. The wooden waiting house in the then-popular chalet style was a design by Sanders and Berlage, as to be expected. They also designed the first Tolhuis tramway station along the IJ, which burned down after a few years. It was a wooden canopy with a strikingly elegant shape. Berlage's archive also contains a drawing for a simple wooden tram stop, which may have been used at the stopping places outside the city for the first few years.
The final Tolhuis station and the later stations of Edam and Alkmaar, as well as the stops in between, were probably designed by Sanders around 1895; by then Berlage was no longer involved. Tolhuis station — not fully completed until around 1900 — had a cast-iron roof and a rectangular brick extension, decorated with pinnacles, on the waterside. Large letters with the name of the tram company were readable from the water. Alongside was a dock for the ferries. The stations and stops outside the capital were in chalet style with a lot of wood and bricks in timber frames. A striking feature of the Edam and De Rijp stations was their location in a rail curve with a partly rounded canopy.
First posters
The North-Holland Tramway Company has released a timetable, which in appearance differs significantly from the timetables of other trams and railways. The departure times of the trains from Amsterdam to Edam and vice versa are surrounded by views of Edam, Monnickendam, Marken and Broek in Waterland, while a man from Volendam and a woman from Marken are each posted on one side of the timetable. Mr. H.P. Berlage earns all the credit for these drawings, while Mr. Roeloffzen & Hübner deserve a word of praise for their piece of printing art.
As Berlage had the most artistic talent, Sanders asked him to make not only presentation drawings of buildings, but also promotional posters for the tramway. As early as 1889 Berlage illustrated a poster with timetable. As far as known, no printed copy has survived, only the design drawing with an empty white box for the fine print of the timetable. The illustrations of places along the line are very detailed, surrounded by decorations including fish and dairy products, as these were delivered by tramway from the Zuiderzee fishing villages and the Waterland farms.
In addition to the line to Edam, the tramway opened a side branch to Purmerend in 1894, extended to Alkmaar the next year. The line branched off at the hamlet of Het Schouw and ran through the Beemster and Schermer polders. This brought the total length of the North-Holland Tramway's lines to 55 kilometers. Incidentally, a new company had to be set up for the expansion, the Second North-Holland Tramway Company, because the regulations of the first one did not provide for new routes. In practice the designation 'Second' was mostly omitted.
The opening of the link with Alkmaar was celebrated on July 15, 1895. For this occasion Berlage designed a striking poster, looking much more modern than his design from 1889. He probably did this as a favor to his friend Sanders, as their architectural association had ended in 1890. In addition to a winged wheel — a traditional railway symbol — the poster shows a schematic route map and the municipal arms of Purmerend and Alkmaar. The Accijnstoren in Alkmaar is recognizable in the tower at the top. The printed timetable shows that the trip to Alkmaar took almost 2.5 hours, while Edam was reached in just over an hour.
Hendrik Petrus Berlage
(1856-1934)
Berlage is considered the godfather of modern Dutch architecture. His most famous buildings include the Koopmansbeurs (commodity exchange) in Amsterdam, Jachthuis Sint-Hubertus lodge in Otterlo and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. As an urban planner he created the Amsterdam South expansion plan, amongst others. At the start of his career, when he was working with Sanders, Berlage also designed book covers for Louis Couperus as well as several posters for railway companies. In addition to the ones for the North-Holland Tramway, he made a poster for the (colonial) Sumatra State Railway in 1891, traditionally illustrated with local scenes, bamboo, flowers and a tiger. Berlage produced his next poster in 1893 for the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij (HSM) about the Harwich-Hoek van Holland boat train. This design was much more stylized, but still very crowded.
Tourism
At the end of 1903, the tramway's founder Sanders stepped down as director and was succeeded by W.A.E. Geuns. The shares partly came in the hands of the large Dutch railway company HSM. Geuns wanted to develop the touristic branch of the tramway further, mainly aimed at British tourists heading for the picturesque fishing villages of Marken and Volendam. Already before the turn of the century, a special boat tram ran on Sundays, connecting in Monnickendam to a sailboat for the isle of Marken.
In 1904 the North-Holland Tramway induced a round trip by tram and boat from Amsterdam via Monnickendam, Marken, Volendam and Edam. A special express service with an English-speaking guide was available at additional charge. Tickets were available at HSM stations, hotels and travel agencies such as Thomas Cook & Son. Cook organized a 'lunch à prix fixe' for tourists at the Hotel Spaander in Volendam.
We cannot imagine the Second North-Holland Tramway Company without its systematic and well-organized advertising, for which it spares neither effort nor costs. Its neat plates with the perfectly suited images, showing the direct connection from London via Amsterdam to the five well-known places: Broek in Waterland, Monnikendam, Marken, Volendam and Edam, are known far beyond our borders. And let's not forget the guides, in four languages, in a handy format, with superb photographs and printed on beautiful vellum paper. It is all up to date!
The NHT tramway company issued richly illustrated posters, brochures and postcards for promotion. With the departure of Sanders, Berlage's lateral involvement with the tramway was over, but a friend of him took over as a designer: Willem Wenckebach. In 1905 Wenckebach created a poster with stylized pictures of the Zuiderzee villages, laced with oranges. A few years later a version appeared with a highly abstracted route map, as well as an English version in which the IJ river had become the North Sea! in 1907 rail and tramway magazine De Locomotief wrote about the successful advertising campaigns of the North-Holland Tramway: 'Well-kept illustrated guides were made available free of charge in four languages, the annual expenditure on advertising ranged from ± 500 to ± 2000 guilders'.
Willem Wenckebach
(1860-1937)
Ludwig Willem Reymert Wenckebach attended the Linnaeus horticultural school in Amsterdam to become a garden designer, but ended up as an apprentice to the Utrecht painter Dirk van Lokhorst. He turned out to be talented and a royal grant enabled him to work in Paris for some time. In addition to being a painter, Wenckebach was a prolific graphic artist. His series of drawings of the old city of Amsterdam became popular. He designed book covers and posters in Art Nouveau style. In addition to the North-Holland Tramway advertising, Wenckebach produced a French-language poster with decorative plant motifs for the HSM railway company. He specialized in flora and also made watercolors for Jac. P. Thijsse's well-known picture albums.
The slogan 'The most varied trip in Holland' became a household phrase. Around 1910 an anonymous English-language poster — more traditional in style than Wenckebach's design — promoted the roundtrip with five means of transport: 'Steamer - Tramway - Motorboat - Botter - Houseboat'. The latter was a trekschuit (horse-drawn boat) from Volendam to Edam. Since 1906, however, another option was the (separate) Volendam-Edam steam tramway, also operated by the North-Holland Tramway. In 1912 a following poster featured a detailed bird's-eye map by Leendert Grondijs, again with English promotional text. Unlike Wenckebach, Grondijs did include the branch to Purmerend and Alkmaar. Meanwhile the tramway was also offering a touristic roundtrip on that route through 'the N. Holland-polders' in collaboration with shipping company Alkmaar Packet.
Leendert Grondijs
(1857-1944)
Leendert Izaak Frederikus Grondijs was born in Utrecht as the son of a saddler (upholsterer). His education is unknown. From about 1890 he worked as a lithographer at the Roeloffzen, Hübner & van Santen printing workshop in Amsterdam. In 1907 Grondijs cerated a poster for the Java-China-Japan Line at his employer, followed in 1912 by the bird's-eye map of the North-Holland Tramway. That he also used this tram himself becomes evident from an entry in the guestbook of Hotel Spaander in Volendam. A year later Grondijs made a similar bird's-eye view for the Gooi Tramway. That poster was not signed, but is very similar and was also printed by Roeloffzen, Hübner & van Santen. Moreover, Grondijs was living in the Gooi region at the time, where he created watercolor landscapes.
Tram boat station and coffee house
The station will be built entirely in timber and will contain a small administration building that is connected to the waiting room and buffet by a closed colonnade. The appearance is inspired by the former Paalhuis, which once stood on the corner of the Nieuwesluis, as depicted in the painting by Van Beerstraeten in the Rijksmuseum. The colonade resembles the well-known colonades that give so many old Dutch fish markets their nice appearance.
The whole building with its composite roof, its nice alternating façades and its stained-glass windows, promises to become something very typical, that will be enjoyed by the many foreigners, who visit Broek in Waterland, Volendam and Marken, and constitute a large part of the passengers of this tramway company. Last but not least, the gloom of the large canopy of the Central Station, which is so prominent on this side, will be somewhat broken by this airy little station.
In 1908 the North-Holland Tramway decided to replace the waiting house in front of the Central Station by a new tram boat station with waiting rooms, offices and a coffee house. The first plans had to be adjusted because the municipality was afraid the view of the Central Station would be blocked. The wooden structure was completed in 1912. The architect was Willem Leliman from Baarn. He was inspired by the (disappeared) 17th-century Paalhuis in Dutch Renaissance style. And the colonnade on the waterfront referred to fish markets as they existed in old Dutch cities.
The use of timber was a continuation of the first station designs by Sanders and Berlage, although their chalet style was not very old-Dutch. Leliman's design did match the traditional architectural styles of the Waterland and the Zaanstreek regions, especially the wooden boards that were painted green originally. In this way, the building doubled as a kind of advertising column for the tramway's touristic tours, right in front of Amsterdam Central Station. In decorative carvings the letters NHTM (Noord-Hollandsche Tramweg-Maatschappij, North-Holland Tramway Company) were applied, while the stained-glass windows were ornated with the arms of the places along the line, including Edam and Alkmaar.
An important part of the building was Smits' Coffee House, which remained there for almost a century. The tram boat station was expanded in style in 1931 by the architects Kleinhout and Van der Steur. The lading stage partly became a terrace. When the NHT was taken over by the Noord-Zuid-Hollandsche Tramweg-Maatschappij (NZH) in 1932, the coffee house became known as Noord-Zuid Hollandsch Koffiehuis. After the Second World War the building was painted in light colors instead of green. Due to the construction of the Amsterdam metro it had to be demolished in 1972. The building was dismantled and then rebuilt a few meters eastward in 1980. In addition, an extension was added for tourist and ticket offices.
NZH and electrification
The flood of 1916 caused great damage to the Waterland and rails and bridges, but the tramway eventually overcame this. The rise of lorries and passenger cars, and especially buses, was of a more lasting influence. Tourist tours continued to be successful, but regular services were hardly profitable anymore. The Purmerend-Alkmaar line was discontinued in 1931 and replaced by a bus service. The tram connections to Purmerend and Edam remained, but were taken over by the larger NZH. This transport company had the lines fitted with overhead wires and introduced electric trams from the former Amsterdam-Zandvoort tramway. The three types of motor trams, dating from around 1900, were nicknamed the Métallurgiques, Purmerenders and Buiksloters.
'By electric to Waterland', was the slogan on a 1932 poster. It provided nice views of the route through the green Waterland, the destinations, the trams and the Noord-Zuid Hollandsch Koffiehuis with a departing tram boat. The electric trams to Purmerend continued to run until 1949 and the branch to Edam existed until 1956. In that year the station in Amsterdam-Noord had to make way for the construction of the IJ tunnel. Today, only the Noord-Zuid Hollandsch Koffiehuis and the old tram stations in Purmerend and Broek in Waterland still remind of the North-Holland Tramway.
Live steam is steam under pressure, obtained by heating water in a boiler. The steam is used to operate stationary or moving equipment.
A live steam machine or device is one powered by steam, but the term is usually reserved for those that are replicas, scale models, toys, or otherwise used for heritage, museum, entertainment, or recreational purposes, to distinguish them from similar devices powered by electricity or some other more convenient method but designed to look as if they are steam-powered. Revenue-earning steam-powered machines such as mainline and narrow gaugesteam locomotives, steamships, and the worldwide electric power-generating industry steam turbines are not normally referred to as 'live steam'.
Steamrollers and traction engines are popular, in 1:4 or 1:3 scale, as are model stationary steam engines, ranging from pocket-size to 1:2 scale.
Railroads or railways[edit]
Ridable, large-scale live steam railroading on a backyard railroad is a popular aspect of the live steam hobby, but it is time-consuming to build a locomotive from scratch and it can be costly to purchase one already built. Garden railways, in smaller scales (that cannot pull a 'live' person nor be ridden on), offer the benefits of real steam engines (and at lower cost and in less space), but do not provide the same experience as operating one's own locomotive in the larger scales and riding on (or behind) it, while doing so.
One of the most famous live steam railroads was Walt Disney's Carolwood Pacific Railroad around his California home; it later inspired Walt Disney to surround his planned Disneylandamusement park with a working, narrow gauge railroad.
The live steam hobby is especially popular in the UK, US, and Australia. All over the world, there are hundreds of clubs and associations as well as many thousands of private backyard railroads. The world's largest live steam layout, with over 25 miles (40 km) of 71⁄2 in (190.5 mm) trackage is Train Mountain Railroad[1] in Chiloquin, Oregon. Other notable layouts are operated by the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum and the Riverside Live Steamers.
Scale[edit]
A live steam locomotive is often an exact, hand-crafted scale model. Live steam railroad scales are generally referred to by the number of inches of scale per foot. For example, a 1:8 scale locomotive will often be referred to as a 1½' scale locomotive. Common modelling scales are Gauge 1 (1:32 scale), 1/2' (1:24 scale), 3/4' (1:16), 1' (1:12), 1½' (1:8), 2½' (~1:5) and 3' (1:4).
Track gauge[edit]
Track gauge refers to the distance between the rails. The ridable track gauges range from 21⁄2 in (64 mm) to 15 in (381 mm), the most popular being 31⁄2 in (89 mm), 43⁄4 in (121 mm), 5 in (127 mm), 71⁄4 in (184 mm) and 71⁄2 in (190.5 mm) (see Rail transport modelling scales). Gauges from 10 in (254 mm) and up are called 'Miniature Railways' (in the US these are known as 'Grand Scale Railroads'), and are used mostly in amusement park rides and commercial settings.
Often the gauge has little to do with the scale of a locomotive since larger equipment can be built in a narrow gauge railway configuration. For instance, scales of 1.5, 1.6, 2.5, and 3 inches per foot (corresponding to scales of 1:8 to 1:4) have been used on a 71⁄2 in (190.5 mm) track gauge.
The generally accepted smallest gauge for a live steam locomotive is O scale. Producing smaller-scale models remains problematic, as the laws of physics do not themselves scale: creating a small-scale boiler that produces useful quantities of steam requires careful engineering. Hornby Railways has produced commercial live steam-powered locomotives in OO scale by utilising an electrically heated boiler mounted in the tender, with cylinders in the locomotive, and control provided by electrical signals fed through the track from a remote control unit. They are less mechanically realistic than models in larger scales; the visible valve gear is a dummy, as on the electric-motor-powered models, and steam admission to the cylinders is controlled by a rotary-valve servo inside the boiler casing, which is also a dummy. Nevertheless, the locomotive is driven by steam that is created on board the locomotive and is hence a genuine steam locomotive.
It is technically possible to build even smaller operating steam engines. Hand-made examples, as small as Z scale (1:220), with a gauge of only 6.5 mm (0.256 in), have been produced.[2] These are fired with a butane flame from a burner in the engine's tender. AA Sherwood of Australia, an engineering lecturer, produced some miniature scale model live steam engines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His smallest live steam engines were 1:240 scale which is smaller than the 1:220 of Z Scale.[3] The smallest scale Sherwood worked in was 1:480, though that was not live steam.
Technology[edit]
A wide variety of boiler designs are available, ranging from simple externally fired pot boilers to sophisticated multi-flue internally fired boilers and even superheater boilers usually found only on larger, more complex models.
For basic locomotive models, a simple valve gear can be used, with the reversing (if any) performed by a valve, or by using a 'slip' eccentric.
More complex locomotive models can use valve gear similar to real steam machine with the reversing done mechanically, most frequently the Walschaerts type.
Fuels[edit]
There are several common fuels used to boil water in live steam models:
- Hexamine fuel tablets – which produce relatively little heat but are cheap and relatively safe. They are often used on 'toy' live steam locomotives and engines, such as the newer models in the range produced by Mamod.
- Methylated spirit, (methanol/ethanol mixture) – which burns hotter than solid fuel, but, as with any flammable liquid, requires more careful handling. Cheap and easy to obtain, this fuel was used with early Mamod models.
- Butane gas – clean burning and safe, but relatively expensive to engineer the burners.
- Electricity – delivered via the track and used to boil the water with an immersion heater. In 2003, Hornby launched a range of 00 gauge models that run from a 10 to 17 Volt power supply, making this method safer than previous, higher voltage versions.
- Coal – which is the prototypical fuel for most full-sized steam locomotives, and the preferred fuel for ridable trains. It can also be used on boilers down to at least 16mm:1 foot scale.
- Oil – also a popular fuel for large, ridable trains.
- Propane gas – an alternative to coal or oil in large-scale models. Propane has also been used successfully as fuel in smaller 1:48 scale live steam locomotives produced most notably by Roland Neff.
Road vehicles[edit]
Live steam road vehicles are popular with model engineers because they are not restricted to running on tracks or water and can be easily transported for rallies and exhibitions. They include traction engines & rollers, wagons, cars, road-making & agricultural machines, often seen with ancillary equipment like threshing machines.
Boats and ships[edit]
Most types of boats and ships that were powered by steam in real life can be found as live steam ship models. These include, amongst others, speed boats, launches, tugboats, ocean liners, warships, paddle steamers and freight carriers. A specialized type is the tethered hydroplane.[4] When steam-powered, these often have flash boilers.
Stationary engines[edit]
Stationary engines tend to be less popular with modelers than mobile engines; probably because they are less easily transportable. They are more popular with toy makers. They can be anything from small farm engines to winding engines and mill engines.
Toys[edit]
In the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries, live steam toys were extremely popular, with some large manufacturers like Bing selling hundreds of different models in large quantities. There were very many smaller manufacturers all over the world. Some of these, like Mamod, Wilesco and Jensen, are still in business making live steam toys, although they are now mainly marketed as collectables and novelties rather than toys. Toys tend to be less accurate representations of real life equipment than are models and many are somewhat generic in nature. The range includes all those seen as models and some of a purely novelty kind.
Steam Gauge Siphon
Festivals[edit]
A live steam festival (often called a 'Steam Fair' in the UK and a live steam 'meet' in the US) is a gathering of people interested in steam technology. Locomotives, trains, traction engines, steam rollers and tractors, steam boats and cars, and stationary steam engines may be on display, both full-sized and in miniature. Rides may also be offered.
Publications[edit]
There are several magazines devoted to the live steam hobby:
'Model Engineer' is an English publication that is published twice a month and was founded in 1898. Most locomotive articles have an 'English' flavour popular in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The magazine is aimed at constructors but also covers non-steam and non-rail model engineering interests.
Steam Gauge Cockpit
'Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading' is a U.S. magazine, founded in 1966 and devoted to the live steam hobby, as well as to other uses of miniature and full-size steam. Originally, it was a mimeographednewsletter, but soon expanded into magazine format. In 2005, the name was changed from 'Live Steam'. It is currently published bi-monthly, with a press run of slightly over 10,000 (Dec. 2004).
The now-defunct publication (launched in 2006), was 'The Home Railway Journal'.[5] which was specifically aimed at enthusiasts with ride-on railways (although not just steam-powered) in North America. It is published quarterly in Sacramento, California, US.
See also[edit]
- Carpet railway – the 'Birmingham Dribbler' locomotives were a very early form of live steam toy
References[edit]
- ^TMRR. '''Train Mountain' website'. Trainmountain.org. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
- ^'Live Steam magazine'. Livesteam.net. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
- ^A A Sherwood. 'Live Steam in 1/240th Scale'. (Reprinted from the November 1973 'Model Railways' magazine). Archived from the original on 25 March 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2011.
- ^'Tethered Hydroplanes'. Mpba.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
- ^'The Home Railway Journal'. The Home Railway Journal. Archived from the original on 2013-01-25. Retrieved 2012-12-10.