It’s finally finished, even though it didn’t take that long. The side batches have been added, sometimes these have been substituted in museums for heavy duty glass, so that the public can see inside. The generator side is all done and painted, now a small box is needed for the switches. All that is left now is to find a suitable spot in the mill and plumb it in to the steam lines, I’ll post a picture in the next entry, which will hopefully be when the motive power comes wandering in courtesy o
I decided on using a sheet of brass for the stator housing, even though it’s probably too thick. I might add some more detail around it to break up the monotony. As for the engine, it’s been painted, but there will be a few more hatches that need to added, and will be painted in a different color. The pieces sticking up at the end of the base are supposed to be pickup brushes, and yes they look awful so will they shall be sacked for something more accurate.
Stay healthy,
Douglas
After watching many videos of mills in and around Gula Java, I have become jealous of their high speed fully enclosed steam engines driving generators, so I decided to make one for myself. These engines were designed for 24hr high speed running at high rpm. So they are fully enclosed with a pressurized oil system. A small number of hospitals in the UK used them into the 90s, maybe even today. A few companies made them, the most prominent being Bellis & Morcom of Redditch, and W.H. Allen of
More work has been completed, the puzzle of the cane in loaders has been solved. The first photo is of the unloading shed at Luabo, (found it on Grace’s Guide) and it baffles me. From my observation I could not possibly fathom how that thing could unload sugar cane. Then I found the second photo by chance, (of a mill in Cuba I think) and it made sense. It appears to have been patented by an American light railway company (Greggs), and used a lot in Cuba and Hawaii. The conveyor suspended from th
I've found a bit more information on the mill from the recent past, as there are few period photos of it. The first video is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nn3Lo8QdTE , produced by the revolutionary group RENAMO, showing one of there prominent members inspecting the now destroyed mill? At 0:19, what I"m guessing is a Fowler heavy duty water cart, and at 0:27, there are a load of diesel shunters, Hunslett or Bagnall's? Then they go into the mill itself, and you can see the remains of a cr
I’ve always been interested in African railways, and sugar mills, so this seemed like a pretty good compromise. It will eventually be a representation of the Sena Sugar Estates Luabo mill, located in the Zambezi delta of Mozambique. I decided on using HOe scale track for it,
and the motive power will be a Roco Henschel hf 110, disguises to look like a 2 foot gauge Fowler. The main long grey building is scratch built out of card and long bbq matches. The interior is, from left to right, The
