Monday Morning Trivia


Trucula

Trucula

Drum Driver
OK I know it's early but this weekend our club went on a tour of a local abandoned line and I ran across this find. I thought I'd throw it out and see if anyone remembers or ever saw one. This is one of the sites we saw when we were finishing for the day. Note the size of the chain drive belt.

Know what it is? How it was used and why?...am sure some of the older members will know and it will be a history/machine lesson for others as it was for me. Enjoy!
 
Looks like some type of water wheel to me.

At first glance of the thumbnail photos, my first thought was some type of threshing device for farm use. After looking at the larger photos, water wheel is what came to my mind.

The setting confuses me. It's a big piece of equipment and would be hard to move. There doesn't appear to be any flues for water to pass under it. The concrete block wall looks fairly new, perhaps built around the equipment. I'm thinking it was either moved to this location for storage or the waterways were filled in and the block wall built when the equipment was decommissioned.

Fascinating photos! Thanks for posting them.

Darrell, quiet...for now
 
I don't think it's a water wheel - the shape of the blades isn't right for that. Looks more like a conveyor loader from a coal bin, maybe at an old coke and coal dealer or for a railroad coaling tower.
 
nah, I vote water wheel. for solids the scoops would be more bucket shaped with sides. The scoops arms are too flimsy for lifting anything of any mass.

not a water wheel like we normally see where the water falls some distance, but more like the water flows in a narrow trough. It looks like it worked right where it sits now, the trough has been filled (so the lower scoops are still "in" the trough). All the other stuff(walls, etc) have been added since.
 
Looks like an undershot water wheel. You need fast moving water to move it. Typically they are very inefficient (about 20% efficiency) and you usually bring the water to it through a narrow trough or trench for use.

-G-
 
Ok I was going to give the guys on the other side of the world a chance but I'll be sleeping when they answer...
It's actually a "coal mine air extractor". They determined that rather than chance pumping bad air into the miners, it was better to draw the bad air out. Fresh air would enter thru various air pipes elsewhere on the site..Just to the left of the paddle wheel is a hole about 4x4 foot square with a chute (completely ice covered from the mine shaft air when we were there) going into the side of the hill.. The paddle wheel which was first powered by steam from a nearby boiler house, was converted to electric before it was retired. The building, once wood, was later blocked and sealed as much as possible so more air could be extracted from the mine alone.

Could you imagine being anywhere near this thing running if it had no protection guards???..No OSHA rules then!!
 
Makes sense now that you explain it since it looks more like giant fan than anything else. I can see now that the structure is not beefy enough to lift much weight. Having spent 15 years around hydro plants, I was pretty sure it wasn't for water. Anything that old would have been some variation of a Pelton Wheel and that thing sure ain't no Pelton Wheel. :)
 
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