A Nerd in Paradise - Coolspring Power Museum, October 2006 - General Photos

Posted October 24, 200618 yr

Coolspring Power Museum is located off Pennsylvania 36, midway between Brookville and Punxsutawney. For anyone fascinated by the illustrations in old engineering books and Scientific American articles, it's paradise. You can see in operation the amazing machines you thought you would only ever see in pictures.

Some museums have a few examples of early internal combustion engines on static display, gathering dust, with incomplete or inaccurate descriptions and no one on staff who really knows anything about them. A few have one or two examples that are run occasionally for brief periods.

Coolspring Power Museum has the most complete collection you'll see anywhere in North America, and most are operable or under restoration. The volunteers know their engines; they have to have demonstrated understanding in order to be entrusted with the care of such valuable and increasingly rare machines.

These machines are big and heavy and almost entirely made of iron. Many of them fell prey to scrap dealers during World War II, and not all were willingly sold by their owners. The engines used in the oil fields were set up to run mostly unattended in remote locations sometimes for days at a time, and the loud, sharp bark of their exhaust made them easy to locate. Many were stolen and broken for scrap.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only self-avowed practicing engine nerd on the forum, but I think I can detect latent tendencies in a few others. I'm not here to "out" anyone, but if the pictures stir something in you, maybe we should talk.

Compare the crankshaft for this single-cylinder engine with the pickup truck to get an idea of the size of some of these machines.

A 20-horsepower Klein engine, set up in a replica of the station where it once worked, complete with the geared piston pump that could move crude oil through pipelines at pressures in the hundreds of pounds per square inch. These engines were designed by engineer John Klein for National Transit Pump and Machinery Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, and used mostly in the company's pipeline facilities. They are readily identified by their massive construction and simple, reliable, long-wearing design.

The gray building on the left, named in honor of a long-time benefactor and volunteer at the museum, the late Nathan Lillibridge, houses the recently-restored 300-horsepower four-cylinder opposed Miller engine and the Ingersoll-Rand air compressor driven by it, along with a smaller engine and generator that provide electric lighting.

An open pavilion shelters a large collection of engines sometimes known as half-breeds. The earliest oil fields used steam power to run pumps, and as internal combustion became a safer, more reliable and more economical power source, several companies made cylinder kits for converting steam engines into gas engines. A few of these engines were built so that they could be configured to run either as steam engines or internal-combustion engines.

Restoration in progress. In order to make an operating display, the largest engines require deep reinforced concrete foundations weighing many tons.

160-horsepower Bessemer engine, one of a pair installed in 1943 in the Brookville Water Works. This engine is being offered for sale by sealed bid to help finance the installation of its sister engine and pump at the museum.

One of the largest internal combustion engines to be relocated to any operating museum, this 600-horspower 1917 Snow tandem engine will have its major components set in place before a building is erected over it. I'd guess the pipe trenches shown in the photos are about eight feet deep. The completed engine will be 65 feet long; the flywheel is 18 feet in diameter and weighs 20 tons.

The New Era engine is one of many built in Ohio. This engine worked many years in a waterworks in a small city in Ohio.

The big upright four-cylinder engine against the back wall is a Turner-Fricke. It has 10 x 18 bore and stroke and runs at 227 rpm. It's one of three that were direct coupled to electrical generators in a gas pipeline station. On the left, the Crossley Brothers engine was built in England before 1900. It uses a slide-valve mechanism for direct-flame ignition of the compressed fuel and air mixture in the cylinder.

Another, larger Klein engine. This one went through a fire and was heavily damaged and has been restored to operable condition.

A four-cylinder Bruce-McBeth engine. Very smooth and quiet, beautiful to see in motion.

This Elyria engine, built in the Ohio city by the same name, powered an Amish millwright's shop for many years. Engines like this ran all the machines in a machine shop, carpenter shop, laundry, printing plant or small factory via a line shaft suspended from the ceiling or running beneath the floor; the engine drove the shaft with a flat belt, and the individual machines were driven in turn from the shaft by pulleys and belts.

Each year in October, the museum hosts a swap meet where dealers and collectors can come together to buy and sell engines, parts and other engine-related materials and try to impress each other with outlandish tales of the one that got away.

You gotta feed the people somehow, and the aroma from this place had my stomach growling the whole time.

Top it off with real, old-fashioned home-made ice cream, made with real ingredients and dished up fresh from the freezer. Ice cream production has become a popular activity at a lot of engine collectors' events, and one show I attended several years ago near State College had a complete small ice cream factory in a permanent building and powered by a steam engine. They were really turning the stuff out, and they had a line waiting.

October 24, 200618 yr

I dig those machines, but alas, I only have so much time...

Thanks for the photos.

October 27, 200618 yr

This certainly was interesting...esp the info on the transitional engines, which could be configured to run on steam or via internal combustion. These really do date from an overlap era, and some of the configurations of these engines do look like steam engines (like the govenor with the little metal balls that I can see on an engine in one of the displays....I dont think they have these on modern engines).

One of the makers of smaller internal combustion engines was the Foos company in Springfield.

October 27, 200618 yr

Many modern industrial and agricultural engines still use centrifugal governors to keep rpm constant under varing load conditions, but like most of the components, they're now more compact and enclosed for better lubrication and protection from dust and dirt. As microprocessors have become more common in power control systems, some engines are now electronically governed.

Foos engines were a very high-end product; they often had distinctive mechanical design features, and the craftsmanship in their construction was flawless. There are some Foos engines in the Coolspring collection, but I didn't happen to see any in operation during this visit. Foos built some beautiful, moderately large engines for electric power generation.

The spring expo on Fathers' Day Weekend in June is more fun, because more engines are available for operation. By the time of the fall swap meet, they've already winterized some of the engines and won't run them again until spring.