Waller Steam Engine

This steam engine was used to power the flow of gas in Aberdeen Gasworks.

From the 1800s until the 1970s every town had a gasworks. This was because before natural gas was discovered under the North Sea we had to rely on ‘coal gas’ which was literally gas extracted from coal.

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Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

The coal gas had to be cleaned before it could be used and this engine drove two ‘exhausters’, which pumped the gas through the various cleaning treatments before it was stored in a gas holder. This was one of several exhauster engines in the gasworks.