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.

© Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of

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.

Stone Planing Machine

This rare machine is an example of the first type of planer for shaping granite blocks, invented in Scotland. It is probably the last survivor.

Machine tools such as this were an important advance in building construction in the mid-1800s, particularly in the North East. They made it possible to accurately work hard granite on a large scale enabling it to used as ‘ashlar’ or dressed stone. This innovation revolutionised quarrying in the process turning Aberdeen into the famous ‘Granite City’.

The stone planer was invented in the 1830s by James Hunter a quarry manager at Leysmill near Arbroath. This particular machine was built by Nicol Esplin, a company founded in Leysmill by a descendant of Hunter. However the company only lasted for 7 years, from 1906 to 1913.

Large Radial Drill

This big Tullis drilling machine was used at Thomas Hudson and Companys Sheepford Boiler Works, Coatbridge.

This type of machine is called a radial drill because it can rotate around its centre column. This is a very versatile tool because the drill and be moved along the horizontal arm and the arm itself can be moved up and down as well as rotating around the centre column.



© Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

This photograph shows the drill inside the Sheepford Boiler Works. Above it you can see a small crane attached to a pillar. Items would be lifted onto the table of the drill using a larger overhead crane that spanned the factory roof.

Glenfield and Kennedy Valve

This large Scottish-built gate valve was used to control the flow of water.



© Royal Commission on the Ancient and

Historical Monuments of Scotland; SC682074.

Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

Glenfield and Kennedy of Kilmarnock specialised in building valves and pumps. They were founded in 1852 and grew to be the leading British manufacturer of valves.

One of Glenfield’s biggest projects in the 1800s was supplying huge gate valves for the Loch Katrine project to supply water from the Loch to Glasgow. The pipeline was opened in 1859.

Vertical Boiler

This boiler design is called a ‘vertical cross-tube boiler'. Pipes criss-cross the inside of the boiler. These pipes held the water to be turned into steam by the heat of the fire inside the stokehole. This is different to a Lancashire

boiler where the fire was inside the tubes and the water inside the shell of the boiler.

This particular boiler was used at Aberdeen Gasworks. It provided steam to power steam engines, mostly pumps. These pumps forced the dirty coal gas from the coke ovens of the gasworks through a series of tanks to clean it for use in homes and businesses and for street lighting.

16 Inch Reed Lathe

By the 1890s it was becoming common to find American machine tools in Scottish engineering works. This example was built by F E Reed and Company of Worcester, Massachusetts who built machine tools of the very highest quality.

This lathe was used in Greenock, first by the Scott Shipbuilding and Engineering Company and then after the Second World War at Gardners Brass Foundry.

Radial Drill

This machine is called a radial drill because it can rotate around its centre column. This is a very versatile tool because the drill and be moved along the horizontal arm and the arm itself can be moved up and down as well as rotating around the centre column.

This particular machine was used in the engineering workshop at Kingshill Colliery, Lanarkshire. It is missing its gearbox, which was bolted to the rear of the table.

There are two larger radial drills on display in the Engineering Pavilion at Summerlee.