The Toronto Railway Museum is open! Please click here for more information.     
Click Here to
join the TRHA
discussion group.




Powered by Blogger

           
3/24/2016

Roundhouse Park acquires a triple expansion steam engine!

 


For many years, a triple expansion steam engine was on display outside the old Marine Museum at Exhibition Place (the CNE). Click here for more information from a newsletter from that era about the engine. It is a triple-expansion marine steam engine from the Niagara II suction dredge which operated on the Niagara River. Before that it had been the "Rideaulite" and later the "Imperial Lachine". Click here for information and photos of it in these roles. 
With major development of a new hotel complex at the CNE, the triple expansion engine needed a new home.  The TRHA agreed that moving it to Roundhouse Park would provide another worthy attraction associated with our museum. Aside for the the need for some new sod around the enclosure, the move is complete. 

We have started to clean up and repaint the engine. In the images below we are repainting the main columns supporting the steam cylinders (the big green lump at the top) and working to free up a stuck entry door. We have also started to de-rust one of the secondary support columns.

Much of what shows as rusty in the images was once polished steel with an oil finish. Some of it is brass, some of it is bronze. The corrosion and "guck" will be cleaned off to restore the bright parts to their proper look and the whole engine will again show in its former glory.
At the Marine Museum the engine was motorized to revolve slowly to show the motion. At present the mechanism is stuck and will not turn but we have plans to carefully free things up so it will turn once again.
Posting and pictures by Michael Guy

Click on each image for a closer look!




News and Events About Us Museum Collections History Links Contact Us Resources Home