In the early 1930s, my father was the schoolteacher at Goodnight on the Murray in NSW but near Swan Hill. One of the things he used to talk about when I was little was the pumping engine at goodnight Station. In the 1960s I visited there with him, and saw the engine. I can't remember the brand or any real details.
Installed early in the century, probably just after WW1, but possibly before the war, it was a horizontal single cylinder diesel, rated at 60hp at 120rpm. It had a bore of around six inches, and a stroke of around two feet. The single flywheel was about ten feet in diameter, with the crankshaft around waist level, and a fair bit of the flywheel in a pit. The muffler was an underground chamber, with a metal chimney about ten feet high and six inches diameter.
The engine was started as a compressed air engine, after being turned to the right position using a crowbar and a ring of gear teeth cast onto the inside of the flywheel rim. Originally provided with a hand pump for filling the compressed air storage cylinder it had long since had a compressor added that used a flat belt onto the PTO of a tractor backed in to the shed door.
It was usually run for 3-4 months every year, and when I was there in the sixties it had been doing so for over forty years with virtually no work required - although it had apparently twice set fire to the shed and burnt it down round the engine. Lubrication was via a total loss system from a small tank that had a row of sight feeds below it. Both the fuel and oil tanks had to be filled once a day while the engine was running.
I wonder if the engine is still there, and if it is still running?
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
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