Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Steam haulage engine from Park Colliery, Cwmparc, Rhondda Fawr. Slide valve, Stephenson's link motion.

Horizontal single cylinder steam engine. 1 cyliner : 16" diameter stroke : 3' 0" efficiency : 12% flywheel : 11' 0" diameter geared winding drum : 4' 0" diameter.

For the best part of a hundred years, since the invention of the beam engine in 1712, nearly all engines were designed with vertical cylinders. Later there was a rapid transition to horizontal engines, which dispensed with the massive beam. Horizontal steam engines such as this, used in their tens of thousands in industry, were robust, easy to operate and relatively easy to build.

The Museum’s engine was consructed by Llewellyn and Cubitt of Pentre, Rhondda, about 1870. It was used as a haulage engine for pulling trams loaded with waste material from the pit-head at Cwmparc Colliery to a tip on the hillside above the mine. Similar engines were also used underground for hauling loaded trams of coal to the bottom of the shaft. Until the passing of the Child Labour Act in 1842 children and women were employed in mines to undertake this kind of work. Not until some ten years later did engines and pit ponies completely replace human haulage.

Source: Welsh Industrial & Maritime Museum Guidebook, 1984