Some museums have a few examples of early internal combustion engines on static display, gathering dust, with incomplete or inaccurate descriptions and no one on staff who really knows anything about them. A few have one or two examples that are run occasionally for brief periods.
Coolspring Power Museum has the most complete collection you'll see anywhere in North America, and most are operable or under restoration. The volunteers know their engines; they have to have demonstrated understanding in order to be entrusted with the care of such valuable and increasingly rare machines.
These machines are big and heavy and made almost entirely of iron. Many of them fell prey to scrap dealers during World War II, and not all were willingly sold by their owners. The engines used in the oil fields were set up to run mostly unattended in remote locations sometimes for days at a time, and the loud, sharp bark of their exhaust made them easy to locate. Many were stolen and broken for scrap.
All images © 2006 by Robert E. Pence
Compare the crankshaft for this single-cylinder engine with the pickup truck to get an idea of the size of some of these machines.
A 20-horsepower Klein engine, set up in a replica of the station where it once worked, complete with the geared piston pump that could move crude oil through pipelines at pressures in the hundreds of pounds per square inch. These engines were designed by engineer John Klein for National Transit Pump and Machinery Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, and used mostly in the company's pipeline facilities. They are readily identified by their massive construction and simple, reliable, long-wearing design.
The gray building on the left, named in honor of a long-time benefactor and volunteer at the museum, the late Nathan Lillibridge, houses the recently-restored 300-horsepower four-cylinder opposed Miller engine and the Ingersoll-Rand air compressor driven by it, along with a smaller engine and generator that provide electric lighting.
An open pavilion shelters a large collection of engines sometimes known as half-breeds. The earliest oil fields used steam power to run pumps, and as internal combustion became a safer, more reliable and more economical power source, several companies made cylinder kits for converting steam engines into gas engines. A few of these engines were built so that they could be configured to run either as steam engines or internal-combustion engines.
Restoration in progress. In order to make an operating display, the largest engines require deep reinforced concrete foundations weighing many tons.
160-horsepower Bessemer engine, one of a pair installed in 1943 in the Brookville Water Works. This engine is being offered for sale by sealed bid to help finance the installation of its sister engine and pump at the museum.
One of the largest internal combustion engines to be relocated to any operating museum, this 600-horspower 1917 Snow tandem engine will have its major components set in place before a building is erected over it. I'd guess the pipe trenches shown in the photos are about eight feet deep. The completed engine will be 65 feet long; the flywheel is 18 feet in diameter and weighs 20 tons.
The New Era engine is one of many built in Ohio. This engine worked many years in a waterworks in a small city in Ohio.
The big upright four-cylinder engine against the back wall is a Turner-Fricke. It has 10 x 18 bore and stroke and runs at 227 rpm. It's one of three that were direct-coupled to electrical generators in a gas pipeline station. On the left, the Crossley Brothers engine was built in England before 1900. It uses a slide-valve mechanism for direct-flame ignition of the compressed fuel and air mixture in the cylinder.
Another, larger Klein engine. This one was heavily damaged in a fire and has been restored to operable condition.
A four-cylinder Bruce-McBeth engine. Very smooth and quiet, beautiful to see in motion.
This Elyria engine, built in the Ohio city by the same name, powered an Amish millwright's shop for many years. Engines like this ran all the machines in a machine shop, carpenter shop, laundry, printing plant or small factory via a line shaft suspended from the ceiling or running beneath the floor; the engine drove the shaft with a flat belt, and the individual machines were driven in turn from the shaft by pulleys and belts.
Each year in October, the museum hosts a swap meet where dealers and collectors can come together to buy and sell engines, parts and other engine-related materials and tell each other tales of the one that got away.
You gotta feed the people somehow, and the aroma from this place had my stomach growling the whole time.
Top it off with real, old-fashioned home-made ice cream, made with real ingredients and dished up fresh from the freezer. Ice cream production has become a popular activity at a lot of engine collectors' events.