The Kempton Park Steam Engines (also known as the Kempton Great Engines) are two large triple-expansion steam engines, dating from 1926–1929, at the Kempton Park waterworks, Middlesex, London. Each engine is of a similar size to that used in RMS Titanic and rated at about 1008 hp. They each pumped 19 million gallons of water a day, to supply north London with drinking water taken from the River Thames. They were the last working survivors when they were finally retired from service in 1980.
The engines are of an inverted vertical triple-expansion type, 62 feet (19 m) tall from basement to the top of the valve casings and each weighing over 800 tons. The engines are thought to be the biggest ever built in the UK.
One of the engines, called The Sir William Prescott, has been restored to running order and is the largest fully operational triple-expansion steam engine in the world. It may be seen in steam on various weekends during the year. The engine house also houses two steam turbine water pumps.
The waterworks is adjacent to the A316 (just before it becomes the M3 motorway), between Sunbury-on-Thames and Hanworth.
The steam engines now form a museum operated by Kempton Great Engines Trust, a registered charity.
Famous quotes containing the words park, steam and/or engines:
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)
““If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
“And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)