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Temples of Steam - 2006 |
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My wife Yuehong and I visited Burma (Myanmar) in early 2005 for what we believe was the first in-depth look at the stationary steam engines in the country's thousands of rice mills. It was a fascinating experience and we returned for more in 2006. Broadly we wanted to visit 'new' parts of the country but also to develop specific coverage of certain mills and try to see some special engines working which were not active in 2005. I made a flying visit to Burma in April 2006 to complete the purchase and arrange the transport of two large and heavy metallic souvenirs. There was just enough time to organise a couple of days gricing the rice mills in the Yangon area. Just another Marshall describes one of my most remarkable discoveries in this country.
I was told about the rice mills more than 5 years ago by John Raby, he said he had heard that there were maybe more than 2500 of them all over the lowlands of the country where rice is grown. It was a natural extension of my interest in Java's sugar mills to pay an extended visit to research just what was left. Mechanisation of the separation of the rice grains from the husks appears to date from the time of the British Raj, and nearly all the original pre-Second World War machinery, if it carries a name at all, bears that of British manufacturers. It seems we have now visited the majority of areas with significant steam activity and we have found that within each State/Division the activity varies appreciably by district. There are a number of factors at work, I am sure that the main reason for the survival of steam power in quantity is the absence of any kind of reliable 24/7 electrical supply in most of the country, at least two mills are using an engine to power a generator for electric motors. For, instance in the area south of Pyay, steam is strongest furthest from the city and again wanes nearer Yangon. The liberalisation of the rice trade a few years back means that in some areas many mills have closed, farmers now being free to make their own arrangements for processing their harvest. Many steam mills have seen little investment and the old, poorly maintained equipment produces poor quality rice with many broken bits which will fetch a low price. On the other hand, some millers (particularly but not exclusively in Irrawaddy Division and also around Shwebo in Sagaing Division) are building new mills which are steam powered. They appreciate that the current low price for electricity (when it is available) is unsustainable and that when economic reforms are completed, they will be very competitive. See Appropriate Technology 2006. In 2005 we were told there are several thousand (mainly small) private rice mills in the country, certainly a lot less than half use steam power but that is still an awful lot of engines..... So how many stationary steam engines are there left here? I would say of the order of 1000; it is impossible to estimate more precisely because of the number of them which are derelict or out of use, the total could well be higher. And how many still earn their living? At least 300, a more exact figure cannot be given with any confidence because not all mills are registered and inaccessible mills in remote areas are more likely to use steam. Our reports on this website are deliberately selective, designed to give a flavour of the country rather than be a definitive account. Having seen it happen in China with steam locomotives, I am painfully aware of the 'Lonely Planet Effect' and if you want to see these mills for yourself, you are going to have to co-operate with us (and more specifically our guide) or repeat the whole painful learning process we have been through. In 2005 we visited nearly 200 'steam' mills and logged nearly 120 working. Of the rest up to a half will have worked during the year, the others are effectively closed. In 2006 we clocked up a further 90 or so working mills and for the most part we ignored closed mills. Even those mills which work all through the year have days off while they accumulate enough rice to mill or repair their equipment. Some mills may only operate on a few days a year which is rather unfortunate if they happen to possess an unusual type of engine. We have now produced a set of DVDs using video material recorded during the 2005/6/7 visits.... In 2005, we explored Mon State, had a brief look (not reported here) at the mills round Bago and the extreme north-east of Yangon Division before moving on to the rice heartland of Irrawaddy Division based on Pathein (not reported here). In 2006, we went first to Sagaing Division particularly the district of Shwebo. A speculative trip to Katha in the north of the Division drew a complete blank. The overnight train journey there is best forgotten, but we had a day and a half doing nothing in an unspoiled town on the upper Irrawaddy River and an unforgettable (for both the right and wrong reasons this time) boat journey back to Mandalay. These days I confess I no longer enjoy travelling for the sake of it, I need a reason and the boat journey told me that I desperately needed some very positive experiences to persuade me to come here again. Revisiting Dakhondaing in Mon State was one such. You can also get a flavour of the ups and downs of this kind of bash in A Day in the Life, a part account of our visit to the western end of Bago Division. Finally we went back to Irrawaddy Division; first we had a patchy look at the northern end, travelling here was relaxing (if slow), it did provide me with a Burmese 10. Further south, the (steam) mill density is as high as it gets, we had one wonderful day out to see what is thought to be the biggest working engine in the country. I have to say that I did not greatly enjoy our second visit to Pathein, it has become a stopping off point for visitors to the beaches on the west coast, overcharging and begging have become endemic, I shall not be returning there in a hurry. As you will gather, overall, travelling in Burma is not something for the faint hearted.... The manufacturers (updated to include our 2009 bash) : The names of Tangye (Birmingham, England) and Marshall (Gainsborough, England) dominate the scene, with maybe rather more than a quarter of the market each, the Marshalls being generally more sophisticated and larger machines than the Tangyes. Jessop appeared to have been the main Tangye agents for some time and their plates are found on some engines. However, a lot of other names appear and no doubt others too are represented because many engines (especially very old ones) carry no mark. The following is a list of what we have found, at least one example active unless indicated otherwise, more information (eg based on the unidentified engines shown in the various reports) to flesh it out would be very welcome indeed. While most engines we have seen were delivered new here, it seems that quite a few came second hand, especially once the British mills went over to electricity, this may explain the appearance of some oddball small makers who would definitely not have had the resources to get into the export business. Ajax Iron Works, Corry, Pa., USA (only one, semi-derelict) Although we have seen only one engine marked for MacDonalds as manufacturers, the term "MacDonald Engine" appears on several engines including at least what seem to be three standard early Tangyes with no identification save "Hosein Hamadanee" - see below. Some people in the mills also use the generic term "MacDonald Engine", for an engine with narrow parallel frames and two or four separate bar crossheads, maybe it was once the industry standard. "MacDonald Engine" is on one of the Geo. Garrett engines and another similar with no other identification. Some late Geo. Garretts bear a strong resemblance to later standard Tangyes. This is a very murky area. The name James Tate & Co., Bradford, England appears on two machines on a (disused) electrical emergency stop device - I am unclear whether they also made engines. The following appear and were definitely agents: Bulloch Bros. & Co Ltd, Rangoon (they also owned/ran rice
mills) The following appear and are assumed agents although often there are no manufacturers' names on the engines: Burma Electrical Stores, Rangoon, also as the Rangoon Mechanical & Electrical
Stores and may have been the same as the
Standard Electrical & Motor Works, Rangoon, all seen on various engines Overall this is a very murky area which with the Second World War and the passage of time is unlikely ever to be resolved. One engine bears "C.R. Co" but no other identification, two others have an entwined "RSJ" on the valve chest cover, the latter likely to be for Ransomes, Sims and Jeffries.. There are quite a few duplex pumps at the mills used to pump water, very similar to those in Java's sugar mills but at the smaller end of the size range. Hayward Tyler, London Other names appear on disused duplex pumps, of course these
could be manufacturers or agents: We saw one active vertical cylinder pump marked Lee Howl, Engineers, Tipton, England. There are other derelict pumps, the name Blair, Campbell & McLean Ltd, Glasgow 1920 was noted on one. Of other engines we also saw a small disused Robey generator. The mill boilers (fired by the rice husks) are similarly a complete miscellany, although time constraints did not allow proper examination and record keeping. Most appear to be of relatively recent local manufacture, others supplied originally, being both vertical and horizontal. Nearly all have no identification at all. There are boilers formerly from steam locomotives (we were shown one said to be from a YB), road rollers and portable engines etc. Names which do appear on boilers include:
Babcock and Wilcox, Oldbury, England Technical Note (updated to include the 2009 visit): The engines broadly fall into two groups. Older engines have a cast (under) frame on which the various parts are mounted (cylinder block etc). Newer engines have their parts just bolted together linearly. We have seen just one complete working over-boiler engine, another out of use, one stored and another working with the boiler out of use. Many of the smaller engines we saw seem to have been supplied as portables where the engine and boiler have now been separated - in such cases the firebox doors have been blocked and fire grates for the husks added underneath. Clues that this has happened include a rounded fixing point under the cylinders and the presence (or signs of the presence) of a regulator ahead of the cylinder(s), even a chimney crutch. These are all non-reversing engines. Almost all use slide valves, exceptionally a few machines have piston valves and a few machines drop valves or variants. The vast majority have a single eccentric Stephenson's type valve gear. Most of the later Marshall engine were built with twin eccentrics although many of them these days work with just one and no cut-off adjustment. Others still have Marshall's own governor which operates directly on the gear system to control steam admission, this needs both eccentrics to work and hence the engines are 'complete'. Some Tangye's had been fitted with their patent Tangye-Johnson system with a second eccentric but these have mostly been removed. Pickering (type) governors predominate, many Tangye engines have their company's governors, but there are many unmarked examples. In 2005, we saw six compound engines, both 'straight/tandem' and 'cross' alas only two were working, one of each type. All were in good condition and it is likely that some will have worked later in the year. In 2006, three further 'tandem' compounds were seen, one active, one stored for resale and the other derelict, another operating engine had clearly been a tandem compound once and I am sure others have been 'simplified' too. We saw a further working cross compound in 2007 and an out of use tandem compound in 2009. By and large cylinder stroke is twice that of the cylinder diameter, we recorded many sizes as reported by the mills (we made no measurements), but many Tangye engines, for example, have a small plate with the size (eg 10" x 20"). 10" and 12" engines were the most common but many other sizes between 6" and 16" were noted working (low pressure compound cylinders were up to 20"), a few engines were clearly smaller but none was working. Some engines have their sizes cast on the cylinders. Rated horsepower was again anecdotal, but in the range 20HP up to over 100HP. Working boiler pressures were generally below 100 psi and engine speeds of the order of 90-100 rpm. The use of multiple belts means that it is easy to adjust the speed at which the power is actually delivered to individual components of the mills. Footnote: I was always certain that other industries in the country would still use stationary steam engines and, although I had little time to follow this up, it seems that pockets of such activity remain. I saw two engines which have been stored following their sale by sawmills (many big engines were said to have been bought secondhand from sawmills) and have visited a groundnut oil mill with an engine used during that season (said to be between June and October), but in Pyay one such mill owner told us that all the mills in that area now used electricity, even though they still keep their boilers (using the shells as fuel) as steam is needed in the processing. We were told of areas with steam powered sawmills but they were not readily visited - a friend of mine saw a working saw mill in Central Burma in 2000. The rice husks produced by a good mill are far more than it needs for its own fuel purposes and in major centres with many rice mills there are large numbers of other chimneys which indicate boilers used for other purposes. The railway workshop at Insein in 2005 had a derelict Ruston (and Hornsby) engine which had been used as a generator and a Cowan's steam crane under repair had a small Worthington-Simpson duplex pump. Acknowledgements: The very nature and location of the mills would make it ludicrous to contemplate visiting them independently for the first time - although in 2006 we found it very easy to make revisits alone even using public transport. In 2005, we used exclusively private transport, albeit extremely expensive by our normal standards of travel in such a country. In 2006, we used a judicious mixture of private and public transport according to local conditions to keep our costs under control. A local guide is absolutely essential and in this regard we were exceptionally well served in both 2005 and 2006 by Han Win Aung, the experience of such bashes was totally novel to him but he spared no effort at all to maximise the return on our investment. His new wife is smiling because, on one of his rare visits to see her in Yangon, he has just told her that there is no football on the television this evening....
Kyi Kyi Mint did some extremely significant and valuable background research beforehand, resulting in area lists of mills of potential interest. On the ground we were made welcome in the mills everywhere we went and particular mention must be made of the local boiler inspectors in Moulmein and Sagaing who went out of their way to document which mills in their charge were active and to describe their locations. As I have already mentioned, I have quite deliberately not indicated our other sources or the exact location of particular engines/mills and included pictures of only a small proportion of what we have seen. A lot of hard work has gone into this project and I would hope anyone contemplating a visit such as ours will use the services of our guide to reward him for his efforts (I can put you in touch). Similarly I would welcome collaboration with other serious researchers who are prepared to help in a practical way. Do not even consider a visit if you need 'international standards' when you are on the move, the roads (if they exist) can be endlessly appalling and the hotels basic even by my low standards, the 2005/6 bashes were some of the hardest trips I have done for many years, but also probably the most satisfying. I have no wish ever to revisit Pyapon where the Luxury Restaurant is worthy of the name but the Seven Stars Hotel is my contender for the most grotesquely misnamed establishment in the world. Burma can still be a wonderful place to visit at times and its peoples second to none in their hospitality, but I have to say that they don't always smile as much as they used to...... If you can help us identify unmarked engines or provide information about manufacturers/agents we can reward you with copies of some of our photographs on CD-ROM. I should add the names of John Raby who put me on the track of the mills, regular Burma visitor Manfred Schoeler who introduced me to Kyi Kyi Mint and aided communication with her to set up these extremely successful trips and Ray Gardiner who put his money where his mouth was and joined us for 2 weeks in 2006. These are the individual pages from the 2006 trip:
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