The International Steam Pages

Home

Africa

Americas

Asia (East)

Asia (West)

Europe

Stationary Steam

Railway Museums

Narrow Gauge

Tales

Road Steam

Our DVDs

CD-ROMs

About us

Thaton's Magnificent Marshall, Burma 2009

This is the fifteenth part of our 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about our 2009 bash which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009.

Ask any mill owner in India or Burma what his first preference would be for an engine and the answer would be totally predictable - a 12" Marshall K Class. In Burma, there are many such engines but I believe very few, if any, can compare with the one in Thaton. 

After breakfast, we walk to the mill to deliver a small present and DVD from our previous visit where the Indian family fired up their boiler and ran their engine (but not the mill) specially for us as we had just missed their working the day before, in fact that was our third attempt to see it in action. Thaton is one of my favourite towns in Burma, it has many elegant houses and in the morning hundreds of monks and nuns are out collecting food. Yuehong and Han finish their breakfast in the tea shop while the monklets collect their dues...

Each monk or nun (or group of them) has a regular route and supporters along it. Here one lady scampers across the road with a bowl of rice for the queue:

As it was just after Chinese New Year, there was even a Chinese family doing  the rounds, the mirror stands for the Emperor of Heaven.

And watching over it all is one inhabitant whose breakfast no doubt did not need working for:

When we arrive, to our surprise the mill is up and running, there is no time to waste. We make ourselves known and have to refuse an invitation to come in immediately as we must rush back to the Guest House to get our equipment. This time, we need a trishaw and there is a further slight delay in the filming because my tripod, like Yuehong's earlier shows 'Made in China' tendencies and needs some wire to put it back together again. It's a lovely mill to film, almost all the equipment is about 50 years old and while it is naturally dusty there's just about enough space and light to see exactly what is going on. I leave the engine to Yuehong and spend the next hour filming the process from start to finish. It's a well run ship which means that operation is fairly predictable and it's easy to get things right first time. Rice flows from right to left, first are the hullers, then the shaker (see below) and finally the polishers. Above are sieves which separate rice and husks and some of the dust. The vertical towers are belt driven Jacob's Ladders. 

The final rice is delivered to sacks which are weighed. Behind is a tally system to record the number of bags in each batch. 

Nothing is wasted, even the dust is bagged, collected and weighed, I have always assumed it is used as chicken or other animal feed. The husks of course are burned in the boiler which in this case is from a Burma Railways YB:

And here is that magnificent Marshall..

The first two pictures do not do justice to its condition, it runs 'like a sewing machine', it has its original Hartnell governor and is 'total shine':

It seems it is the only mill in the district still working, they have a contract with the army and work 'as required', certainly nothing like daily, we have been very lucky this time. Afterwards, we are hosted to some traditional snacks and fresh orange juice and their own milk. It is simply yet another wonderful experience. Now we have to collect our luggage and head out of town, first in a trishaw and next in a pick-up.

We pay the premium for the front seats, not for us, but as an insurance for our cameras and laptop. Next up would be Kipling Country.

The full list of 2009 trip pages is on:

These are the individual (stationary steam) pages from the 2009 trip:

Our earlier explorations are described in pages linked from:

Rob and Yuehong Dickinson

Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk