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Irrawaddy Steamers 2010, Part 8 |
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This is part of our 2010 Burma Crusade. With just seven known mills to visit in town, we were back to the 08.00 start, it could have been later but that would put us on the river in the heat of the day. The first mill was 'on the electric', they hadn't given up on steam as a 12" inch Marshall was being installed, but no one was in a hurry to finish the job. Across the road was their former engine in store, it has Robey qualities but no plate and on the river bank was a MacDonald engine, long out of use.
It was time for a lightweight boat across the river to the next two mills, you just hail one as it passes, they are more common than taxis in London. Non-swimmer Han was quite enjoying the ride until we pointed out a very large boat bearing down on us. You can see why he was worried at the end of the report. As it happened it was a false alarm as it was slowing down to stop at this mill to collect processed rice.
This mill was still using steam power but, like many others in town, only when the mains electricity was on extended holiday. At around Kyat 30,000 (USD 35) a day, it just wasn't worth firing up the boiler, as a result like many other mills the owner had a mountain of husks and was paying people to take them away - we saw other mills letting them loose into the river! A town like Myaungmya should have its own biomass power station as similar towns do in Thailand. It's not rocket science and the present system is the economics of the mad house, but no one is going to make the necessary investment in the current political climate especially when the government is effectively giving away electricity for free. The old Struthers Wells engine we saw working in 2005 was stored around the back and a rather nice engine with Burn & Co Ltd, Engineers, Howrah 1904 had been installed. The balance of probability is that Burn was simply an agent in this case. I would have been happy to see it running, but that would have meant a situation prevailing whereby we had no regular night time air conditioning!
Next door, the mill was closed, the delightful small engine we had seen working in 2005 looked fine, but the boiler looked very sick.
It was time to go back, Han cracked a joke about his swimming and when we got out, I gave the boat a helpful shove into the river but the boatmen didn't look at all happy. Apparently, he hadn't been paid yet.
We now got our only working engine of the morning, an old friend in the gloom, with the exhaust steam pipe behind. It's one of those engines calculated to confuse, it has "Alexander Young, London and Glasgow" on the base and that plate reads "The Rangoon Docking & Engineering Co Ltd, Managing Agents Mower & Co". I didn't bother to get it cleaned this time as I had already done that before. Now that's three organisations who never made anything except a tidy profit.
Next door, the mill again used steam as back up, the engine on the left from John McDowell of Johnstone had been re-assembled since our visit but seemed totally out of use. Behind was twin cylinder Bellis and Morcom #10952, the first of its kind we had seen here although they are quite common in India and Java. It was the preferred power when needed.
It was an interesting discovery but the next two mills were quiet. The first had ditched its Tangye in favour of a Marshall K class which was under wraps as back up and next door was a stored Marshall C class, yawn, yawn. The final mill was doing nothing, it looked as if their girder engine was serviceable, someone had painted "Tangye, England" on it long ago, but that must have been the salesman because it certainly was not. It was time to do some boat spotting, all creatures great and small, the largest one was apparently the daily ferry to Pathein, most of its passengers seemed to be in uniform.
It was barely 11.00, but it was time to pack up the cameras, relax and enjoy several cold beers and other pleasures, next morning we had an early start for Einme. Before the sun went down I went to pay my homage to the Buddha at the local temple and sneaked in a couple of extra rice mill panoramas. Imagine how many trucks would be needed to carry what that boat will be taking to Upper Burma... It was, of course, the one that frightened Han earlier coming back, now you can see why.
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