Elephantitis 2009

This is part of our second 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about it which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009, Part 2.

We had three days to kill based in Moulmein so it made sense to do a triangular journey with Hpa-An and Thaton as the other apices. The initial ferry trip was memorable only for the amount of rain that fell on us. We left Hpa-An next day on a late morning pick-up for the short hop on to Thaton which featured some on-board catering:

When we arrived, it was raining again and we spent the first hour in a tea shop sheltering. The town itself was just as before, we had to make a brief visit to the Indian family who run the town's only surviving active rice mill where we were able to give them a further DVD of their mill at work. Alas, business is very bad these days, they have already sold off some land which now hosts a Chinese made mini-mill powered by a gasifier and the main mill is up for sale; most likely any buyer would come from Irrawaddy Division and the whole mill complete with engine and boiler would be moved.

Dodging the inevitable showers, we took another pick-up south to Zingyaik (Xingyeik) where there is the only other active steam powered mill in the district, which we had all too briefly filmed in 2005. Talking with the owner, we were surprised to find that he had come here with the mill (and its engine) from Dakhondaing in 1993. Fortunately it was running as we had hoped - we had seen smoke and steam in the distance  from the train on our way down. I had barely started filming when I was summoned to the front of the mill. To quote Mowgli in the Disney version of Kipling's Jungle Book "It's a par - rade!!!", it seemed the whole village were in their Sunday best and rolling past to celebrate the Full Moon festival:

Returning to the mill, I was faced with a bit of a rush job as it was running out of rice to mill. Seen from the crank side, the (later) Tangye Birmingham engine is nothing special:

However, from the opposite side it is indeed an odd ball:

It is one of only two remaining working Tangye engines with twin eccentrics in the country - Tangye Johnson machines. Other engines seem to have started off that way but were 'simplified' at some stage. We were unaware of its significance when we 'found' it as it was only the second mill we saw working on our first bash and despite several revisits we had not seen it working again.

Fortunately almost as soon as we were ready to leave a smart air-con bus rolled past and whisked us back to Moulmein, as they had left a fair slug of passengers by now they were happy to carry us for the same amount as we would have had to pay a pick-up. Unaccustomed luxury indeed.