The steam locomotives which served industry spent their working lives mainly behind the walls of factories, docks and shipyards, unseen by most people, and only in the colliery districts and in the iron-ore quarrying areas of the East Midlands were they a familiar sight to the general public. However, there was a fascinating variety of types, produced by numerous makers in many parts of Britain, and fortunately a great many have survived and can be seen on preserved railways. This book gives an insight into the origins and working lives of these little-known steam locomotives.
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People interested in the steam engine are well catered for by an enormous variety of books, but these deal almost entirely with transport. The stationary steam engine has been much neglected in modern literature and there is very little available to tell us about the largest and most varied aspects of the use of steam power: how for instance it was put to pumping out mines in the reign of Queen Anne and to providing domestic water supplies in London not long after. All these installations were designed as beam engines; in other words, they had a rocking beam interposed between the piston...