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Steam engine afficionados gather for local steam testing

Staff photo by Connor Cummiskey Steam engine owners gathered at Lund Machine Works on Saturday to show off their engines and put them through their paces.

NEW ULM — Hobbyist gathered south of New Ulm Saturday to let off some steam.

During a meeting of the Minnesota Steam Engine Association (MNSEA) Saturday at Lund Machine Works engineers put their machines through their paces.

Onlookers and engineers took shelter from the brisk wind by gathering downwind of the idling steam engines and chatted as they awaited a Prony brake.

The brake, which looks almost like an oddly designed metal loom, is used to measure the torque of an engine to determine its horsepower.

The three machines that turned out could line up in front of the Prony break and turn it with a large belt suspended between the engine’s flywheel and the break.

Steam engines, which look similar in shape to a modern tractor, derive their power — obviously — from steam.

At the meeting engineers burned wood to create the heat necessary to vaporize the water. The steam is manipulated from the boiler through a piston that would generate the energy to in turn drive the engine forward or backward.

The flywheel was connected to the clutch of the machine. Back when the engines were popularly used, the flywheel would be attached via a belt to various machines such as wheat threshers or sawmills to power them.

The whole point, aside from the fun of running large, loud machines, is to harken back to the early industrial era. “It is preserving and recreating history,” Vice President Jeff Lund said.

The MNSEA is a nonprofit dating back to 1978. It has worked closely with boiler regulators to maintain laws friendly to hobby steam-engine operators.

To learn more about the MNSEA go to mnsteam.org.

ccummiskey@nujournal.com.

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