One of my favourite museums in Paris is the Musee des Artes et Metiers – home of the surviving second Cugnot steam wagon (fardier a vapeur). But it is also home to much more as I found when I started to look more closely at the photos I brought back from there last year.
One of the exhibits, not far from Cugnot’s wagon is another remarkable survivor from the pioneering days of self-propelled road vehicles.
Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar (1889)
Leon Serpollet – largely credited with inventing the flash steam boiler (by which steam is generated almost instantaneously as needed rather than by the slower process of boiling in a pressurised vessel). It is said that he came up with the idea when watching his father quench newly-forged horseshoes in his blacksmiths shop. It’s as good a tale as that of James Watt and the kettle!
After a couple of lightweight ‘test-bed’ three-wheelers based on pedal vehicle, in 1889, in conjunction with Armand Peugeot, he built a much heavier more business-like tricar.
In the book Steam Cars 1770-1970 Lord Montagu of Beauleiu and Antony Bird describe this tricar as follows:
… a large three-wheeled carriage.. it ran on wooden spoked wheels with a cricket seat above the single front wheel and a more comfortable bench for two, just ahead of the back axle with the engine concealed beneath it. The Serpollet hopper-fed coke-burning flash boiler, with a downtake flue, was hung behind the back axle on which the wheels were driven by side chains from a differential countershaft connected to the two-cylinder engine by spur gears. Unlike the contemporary Benz petrol tricars, which it otherwise resembled, the Serpollet-Peugeot had the front wheel fork curved to provide castor action. The fork itself was unsprung, but leaf springs were interposed between the mounting of the fork and the chassis frame.
Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar 1889
I knew from the description that I had stumbled across the exact vehicle being described.
After it was shown at the Paris Exposition in Autumn 1889, the carriage was driven from Paris to Lyon – a journey of around 300 miles (480km) – a journey which took, on various accounts, between ten and fourteen days. It was not a blessed journey and showed the tenacity required of a motoring pioneer:
[during this journey]… almost everything which could break or fall off did so, including the steering arm, the brake, the back axle and a wheel. The engine and boiler gave relatively little trouble except that a piston rod gland nut worked loose and was mangled by the connecting-rod before the engine could be stopped, and the door of the ash-pan fell off allowing too much draft through the fire which overheated and melted two grate bars.
After this journey from hell, Peugeot decided to explore petrol engines and another marque was launched.
Nevertheless, the few Serpollet carriages were known for their outstanding turn of speed – even on hills and were known to achieve 12-14 mph (19.3-22.5kph). And the flash boiler meant that steam could be raised in a couple of minutes, rather than the half hour or more for standard boilers.
Be warned though, the Musee des artes et Metiers website is not easy to navigate!
Inspired by McCabe’s runners I decided to have a go at adapting one of McCabe’s designs using standard plumbing hardware and a few basic tools. I bought an ‘L’- join from a hardware store, and a brass screw cap for the valve chest. The one I modelled mine on was the ‘Paul-Zee’ design.
I smoothed the bore as McCabe suggests – using a dowel in a drill with some sandpaper wrapped round. With the bore smooth, I took a three-eighth inch bolt and mounted it in a portable drill and spun it against a grinder wheel – with the grinder going in opposite directions – that gave me a nice rounded bolt head ground to just fit the bore of the plumbing pipe. I then found a washer and ground it to fit inside the plumbing sleeve on the end of the joiner.
I cut off the threaded portion of the bolt and drilled a small hole near the end – this would take the connecting rod.
I then took a small bolt, cut off the head and drilled down through the centre to make a small tube with a thread. I then drilled a hole in the plug cap just big enough for the bolt and cut a thread into it using a tap and die, and screwed it in place, held by a lock nut to keep it in place. This is the steam inlet pipe.
Then I drilled a transverse hole through the plug in line with the body to take the slide valve. The valve is made from small diameter steel rod, with a hole drilled near one end for the valve connecting rod, and another hole drilled to line up with the steam inlet hole when the piston is about halfway along the cylinder.
I filed the valve flat about half a centimetre from the steam inlet hole so it would line up with the edge of the valve chest internal wall – as I hadn’t used a solid plug as recommended.
Then I made a wooden base for the engine
Then after scraping off the flux from a steel welding rod I then cleaned the rod and cut it to be a good length to make the crankshaft. I carefully bent it to make two cranks 90 degrees out of phase, then made short connecting rods from wire to connect the crankshaft to the piston and the valve. With lots of spray grease the whole lot rotated quite smoothly, and when spun in the chuck of my drill it made a very satisfactory engine sound.
Tomorrow I shall make a flywheel, and then hopefully I will know if I have made a fatal error in construction. Here is the current state of the engine, and an animation based on rotating the crankshaft.
Well the plane may be long gone, but it appears that the Besler aircraft engine has survived, and may be seen either at the Warner Robins Air Force Museum in Warner Robins, Georgia USA, or at the Savannah Science Museum (from where it was loaned). This came from the Tiny Power website – makers of model and marine steam engines. Tiny Power has now started making scale model replicas of the aircraft engine. Their site has versions of the following two photos. (I’ve tinkered to make them more legible). According to the museum sign, the engine is a three cylinder single-acting radial design, putting out 70HP at 300PSI steam pressure. Bore and stroke: 3.125″ x 4.125″, displacing 165.38 inches and the whole unit weighed 100lb including pumps and propellor.
The aircraft used a 150 HP V-twin engine and a steam plant designed by Nathan Price, a former employee of the Doble motor company (of the car maker fame). I believe it was designed as a test-bed to prove a concept of a light but powerful steam plant with potential automotive applications.
Presumably the aircraft itself was either scrapped during WW2 or perhaps it found its way into a collection somewhere. It would be nice to think this aircraft might have survived somewhere.
It was first flown on 12 April 1933 – the aircraft being a Travel Air 2000 biplane. It was reportedly so quiet that at low altitude the pilot could exchange words with people on the ground.
And there is some movie footage on YouTube – there is a segment after a demo of the Doble steam car, showing the aircraft taking off, flying and landing.
For those who remember travelling on steam trains as a kid and are surfing the internet now – here is a project that combines the two! Turner art prize-winner Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane have set up a steam powered internet machine to bridge the gap between the steam age and the digital age. This appeared in an article in The Guardian and was uncovered in the Makezine blog.
Cheers
Jerry
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