Not sure if anyones intrested but I found this which is next to the re-opened station that was first opened in 1840.
I'm not sure what this Evaporator might have been used for or whether it has any conection with the trains at the time.
Seems it was left there for a reason rather than just scraping it.
History of the station here.
Yes I read some of that last night but didn't see how it might be connected with trains of the time. Or why they might be a juicer at the station
No idea either. I wonder if anybody else has any idea?
I think it's industrial, not connected with the railway.
Google tells me there is a company in the 'Rigg Approach' estate that has been there since 1960, called "Union Veneers", though the current location looks like a parking lot for
Possibly that evaporator something to do with varnish or other coatings, perhaps preventing solvent fumes from emission?
The Rigg Approach estate seems to have had an interesting history, fires, illegal accommodation and bent coppers, no less!
Steam trains need a lot of water, preferably non-fouling to reduce maintenance. I don't know if the evaporator provided that.
NT
Yes a friend worked there as a fork lift driver. Once he was unpacking a wood lorry and about half a dozen immigrants jumped out made him jump but scared the shit out of them as he was a punk, tatoos, pircings and a red mohawk.
Yes when my friend worked their in teh mid 90s there was a 'specail branch' police car repair garage he used to see the unmarked cars go in and get a service, there were police officers all undercover working there too, he saw them drive out on many occasions attching their blue lights as they raced into lea bridge road. Not sure if it's still active or not.
But when and why is it still there as they are developing the area, unless it;s of some sort of historical value. Maybe I'll email Vestry House Museum.
WHAT... illegal immigrants, bent coppers all in east London :-0
Is the cylindrical tank a storage tank for boiler water? In which case, was the Kestner evaporator actually operated as a "still" to provide high purity water for the boilers, perhaps from the relatively hard water which would have come from artesian wells in the London basin?
By keeping the undistilled fluid liquid prior to disposal, perhaps it was a way around the "scaling" problems that you might get in a more traditional still?
In message , newshound writes
That sounds entirely logical.
Nobody can afford to distill water for industrial boilers. Water is recirculated in most cases. However in steam locomotives it's not, which is one reason they're so inefficient.
Instead the boiler is frequently "blown down" to keep dissolved/suspended solids down.
The thing is not a still anyway.
You make good points, but do you have *any* alternative explanation?
This equipment came up in another newsgroup a few months back, It is also discussed with a couple of pics on an Industrial archeological site for London.
There is a link on that site to a PDF where somebody found a document held at an Indian university. describing various processes where such equipment may have been used. You need to find page 7 where there is a diagram of a similar unit and how they and similar patented devices were used.
The OP's suggestion of whether it was connected to the railway would be No , it was for an industrial process that took place in a factory that happened to be positioned by a railway station
G.Harman
The Indian document is fascinating. My brother in law used to be an insurance inspector, and sometimes he had to certify restored boilers on steam locomotives. He used to assess them against an Indian Imperial Railways standard from the 1930's, IIRC. I gather that India is also
*the* place to go if you need a forged connecting rod for a steam locomotive.
The links to wikipedia someone provided gives a good explanation. The thing is designed to reduce the water content of various products by evaporation.
I think they are now obsolete.
Steam locomotive boilers are nothing special. Indeed very primitive. They are inspected and tested as any other. We have had our own standards for over a hundred years. We can still make parts in this country. Poland is also big in this stuff. New steam locomotives are still being built.
Now, where is the combination of Google Earth - Historical View, and Streetview?
That would be very useful!
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