Boiler House
Within the boiler house there are three Lancashire boilers, each with a capacity to hold 5,000 gallons of water. Each boiler has two furnace tubes and a three-pass flue system shown in the diagram below. The hot gases produced by the burning coal pass along the furnace tubes, over the super heater tubes at the back of the boiler, down beneath the boiler to the front and then back along the sides before exhausting to the main flue and the chimney.
One engine on
full load operated on approximately 35 tons of coal per week.
The boilers
were stoked manually until 1965/66 when
Hodgkinson & Bennis
electric driven mechanical stokes were installed. The stokers were the first
equipment to be fitted that made the station
dependant on external power sources, to cover the eventuality of power failure,
a diesel generating set was installed in the workshop.
The stokers underfeed coal via two screw feeds to individual retorts in each furnace tube. A timer controls the quantity of coal supplied to the retorts, with a forced draught being supplied by electric fans to boost the natural draught produced by the chimney.