The Museum of Power, Langford

  

(Click on the photos to see more pictures at the flickr site)

Housed in a former waterworks pumping station in the village of Langford, the Museum of Power pays tribute to the humble workhorses of the industrial age. Stationary engines, water pumps, belt driven workshops; all are showcased here.

The centrepiece of the collection is the giant Lilleshall water pump. One of three to have been housed in the station for the purposes of pumping water to the growing metropolis of Southend-on-Sea (only two would have been used at any time.). The pump and engine have recently been converted back to running on steam (in the early days of the museum, compressed air was used), and this was one of the first public runnings post conversion. It really is a beast of a machine, as can be seen from this clip:

Surrounding the Lilleshall are a number of much smaller engines and pumps, including one from the Davey Paxman and Co of Colchester, an Essex based engineering firm.

Next door is a reconstruction of a belt driven engineering workshop of the sort that would have been common in the days before electricity revolutionised manufacturing. Drills, lathes and saws were all belt driven with a series of axles and gears taking the power from (in this instance) a diesel engine.

Although the engines and machinery housed at the Museum of Power perhaps lack the glamour of the railway engines and so forth, there is no doubt that they played a vital role in Essex's industrial heritage and are worthy of recognition at a museum such as this.