Steam-powered narrowboat for hire - Firefly

When I was a kid (1992ish), there was a steam boat for hire on the Grand Union called "Firefly"

It had oscillating cylinders (from IIRC a South Bank Poly project for a third-world sustainable power system), and a boiler that was very idiot proof (water-tube?).

It also had some kind of super-efficient propeller and glorious 5-note chime whistle.

It was absolutely marvellous

Does anyone know what became of it?

 

https://nbalbert.blogspot.com/p/al.html

At the bottom

Seems she was converted to Diesel sadly

 

that's a shame, it was a lovely boat. so quiet you could sneak up on anglers...

 

The idea of a steam narrowboat, for hire gives me the Heeby Jeebies.

I cant imagine that there is a large pool of potential of competent hirers

 

That surely depends on the design of the engine and particularly the boiler. If the exhaust goes to a condenser, which can be a tank inside the hull, cooled by conduction to the water outside, and there's an automatic control on the burner to limit the boiler pressure, then only very occasional topping up should be needed. Nice and quiet, and reversing by the valve gear instead of a gearbox.

 

How is all this auxiliary equipment powered?

 

How is anything powered on a narrow boat? Batteries? If it was oil fired it would be very easy to make it automatic, fail safe and idiot proof. There are a lot of boilers out there that run for weeks and months without any human intervention. If the power supply/battery fails, the fuel supply is cut off.

 

It was safe as houses. The boiler was a central-heating type with gas, and it was oscillating cylinders like a big mamod.

It was low-pressure steam and the cylinders would just lift off their valve-plates if anything untoward happened.

It had batteries that (from 30-yr memory) charged as you went.

 

I find the choice of a central-heating boiler surprising. Those are designed to run at only one bar or so above atmospheric pressure, say about 20 psi. Even if the condenser is well below atmospheric pressure, that doesn't give you much of a temperature range, so not great efficiency.

 

It was a big mamod in concept. Low pressure, oscillating cylinders (can't be damaged by priming or ham-fisted used of valve-gear), etc. You don't need much power to get to 4mph...