. The scary job of having to do a Sunday test run on the 'Normally Stationery Standby Power Plant' for the town Telephone Exchange. Of course a modern Cummins or whatever but a massive terribly noisy machine & scary job. What if it didn't start, then switching the output to take the load (I can still recall the bloody thing seeming to pause & groan as it took up the load .. causing a great heart flutter) & hope that it all worked & didn't put the Exch off the air or blow up a battery bank or something equally disastrous.
. Then there was the single pot engine on a cattle property at Condamine that pumped up bore water. It just ticked away night & day. Could hear it in the background from miles away. When it stopped, the silence was deafening & I'd run up a horse from the house paddock & ride off to fix the problem. We would start it on one fuel type & then switch over to a less volatile one ... Kero? It was cooled from an open water reservoir. Super reliable. The stock depended on it to keep the turkey's nest dam full.
. Those legendary Chapman pup motors used on dingies like my mates restored traditional fishing boat on Murray Lake at Mandura, just putted along & did the job reliably for generations.
Cupie, that single cylinder pump might have been a Lister? I knew a few places out Condy and Glenmorgan, The Gums area who had the old single cylinder Lister thumpers. A lot were used as lighting plants because they were so reliable, too.
-- Edited by Dave1952 on Thursday 19th of July 2018 02:15:01 PM
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Dave (Nutgrass)
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Carpe Diem - Seize the day!
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Cupie, that single cylinder pump might have been a Lister? I knew a few places out Condy and Glenmorgan, The Gums area who had the old single cylinder Lister thumpers. A lot were used as lighting plants because they were so reliable, too.
-- Edited by Dave1952 on Thursday 19th of July 2018 02:15:01 PM
D .. I think that you are right. The name is familiar & same area. I would stay at Andy Dohle's place (Weona?) outside Condamine towards Meendarra. He had a few country gallopers too. One was Condamine Lass. We used to ride the grass of them before they went back into training. Great fun chasing roos along the back fence dodging stumps.
The old Lister generator (32v) at Dad's old place also was a wonderful piece of Engineering as is the Sunbeam shearing heads. Fortunately they run smoother than the beasts in the clip with a little less smoke.
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