134 Comments for Armour Meat Packing Plant

Looks like an electrically driven compressor to me. Possibly 3 stage. From this angle, I see no valving on the cylinders that makes me feel that's an engine. Big hairy electric motor that critters gnawed the copper off of.

I'd like one of these to put out in my yard.

And that is a Corliss valve type as Frederick mentions. I believe that is a double acting dual compound engine. The high pressure (HP) cylinder has the steam input to it, and the far cylinder is the low pressure (LP) cylinder receiving the output of the HP side. The lower the pressure the larger the cylinder, as the far cylinder is seen in a larger housing. Records indicate the James Young company had built a rolling engine with a final LP cylinder diameter of 60". This thing couldn't be more awesome. It compressed ammonia. If anhydrous ammonia, any kind of leak could quickly kill anyone near it.

...those holes are for a crowbar to fit into.
- the bar was used to leverage the flywheel into a position that set the pistons and valve-work into a starting configuration when the engine was either, cold or shut down for some reason requiring it to be so.

The centrifugal "flyball" governor does work as you explained . When the steam engine was producing it's maximum power and the governor had lifted the balls on the governor to their maximum , it gave birth to the phrase " running balls out ". " Running balls out had nothing to do with sex.

Yeah it can be pretty shady over there; I would definitely recommend going with a group of several people.

Dude... E. St. Louis. You've got some balls, man. I've seen some of these locations in the St. Louis area while on the road. The fear of whom I would encounter was always greater than the longing to explore and take some shots. My hat's off to you, my friend. Too bad it was so sultry that day.

Stay safe...

Its like a little indoor garden. Imagine how green it may be years from now

Ah so that black cylinder was really just foam padding surrounding a pipe thats rotting away

Beautiful machinery but I wouldnt want to be around such when it was at full power, at least not without earmuffs

That black cylinder looking thing in the front looks like it either burst or someone attacked it. That or its just rot

Mica is a her?

Wallpaper?

Like others have said, it's for rotating the flywheel manually.

Large steam engines start best from a specific position, so before starting they would need to rotate the flywheel into a specific spot. Chances are there was (or is) a mark somewhere on the flywheel to indicate to the operator where to rotate it too.

Dang it, I have seen an excellent you tube video on the fly ball governor, which list it as the source of the term "balls out" when going at maximum speed, but I did not find it in my half-hearted search.