For over 200 years Crofton Beam Engines has always burnt coal as the fuel for heating water in the boiler to produce steam to drive the beam engines.

Crofton Beam Engines did another steam test earlier this year using a bio fuel made from rape seed pressings as an alternative to coal.   Could this bio fuel be a future alternative to coal?

How well did this coal alternative work?

Crofton Beam Engines will be hosting their annual Teddy Bears Picnic on Sunday 8th June. Bring a picnic lunch, your favourite stuffed animal and the family to Crofton for lawn games, stories, a teddy bear trail and crafts.

Join one of our two 20-minute Story Sessions in the Side Boiler House at either 11:30 or 12:30 for bear themed stories or come by the Craft Tent to make some bear ears, a bear mask or do some paper weaving. Story Sessions and Crafts are each £1 per child. No booking is required.

Family lawn games will be dotted around the grounds, suitable for a variety of ages. You can take part in the Teddy Bear Trail inside the station, finding our eight bears hiding around the station, or try your luck at guessing how many gummy bears are in our jar or guessing the name of our Teddy Bear. If you guess correctly you get to take it home.

Boiler Bear will be making an appearance at our Story Sessions to say hello.

Tea, coffee and cake will be available for purchase in our newly refurbished Smithy. The site is open from 10:30 – 16:00, with last entry to the station at 15:00 and last entry to the site at 15:30. This is a non-steaming day, so the engines will be stationary.

Entry to the site is free. Entry to the station is £6 for adults (16 and over). Children and carers and members of the Kennet & Avon Canal Trust are free.

The ladies have control.

During our recent Early May Steaming Weekend. Two of our Crofton lady volunteers had control of the driving platform on the Harveys of Hale 1846 beam engine. They both Demonstrated their driving skills with great confidence, and had fun at the same time.

If you missed them, they will be back for our next end of May steaming weekend. And who knows next time they could well be driving the worlds oldest working beam engine, the legendary 1812  Boulton Watt.

The Trust purchased a small stone and brick-built building that sits on the Crofton site in November 2023. The building was almost certainly the old Smith’s shop during most of Crofton’s life and has obviously been used as a workshop for a very long time.

When the building was bought from the Canal and River Trust it had already been used for a number of years as a hot workshop by Crofton volunteers although it had fallen into disuse and become a glory hole. By coincidence, we had had a major reorganisation of our crew room and workshops, and the possibility of using the Smithy for something else arose.

The following considerations came into play:

Over the last two seasons two of our volunteers had been running a pop-up refreshment tent from a gazebo in the grounds. This worked extremely well, and proved to be a good, reliable source of additional income for Crofton. It also improved the visitor experience for the first time since the pre-Covid years, our visitors could get a drink and light refreshments. However, the gazebo was large, heavy, and did not stand up well to Crofton’s breezy weather. Neither did the volunteers who had to set everything up every steaming and then put everything away again at the end!

We have our own Learning and Community Engagement Officer who has worked with many local schools to encourage young people’s interest in the STEM subjects at school (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This has proved to be highly successful and very popular, however having a space for groups of children that is easily adapted to learning and project development was a problem.

Could the Smithy give us a solution for both needs?

We divided roles, one of our catering volunteers acted as “client” and another volunteer as project manager with back up from “the Client”. Crofton is lucky with its volunteer base, we have electricians, plumbers, carpenters, painters and decorators, welders and a small army of volunteers who can turn their hands to everything from trenching to floor laying. A core group rose to the challenge, leaving others to carry out our normal winter works programme.

The first job was to clear the Smithy of its tools, its clutter and its dust. After selling some scrap, filling a skip, and our Henry cleaners many times, the true size of the room became apparent. We were blessed with a room that could function very well with a catering area at one end and a large open space at the other. This space is versatile and gives us room for groups of children and adults to work on projects or use the space as a meeting area.

Work began in October 2024, with the clearing of the decks and a survey and wood treatment of the roof timbers. A massive clean-up operation followed, everything from the roof lining to the floor, the walls and beams were hoovered, washed and painted. The massive roof trusses and lintels received the same treatment, restoring them to their original black. At this point the electricians stepped in, installing new heating, lighting, a frost watcher, and circuits for water heaters, chillers and AV wiring for talks and demonstrations. Plumbers also moved in and the space became a bit crowded at times!  Remember, we only work on Tuesdays and every other Saturday (during the closed season) with those Saturdays doubling as open days, the pressure was on.

Christmas came and went, progress oscillated from rapid to slow depending on volunteer availability and the fact that there simply wasn’t room for us to all fit in. Many volunteers gave several extra days to keep the project on time. In the bitter cold of a Crofton winter volunteers dug trenches to bring a new power supply to the Smithy, and to connect the sink drain to the septic tank.

We have just completed a highly successful first day of operation during our Great Easter Steam Up. We had a duo of visiting musicians sit and play for us and our visitors outside the Smithy while our guests enjoyed refreshments, cake and a wonderful spot to sit.

A huge thank you to all our amazing volunteers, those who focused on the Smithy and those that had to cover for all our normal winter works.

We were supported in our efforts by a grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation, to whom we are extremely grateful. We also found that the generosity of some of our suppliers was very great. We laid a new wooden floor over the old concrete floor and a scaffold company donated the number of scaffold boards we needed to completely cover the floor. Other companies and individuals discounted their material costs with the result that we were able to hold our budget to well below our original estimate.

We would like to thank all those who worked so hard, often in difficult circumstances to complete such a big project in a very short time.

See our website for further details: https://www.croftonbeamengines.org/

The Boiler House Georgian Lantern window & Engine House windows have been damaged by weather.

Crofton’s unique Georgian lantern window, situated on the roof of our boiler house, built in 1809, needs restoration. At the same time, the windows on the Engine House are also being repaired and repainted as necessary.

Crofton Beam Engines sits on a promontory and is exposed to strong Westerly winds that whistle through the valley, often carrying squally rain, often in large volumes, as well as sleet, hail and snow in the winter.

This week, Gill Simmons from Brave Bold Drama visited Crofton to have a tour of the site from one of our fantastic volunteers and talk to our Learning and Community Engagement Officer and Site Manager. 

We are thrilled to be working in partnership with two other museums, The REME Museum & Chippenham Museum, and are grateful for the funding to help us develop this offer through a ‘Capacity Builder’ grant, awarded by Museum Development South West, with thanks to support from Arts Council England.

One of the many jobs to be done during the winter months at Crofton Beam Engines is to sweep the boiler flues clean, inside our Lancashire boiler. We will then be ready for the next steaming season in 2025.

Our friends from Wilkins Chimney Sweep came along to do the job. They squeezed and crawled through the tight spaces in the boiler flues, sweeping them clean as they went along.

Although it is not one of the best jobs, it is an essential one. We need to make sure there are no potential blockages or buildups that would prevent the smooth flow of combustion gases through the flues in the boiler.