Stop 8 – The Steam Engine Pumper

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THE SILSBY

In eighteen sixty-seven, the city voted to buy its first steam pumper. The Silsby steam engine arrived by steamboat on June eighth, eighteen sixty-eight. The cisterns weren't finished yet, so for a while people called the new pumper "the elephant."

It was the custom to name an engine after a city leader, so this one was named the R. H. Dickey, after the mayor. Built in Seneca Falls, New York, it weighed about forty-eight hundred pounds, cost seventy-two hundred fifty dollars, and could pump four hundred gallons a minute.

The Silsby worked hard, not only at fires but refilling the cisterns, and by eighteen eighty-four it was worn out. On January fifth of that year, the Herman Fass store caught fire. The Silsby was leaking so badly it couldn't pump. And that same bitter-cold night, the chemical engine froze solid. The firemen had to fall back on an old-fashioned bucket brigade.

A new Button steam engine had already been ordered, so the Silsby was left outside to rust and was eventually taken apart at the Wale and Eggleston Foundry.

HOW A STEAM PUMPER WORKS

So how does a steam pumper work? The big upright boiler on the back is basically a hot water heater, like the one in your home. It heats the water until it makes steam, and the steam drives the pump. The shiny brass or nickel on the boiler was just for looks.

Those polished copper domes, shaped like upside-down pears, are air chambers. A piston pump pushes water in spurts. The air trapped in the dome acts like a shock absorber, so the water leaves the hose in a steady stream.

Engines were graded by how much water they could pump. A Sixth Class engine, like the Silsby, pumped four hundred gallons a minute. A Fifth Class engine pumped five hundred. Manufacturers didn't agree on these standard sizes until nineteen-oh-six.