Summary

In 1902 the Melbourne & Metropolitan Board of Works began operating a new steam pumping engine at the Spotswood sewerage pumping station. It was built by Hathorn Davey & Co. of Leeds, UK. This engine was an inverted vertical rotative direct-acting triple-expansion surface-condensing design, it featured fully steam-jacketed cylinders and inter-cylinder steam receivers. This engine proved to be 70% more efficient than the four locally-built Thompson & Co Worthington type triple-expansion engines installed at Spotswood between 1895 and 1897 and 28% more efficient than the single Austral Otis Engineering Co pumping engine installed in No. 6 pumping well in 1901.

When the MMBW required additional pumping engines in 1909, Austral Otis were asked to prepare plans for four new engines, this time based largely on the successful Hathorn Davey design, with a few minor modifications. The first two new Austral Otis engines were commissioned in June and July 1911, followed by the remaining two in mid-1914. Four additional boilers, again supplied by Thompson & Co. of Castlemaine, were installed in 1909 in preparation for these engines. This brought the plant at the pumping station to a total of ten manually-stoked coal-fired boilers and ten steam pumping engines, each of about 300 horsepower, with a combined pumping capacity of 80 million gallons per day (363 ML/day).

This is the original Hathorn Davey engine located at the No 5 pumping well in the South Engine Room which was received in 1901 and was operating by October 1902. It is now the oldest pumping engine left at Spotswood, it is believed to also be the oldest engine of this type and make in the world.

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