Stationary Steam in Madeira 2022

Now (10th May 2022), Chris Grimes has visited during the season.

You may be interested to know that the small mill at Porta da Cruz in Madeira is still using steam to crush cane. My wife and I have tended to use Madeira as a Christmas / New Year destination, but this year (thanks to the pandemic etc.) we thought we'd go a bit later. Fortunately this coincided with the cane harvest, such as it is. Not having seen cane being crushed by steam since Java in 1997, I was looking forward to it.

At Engenhos do Norte, just one single-cylinder engine was working on the 26th April. A second looks like it could possibly work, but hadn't for a while. A couple of steam pumps are used to move the extracted juice. Steam comes from an industrial boiler, presumably burning oil. For most of the time the mill is a museum, and contains a couple of old boilers, amongst other things.

There is a Mill Museum on the other side of town, Museu Engenho Velho, but it never seems to be open! I did find a rotative steam pump tucked down the side of an adjacent building.
Remnants of sugar cane processing can be found elsewhere on the island, notably at Calheta which has a museum and some items displayed on the seafront. The Continente supermarket at Machico has a number of bits and pieces (mostly steam pumps) and an information board in Portuguese and English. (See Dave Collier's report. RD)