Steamy Java Sugar Mill Tour 2010, The Little Princess

This series of pages from July and August 2010 records our travels from China to Malaysia and on to Java, Indonesia where we were hosting the 'Steamy Java Tour 2010'. Click here for the main Winds of Change index page.

Wringinanom is a superb 'small' steam mill, by some way the third best on the island and historically for me it was only really outshone by its even smaller neighbour Olean because the latter had 'real' steam in the fields until 2009. This is the first time I have specifically featured this mill on this site and, as a result, this will be quite a 'big' page. Like Gondang and Olean, it still uses a 'crusher' instead of a unigrator and like Olean it uses a small engine for the cane carrier:

This is the crusher system.

This is the view out from the crusher over the first three mills, the fourth is out of sight at the back at a slightly lower level. The first engine is a Halle and unlike the other three engines and their mills it seems to be a very tight fit .

The second mill engine is a Werkspoor, most of the juice is taken off between the first and second mills (left lower), because imbibition (adding water to the cane) is used to progressively enrich it from the later mills (right lower).

The third mill engine is a Fijenoord, similar to the pair at Olean, together with that at De Maas all their mill engines I have seen in Java are in this area:

The fourth mill engine is a large Stork, not well positioned for photography (as it is a common type, I have not included detail photographs):

After this the residual cane is bagasse and passed to a carrier, the second part of which is driven by a small engine that looks (like the Ruston Proctor) as if it has been dragged here out of small Burmese rice mill (Oil Wells Supply Company, Oil City, Pa.)

There is a small cluster of water pumps here, the first is a rather unexciting duplex, the other two are more interesting vertical engines. The one in the open apparently has a 'crack', the other is still serviceable. It appears it was built for Halle who may have been the original suppliers for this mill as there are several of their engines here and overall it is not a common manufacturer in Java.

Around the juice area are several more common simplex and duplex pumps which I am not showing to keep the page manageable. There are two of these pumps too, one was in use. I suspect they are also Halle engines:

This large (most likely Werkspoor) vertical vacuum pump I believe also doubles as a condenser, there is a similar machine nearby which is no longer used regularly:

There are two vertical water injection pumps which serve them, the active one on the left is a Halle:

The conventional vacuum pump is an old Halle, with the valves for the vacuum cylinder driven externally (like the one at Rejosari)

The final engine I am going to show here is this Stork which shares driving the centrifugals with an electric motor. I was told long ago that it was previously the crusher engine here, but I have no way of verifying that.

All in all, yet another reminder if it were needed that only in Java can one experience in 2010 what it was like to have worked in a steam powered factory/mill a century earlier. Stationary steam enthusiasts who missed the opportunity to come on one of my two ISSES tours here will regret it for the rest of their lives.