Indian Steam Rollers - A Forgotten Heritage

摘要

There have been many articles in past issues of this magazine about the glories of Indian steam in relation to its railway heritage. However, there is one aspect of the country's steam heritage which has never been covered and that's in the use of steam for road making purposes. India was the first country in the world to use a steam roller for road making in 1863. This machine was to the design of William Clark and William F. Batho. Clark was the chief engineer of the Calcutta municipality and the roller had been built by Thomas Worsdell at his Berkeley Street Works in Birmingham, England. It had a vertically-mounted boiler and vertical single cylinder engine. [Fig. 1.] The roller inevitably worked in Calcutta.