Function Without Sacrificing Form: Photos from The Soulé Steam Feed Works
October 2025 (1661 Words, 10 Minutes)
Introduction
In both 2021 and 2023, I got to attend the annual Live Steam Festival at the Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum, a preserved lineshaft machine shop and foundry. It’s a museum built around the nearly-perfectly-preserved Soule Steam Feed Works, which produced a line of small steam engines and boilers for feeding sawmills, and performed general “job shop” machining/foundry work.
Today, the museum has dozens of stationary steam engines, a few steam donkeys and traction engines, and countless antique machine tools in their collection. Many are still in running condition, and the original lineshaft system is still operable (although it has been converted to run on a gigantic 3-phase electric motor, rather than a steam engine).
The musem is particularly unique in that the building is as old as the antique machinery within it. The windows, brick walls, floors, furniture, office equipment, and signage are largely as old as the machines themselves. This makes the museum a very unique experience that feels like time travel, and creates some beautiful industrial “landscapes.” As an engineer, I find it to be an inspiring example of function and form coexisting.
This post is to share some of the photos that my now-wife and I took on our two visits.
Steam Engine Photos
The Watts-Campbell Corliss Engine
The next few photos are of the largest engine at the museum: a single-cylinder Corliss engine, built by Watts-Campbell in 1905. It was given to the museum in 2008.
As far as I know, this engine was personally restored by Walter Clements, a former Auburn University professor. You can see a tour of Walter’s personal machinery collection here.
The “Corliss” name refers to the type of valve gear that the engine uses - the design was invented by George Henry Corliss. Corliss engines are among the highest-tech and highest-efficiency steam equipment ever built - they use a sophisticated variable-valve-timing system controlled by the engine’s governor, with separate intake and exhaust valves for each end of the cylinder. This makes them exceptionally efficient and powerful as constant-speed stationary engines.
A view of the valve gear on the Corliss engine. Note the 4 rotary valves, which are controlled through a combination of the center “wrist” and the dash pots at the base of the engine.
A view of the incoming steam pressure gauge for the Corliss engine. Note the cylinder lubricator in the upper right of the photo.
V-Twin Compound Engine
This engine was being steamed in the lower portion of the foundry building. It’s a V-twin compound steam engine, fitted with a central lubrication system.
“Compound” engines like these use the steam twice - first it is allowed to expand in the smaller cylinder on the left, then it is exhausted from that cylinder into the larger cylinder on the right, and allowed to expand even further.
Two-cylinder engines like these were common in marine applications, since they have the notable advantage of being self-starting. They’re also relatively compact, and have a consistent power stroke with no “dead zones” like a single-cylinder engine has.
The light coming through the windows, the brass and copper plumbing, and the exhaust vapors made for some lovely photos.
Single-Cylinder Vertical Engine
A small single-cylinder vertical steam engine, painted in red and green. I can’t recall the horsepower or manufacturer. This engine is equipped with a flyball governor, numerous drip oilers, a crankshaft-driven mechanical lubricator, and wooden cylinder cladding to retain heat in the cylinder for better efficiency.
The cylinder, complete with wooden cylinder cladding/insulation to enhance efficiency. In contrast to a combustion engine, the goal is to keep as much of the heat in the engine as possible, since this results in more complete expansion of the steam. It also looks cool…
Another view of the single-cylinder vertical engine. Note the drip oiler that reciprocates with the crosshead, to lubricate the crosshead pin. Also note the condensate dripping off all the moving parts of the engine - it was a chilly fall morning, so the frame of the engine was much colder than the steam!
A view of the eccentric (which runs the slide valve) and the drip lubricator for one of the crankshaft bearings on the single-cylinder vertical engine.
Other Steam Engines
A close-up of the brass oilers on the crank and crank-pin of a portable steam-engine/boiler combo. Also note the flyball governor in the top right of the photograph, which ensures the engine holds a constant speed regardless of load. If memory serves, this piece of equipment was intended as a portable power source for the logging industry.
A small steam water pump. I can’t recall much about the history of this pump, but I do know pumps like this were common as boiler feedwater pumps. This one had numerous leaking packing glands, hence the steam and condensate going everywhere. Not very efficient, but it did make for some pretty photographs!
Machine Tools and Other Things
Machine Tools
Some lovely raised lettering on the cast-iron frame of a metal planer. If you’ve never seen one of these operate, check out Keith Rucker’s restored New Haven planer. Before large gantry mills and surface grinders, these were the de-facto standard for generating large flat surfaces.
A “camelback” style drill press from the Cincinatti company. This particular one came from Alabama Power. Note the combination precision-quill-feed/power-downfeed system with the large brass worm wheel, similar to a modern Bridgeport-style mill. Also note the chains at the rear, which hold counterweights to keep the massive spindle/head easy to move.
A view of the tool post on the museum’s massive 36-inch swing LeBlond lathe. Note the multi-speed flat belt pulley that drives the headstock, and the flat belt going up to the lineshaft on the ceiling of the shop.
A smaller lathe (manufacturer unknown), with both a threading gear system and a back-gear for extremely slow spindle speeds. Note that the entire spindle runs in plain bearings - no ball or roller bearings. Also note the steel thrust bearing on the rear of the spindle.
The cone pulleys and flat-belt “clutch” driving one of the machine tools. I believe this is the Cincinatti drill press, but I can’t remember for sure. Note the free-spinning idler pulley in the far right of the photo - to “turn on” the spindle, a lever must be used to shuffle the belt over to the left pulley, which is coupled to the shaft and drives the cone pulley, which drives the spindle.
Another small flat-belt-driven, geared-headstock metal lathe. There’s also a much larger lathe with a quick-change threading gearbox in the background.
The weathered/patina’ed surface of the tailstock feed handle on one of the lathes.
Signage/Offices/Knick-Knacks
This sign is hanging in the material storage room. For the uninitiated, this means “if possible, make your part out of the leftover material from another job instead of chopping up a fresh piece of material.”
Since their primary product was steam engines for sawmill feed mechanisms, they also distributed saws, drills, and saw-sharpening files.
A lovely old typewriter in the office space.
Some tattered company letterhead.
The Pattern Shop
The next several photos are of woodworking equipment and the vast collection of sand casting patterns that were made in the on-site pattern shop, which supported the on-site foundry.
This was one of my favorite parts of the museum - old machinery is often unnecessarily beautiful because of this process. Iron castings, usually made via sand casting, were often used to get the rough shape of a component. Precise features could be finished with machining after the casting process. Since the patterns were made from wood, cabinetmakers were often involved in the process, leading to some beautiful cast features. When manufacturing at a large scale, these features cost practically nothing - after the pattern was made, the bulk of the cost was in the molten metal poured into the mold, not the relatively small investment in the pattern itself.
A pattern for a manhole cover.
A frame/crankcase pattern for one of the “Spee-D-Twin” two-cylinder steam engines that the company produced. These were marketed as sawmill feed engines.
A pattern for a large gear. I assume this would’ve been cast as a single piece, then sawn in half and finish-machined. The split design makes it easier to install the gear in the middle of a long shaft.
Raised lettering on a pattern. This would appear on the resulting casting, marking the foundry that made it.
A woodworking vise, used in the pattern shop. Remember that patternmaking was essentially precision, specialized woodworking.
A pattern for a crank, with a cast-in counterweight. This may have been used on a steam engine or air compressor, I’m not sure.
A small Westinghouse electric motor, being used to drive a piece of woodworking equipment in the pattern shop. I thought this was interesting because this motor’s vented end caps were made with sand casting - the very same process it supported here in the pattern shop.
A small Emerson single-phase AC motor, also used to drive machinery in the pattern shop.
Automatic Saw Filer
These photos are of an automatic saw-filing machine, used to sharpen saw teeth. This one was made by Black Diamond Saw and Machine Works.
The business end of the automatic saw filer. Note the triangular saw file in the lower-right center of the photo.
Another view of the saw filing machine. It could be cranked by hand, or (I assume) driven by machine using a flat belt.
Locomotive
The depot in downtown Meridian also had an event going on while we were there. Among other things, they had an old diesel locomotive on display, with the cab open to the public. I lost most of my pictures from this part of the day, but I still have this photo of the “Electro-Motive Division” nameplate on the locomotive’s control stand.