{"id":507,"date":"2011-05-05T16:02:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T15:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/?p=507"},"modified":"2011-05-05T16:06:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T15:06:04","slug":"toy-ships-with-stirling-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/2011\/05\/toy-ships-with-stirling-engines\/","title":{"rendered":"Toy Ships with Stirling Engines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Toy<\/a>
Toy Ships at NMR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Taking advantage of the sunshine, we took a trip on a Thames Clipper<\/a> riverboat from the London Eye to Greenwich. The pier at the London Eye<\/a> serves both this commuter-style service and the tourist boats – the Clipper is significantly faster though even with the extra stops.<\/p>\n

At Greenwich, the Cutty Sark<\/a> is still shrouded in scaffolding after the terrible fire<\/a> last year. We took the kids to the National Maritime Museum<\/a> and enjoyed the Toy Ships exhibition currently showing there.<\/p>\n

What caught my eye, one pictured here as No.5, are some Stirling-engine powered boats. The description for this example reads:<\/p>\n

“Hot-air-propelled warship and box.\u00a0 J William Sutcliffe<\/a> founded his sheet-metal works near Leeds in 1885. Producing its first toy boar in 1920, the company would pioneer the production of boat hulls from a single pressing. This boat, one of their long-running warship designs, is powered by a simple water-filled engine heated by a small methylated-spirit burner.”<\/address>\n
\"Pop<\/a>
Pop Pop Boat \u00a34.50 at NMR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the shop on the way out I picked up a pop-pop boat<\/a>, powered by candle. On test runs in the bath we found it a bit underpowered so changed the candle for some solid parafin tablets<\/a>.\u00a0 Lots of dire warnings about how it isn’t a toy and not suitable for children, which is a shame as it makes a lovely sound as it chugs around.<\/p>\n

For those of you with your own workshop sheds<\/a>, here’s a great article<\/a> about how pop-pop boats work and how to build one yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking advantage of the sunshine, we took a trip on a Thames Clipper riverboat from the London Eye to Greenwich. The pier at the London Eye serves both this commuter-style service and the tourist boats – the Clipper is significantly faster though even with the extra stops. At Greenwich, the Cutty Sark is still shrouded … Continue reading “Toy Ships with Stirling Engines”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[125,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-locally","tag-cutty-sark","tag-greenwich","tag-hot-air-engine","tag-stirling-engine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}