page_title: Portable engine
section_title: Usage
hierarchical_section_title: Portable engine / Usage
caption_attribution_description: 'Transmissionsriemen zum Antrieb einer de:Dreschmaschine durch eine de:Lokomobile bei der Moorseer-Mühle in Nordenham
context_page_description: A portable engine is an engine, either a steam engine or an internal combustion engine, that sits in one place while operating, but is portable and thus can be easily moved from one work site to another. Mounted on wheels or skids, it is either towed to the work site or moves there via self-propulsion.
  Portable engines were in common use in industrialised countries from the early 19th through early 20th centuries, during an era when mechanical power transmission was widespread. Before that, most power generation and transmission were by animal, water, wind, or human; after that, a combination of electrification and modern vehicles and equipment displaced most use of portable engines. In developing countries today, portable engines still have some use, although the technologies mentioned above increasingly limit their demand there as well. In industrialised countries they are no longer used for commercial purposes, but preserved examples can often be seen at steam fairs driving appropriate equipment for demonstration purposes.
context_section_description: Apart from threshing work, portable engines were used to drive corn-mills, centrifugal pumps, stone-crushers, dynamos, chaff-cutters, hay-balers and saw benches. They were even used to generate electricity for floodlighting at football matches, the first instance being at Bramall Lane, Sheffield in 1878.
  In general, the portable engine is hauled to the work area, often a farmyard or field, and a long drive belt is fitted between the engine's flywheel and the driving wheel of the equipment to be powered.
  In a number of cases, rather than being towed from site-to-site, the portable engine was semi-permanently installed in a building as a stationary steam engine, although the wheels were not necessarily removed.
  A more extreme use occurs where the engine is removed from the boiler and is re-used as a stationary engine. Often, the boiler is also re-used (without its wheels) to provide the steam. As of 2007, there are still examples of such dismantled portable engines working commercially in small rice mills in Burma (and, no doubt, elsewhere too). Such examples are easy to identify due to the curved saddle, below the cylinder block, that was used to mount the engine to the boiler.
  Thousands of 1 horsepower portable engines were built in China, during
  the Great Leap Forward of 1958. Every village and peasant was encouraged to build a small iron smelter and produce pig iron. To power the blowers to sustain the retort temperatures, small straw burning engines were built. It was all to no effect as the end pig iron was of very poor quality for any use.
caption: The drive belt: used to transfer power from the engine's flywheel. Here shown driving a threshing machine.
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