9pm
This is the Steam Clock in Gastown, Vancouver. Although looking quite old, it was only built in 1977. The steam engine is a Stuart no. 4 single expansion double acting 1″ piston engine purchased at the Stuart Turner Limited plant at Henley-on-Thames. It is supplied with low pressure steam — engine inlet pressure is 17 psi — from a centralised steam heating system that serves a portion of downtown Vancouver. The engine, rotating at only a few hundred revolutions per minute, drives a reduction gear train. The gear train drives an ascending chain lift to lift ball weights to a top track from which they load onto a drive chain providing the driving force to the clock while the ball weights descend. Five steam whistles are mounted atop the clock case. The large central whistle counts off the full hours. The four auxiliary whistles chime the Westminster Quarters four times an hour.
Lighthouse Park
Lighthouse Park is a wonderful area in West Vancouver; not a park like we know but a heavily wooded area with lots of hiking trails some of which ended up with great views such as this. This was my first evening in Vancouver and I’d talked to lots of people there, a few with the same aim as me (capturing images) but others just enjoying the evening air and more than willing to share a glass of wine with some strange chap from England! I spent some of the evening chatting with a Corsican who’d settled in Vancouver some 30 years ago and married a Japanese lady. I had no idea what I was going to find in the park and had left the tripod in the car as the evening light looked not very promising; I could have kicked myself, though, for being too lazy and not taking that and the the rest of my kit with me.
Bowen Island, one of the many Gulf Islands, is on the right and Vancouver Island is lost on the murk off to the left.
