Qualla: Internal Fire Museum of Power https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Internal Fire Museum of Power https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power Internal Fire Museum of Power: Introduction https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0. Push open the door of the first hall and the noise hits you. A 1912 single-cylinder diesel engine, taller than a person, is running. The flywheel is taller still, turning steadily, and the connecting rod swings through its arc with a measured thud that you feel in the floorboards. The smell is hot oil and engine fumes. This is the oldest working diesel engine in Britain, built when Rudolf Diesel was still alive and refining his original air-blast injection design. At Internal Fire, near the village of Tan-y-groes in Ceredigion, more than two hundred tons of stationary engines have been collected, restored, and started up. Most of them still work.

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Image: Andy Dingley | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: Engines That Stayed Put https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stationary engines are the unglamorous workhorses of the industrial revolution. They were never built to move; they sat in pumphouses, generating stations, factories, and ships, providing power for whatever needed power. Diesel engines in particular dominated mid-20th century rur...

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Image: Andy Dingley | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-engines-that-stayed-put.mp3 0:06 2 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: The Sulzer 1D25 https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit Internal Fire Mueum of Power, CC BY-SA 4.0. The crown jewel of the diesel hall is a 1912 Sulzer single-cylinder air-blast injection diesel, designated the 1D25. It is one of the earliest survivors of Diesel's original design, in which compressed air is used to blast the fuel into the cylinder at the top of the compression ...

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Image: Internal Fire Mueum of Power | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-the-sulzer-1d25.mp3 0:06 3 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: Hot Bulb and Hot Air https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit William M. Connolley at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Beside the diesels are the hot-bulb engines, an even older class of internal combustion engine, in which a pre-heated bulb at the top of the cylinder ignites the fuel by contact with hot metal rather than by compression. Hot-bulb engines were quieter and more forgiving than early...

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Image: William M. Connolley at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-hot-bulb-and-hot-air.mp3 0:06 4 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: The Pocket Power Station https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0. In a separate hall stands one of the museum's strangest exhibits: a Bristol Proteus gas turbine generating set, the so-called Pocket Power Station. In the 1950s and 1960s the South Western Electricity Board, looking for peak-load capacity that could be brought online quickly duri...

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Image: Andy Dingley | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-the-pocket-power-station.mp3 0:06 5 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: The Steam Hall https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit The Red Fairy, CC BY-SA 4.0. The collection is not all internal combustion. The museum has been working since 2020 on a new steam hall to display a 1903 J & E Wood tandem compound steam engine of 500 horsepower, alongside an 1879 John Penn twin-cylinder oscillating paddle engine that originally drove the Emp...

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Image: The Red Fairy | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-the-steam-hall.mp3 0:06 6 full Internal Fire Museum of Power: Why Engines Matter https://qualla.com/internal-fire-museum-of-power/ Photo credit Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is something hypnotic about watching a hundred-year-old engine run. The mechanism is fully visible: piston, flywheel, governor, oil pump, the small priming tank and the high pressure injector that bring fuel and air together in the cylinder. You can see how it works. Modern...

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Image: Andy Dingley | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/b/internal-fire-museum-of-power-wp/gckb-internal-fire-museum-of-power-why-engines-matter.mp3 0:06 7 full