Wind Power in the South Plains, Part 2 - Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Continued from Part 1...

The G-Scale model train set-up is the second major exhibit in Building 1 of the American Windmill Museum. And it's a WOW! The large model train layout has a 3,000-foot-long mainline track with dioramas of the South Plains. All the windmills in the dioramas were printed with 3-D printers.

In order to travel along the walls of the building, the trains must be elevated to 13 feet to clear the doors. One of the largest spiral helixes, for a model train, lets the trains run up a constant two percent grade. Each spiral is 15 feet in diameter. With two tracks, the trains can run up and down at the same time.

The dioramas of cities and farms explore the relationship between windmills and railroads. There is a behind-the-scenes engineer who keeps the computer running for ten different model trains.

Diorama of Lubbock in 1941.

The detail is fantastic in 
these train set dioramas.

Here's a Barnum and Bailey Circus train.

A windmill helps with powering a pump
to irrigate corn, cotton, and sunflowers.

There was one very small-gauge railroad as well. The train is so small in relation to the house that the train looks more like a big snake.

Some of the dioramas were a little too realistic! 

Someone doesn't think much of 
manufactured homes.

The most fascinating and unique part of the railroad was a spiral helix designed by Shelley Harris, P.E. (Professional Engineer), and constructed by Shelley Harris, Sandra Harris, and Shirley Offutt. This is a one-of-a-kind helix and I loved watching the trains go through it to get to the next floor.

This one-of-a-kind spiral helix takes
trains from one floor to the next.

 

See the diorama of this in the 
next photo.

Yellow Canyon House Ranch
and windmill.

A cute English cottage.

Some of the miniature houses are
cut open to show the inside of the homes.

When you walk from the main part of Building 1, you go through a short hall to the Garrison Millstone Collection, there is a series of original paintings from the children's book, "The Train Story." They are just beautiful. The curator told me that the artist who donated the paintings, painted an extra panel that had windmills in it. None of the art prints from the original book show a windmill.

In the set of art photos below, the very last one on the bottom right is the extra original painting by the artist who wanted to depict windmills in one of the pieces donated here.

Enlarge this photo to see the windmills
in the painting on the bottom right.

A close-up of one of the paintings.

I was so taken by the lovely art, that I completely missed the miniature houses! The miniature house collection was made by Alta Reeds of Lubbock. They are displayed in several places in the museum. Fifteen of them are used in the model train layout. I saw those and they're very impressive. Sixty-one others are displayed in glass cases along the west interior wall of Building 1. Mrs. Reeds took about thirty years of constant work to build and furnish these remarkable homes. If we go there again, I will make it a point to examine the miniature houses more extensively.

The last exhibit in Building 1 is the Garrison Millstone Collection. When the Flowerdew Post Mill was moved from Virginia to Lubbock, a rare collection of mill stones accompanied the windmill. Originally part of the Paul Flory Millstone Collection, these stones have been documented by their composition, their use, and as closely as possible to the date they were used. Some of these were used in windmills and others were used in water mills.

Millstones for different purposes.

Mortar and pestle.

Millstones for diverse types of 
grinding.

Grain grinding mill stone.
(Monolithic millstone grit.)

Mineral grinding millstone.
(Esopus conglomerate.)

All about wheat grinding.

Almost anything that could be turned into a powder was ground by these stones. They were big and heavy and, at the time, expensive. The grooves or furrows cut into the face of the stone by stone dressers moved the material from the center to the outer edges where it was collected. Grinding stones were essential to everyday life and they have been used for thousands of years.

Small laboratory millstone, 
(Esopus stone.)

Black powder millstone.

Beech nut hulling millstone.
(Millstone grit.)

Below is an 1870 kitchen sink drain. It was fitted through the exterior wall of a house and set below the pipe of a kitchen sink. This stone drained water away from the house to soak into the ground. Rags would have been stuffed in the pipe to keep out vermin in winter. [From an 18th-century house in Manheim, Pennsylvania.]

A kitchen sink drain. 
(Sandstone.)

Coprolite grinding.

Coprolite millstone.

Apple cider millstone. (Sandstone.)

These stones could slowly decompose over the years because of the grinding action and weather. Many times, an iron ring would be placed around the outside of the stone to hold it together. 

Any items that were ground would have fine particles of stone included in the final product. For example, if you were grinding wheat into flour, you could expect to be eating some finely ground stone powder in your flour.

You can tell by the various thicknesses
of the mill stones how much they were
used. 

Hershey's chocolate milling roller.
(Granite.)

Hemp millstone.

This exhibit was awesome. I had no idea there were so many types of millstones!

From here, we crossed over into Building 2. In the opening hallway were historic photos taken by Mr. B.H. "Tex" Burdick. 

About Mr. "Tex" Burdick, 
the photographer.

A photo of "Tex" Burdick.

Top man Carl Boyd. See the
description in the photo below.
[Photo by "Tex" Burdick.]

Photo by "Tex" Burdick. The
description is in the photo below.

Have you ever heard of windmill weights or crescent weights? We never had until today. This museum has collections of all types of weights. Windmill weights were used on windmills that did not have orienting tails to help balance the mill on top of the tower. Many times the weights were distinctive figures germane to one company, for example, horses or cows. Other weights used were governing weights to help control the speed of the wheel. 

Continued in the photo below.

Oops, I missed the continuation
of this description. Mea culpa.

Next, we learned about crescent weights. You better make sure the points of the crescent face up, not down.

Crescent weights.

Windmill stories.

The rest of the main part of Building 2 has odds and ends:

• Out in the South Plains, there aren't a lot of grasses or materials for birds to use for nests. The birds adapted and made nests out of wire and barbed wire! The displays are the actual wire nests. The birds are fake.

• There is a history of "80 John," a legendary black rancher. One of the displays made me cry. There was a description of 80 John's last minutes of his life and it reminded me of my mom's last minutes.

This touched me very deeply.

• Information on the windmiller's chuck wagon.

• How the Aermotor Windmills came to be. It all started with a dictionary stand!

La Verne Noyes' dictionary stand.

• A whole section is dedicated to the Aermotor Windmills, the most popular windmills ever made.

Original 1888 Aermotor.

Aermotor windmills.

Aermotor poster.

• The Twin Wheel windmill

A very unique windmill!

The massive amounts of huge windmills in this hall blew us away! Check these out. Just wow!

Bob is dwarfed by these babies!

So, we thought we were done with the museum; however, there was one last surprise in store. That surprise was "The Legacy of the Wind" windmill mural which covers 6,000 square feet of wall space in the events center room. The mural is by artist La Gina Fairbetter. About three other artists helped her paint this. The wall is 200 feet long by 34 feet high. Check it out!

Many portions of this mural would make
terrific jigsaw puzzles.

I like the wooden windmill in 
the corner next to the mural. 

When we went to use the restrooms, we found even more art in the hallway. These are beautiful wood marquetry walls. 

At the end of our four hours in the American Windmill Museum, we made our way into the gift shop. Even that is amazing. There is a huge windmill blade hanging like a fan in the ceiling of the gift shop. The wall behind the cashier looks like old town storefronts. 

This whole museum is just over the top. We were mightily impressed. If you are going anywhere near Lubbock, make time for this museum!

From the museum, we made a quick stop to see Prairie Dog Town. I always like to get a nature fix when possible. As luck would have it, the baby prairie dogs were out!

Protective mama prairie dog.

Baby prairie dogs exploring.

More baby prairie dogs.

On the way back to the RV park, we drove past the Silent Wings Museum (honoring glider pilots in WW II). It was getting late and there was only an hour until they closed. We decided to skip it today and go there the next time we're in town.

Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock.

Back at the RV park, we had a beautiful sunset. Overall, this was a great day! 

We definitely need a Volksmarch in Lubbock, Texas. There's a Buddy Holly memorial, murals, Texas Tech University, National Ranching Heritage Center, the American Windmill Museum, McKenzie Main City Park, Lubbock Brazos River Trail, Prairie Dog Town, and Mae Simmons Park. 

Wind Power in the South Plains, Part 1 - Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Museums come in all types: art, science, technology, inventions, history, geology, you name it. You never know what a museum holds until you step onto its grounds, explore its exhibits, and open your curious mind to what you find inside. Websites give information about what you will see, but typically you will discover more than you thought. We experienced this today at the American Windmill Museum AKA The American Wind Power Center. 

The American Windmill Museum is the largest windmill museum in the world. It sits on 28 acres of city parkland east of Lubbock, Texas. The hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; closed Sunday and Monday.

There's all this and more!

Windmill art on the entry door!

A hand-carved rocking chair decorated
with a roadrunner.

We arrived at 10:30 am and entered the building to pay, but no one was at the reception window. After helping ourselves to a snack-size piece of candy and a small bottle of water, we picked up the brochures on the table and signed the guest book. The windmill exhibits outside looked inviting, so we checked them out. We'd go in and pay when we came back around to the front.

The outside exhibits are what convinced us we had to come to this museum when we saw the grounds a year ago. It was too late in the day for us to visit then. Now we have returned! 

"How does a windmill work? The windmill is erected on a tall tower above any obstructing objects like trees or houses. When the wind hits the wheel, it begins to turn gears inside the gearbox which changes the rotating motion of the wheel into an up-and-down pump stroke. A wooden sucker rod connects the gears to a pump cylinder located at the bottom of the well. Water is then lifted to the surface where it can be stored in stock tanks or in domestic water tanks. The tail on the windmill points the wheel into the wind."

Things to notice on the windmills:

• Unique color schemes for each windmill manufacturing company.
• Orienting tails (with or without advertising as shown below).
• Windmill weights for windmills without orienting tails could be
• distinctive figure weights [there will be photos below],
• governing weights, or
• crescent weights (with the tips pointing up) [there will be photos in Part 2].  

Bob at the base of a Platner-
Yale Mfg. Co. windmill from
Lincoln, Nebraska (1916).

A cluster of windmills.

"Challenge windmills: Challenge made and sold thousands of the Model 27 windmills on the Great Plains. Big windmills, like this 20-ft. model, pumped water for large cow herds in Texas. The wheel mounted on a 4,000-pound gearbox and stood on a 40-ft. steel tower."

S-Challenge, Batavia, Illinois.

Vestas V47 statistics: The wheel is 155 ft. in diameter. The steel tower is 165 feet in height. In the Lubbock winds this turbine, rated at 660 kilowatts, will generate over 800,000 kilowatt hours each year. The wind turbine is big enough to completely power the entire museum complex.

Vestas V47 (2005), Vestas 
American Wind Technology

There were even windmills in the
sidewalk!

"A 10-ft. 602 Aermotor pumps water from a well that is 127-ft. deep. The water flows through a pipe to the large stock tank just south of the Flowerdew Hundred Post Mill."

The large stock tank is filled with koi
and other fish.

An awesome gate by the Flowerdew
Hundred Post Mill.

The two huge museum buildings that 
house the exhibits.

It's fun to explore and marvel at the huge windmills and the wind turbine on the 28 acres. New-to-us windmills included the twin-wheel windmill from 1925 and the Flowerdew Hundred Post Mill. 

"A unique monopole tower (1920) was built for an Aermotor windmill by Ted Russell of Vera, Texas. He had enough money to buy the windmill, but not the tower. He used an oil field pipe for the monopole tower which had a bend in it to clear the sucker rod." (I took a video of this monopole tower working, but it didn't turn out well. You'll just have to imagine it.)

Twin-wheel (1925) from the Twin Wheel Windmill Manufacturing Company in Hutchinson, Kansas:

"The twin wheel is a very unusual American windmill. It has two 12-ft. wheels that counter-rotate and drive a single sucker rod. Advertised as 'pumping twice as much water from a single well,' these were powerful when working." In fact, an inside video about these windmills said that one small town installed a twin-wheel and within six hours it sucked their well dry!!!

Twin-wheel windmill.

"Flowerdew Hundred Post Mill (1621): 

The Flowerdew Hundred is a post mill that was given to the museum by the David Harrison family of Oakville, Virginia. It was on the site where the very first windmill in North America was erected by colonists in 1621. The mill Harrison built was a modified reconstruction of that earlier 1621 windmill. 

"The Flowerdew has two sets of grinding stones with each stone weighing 4,000 pounds. One pair is for corn and the other pair grinds wheat. The wheel is almost 60 ft. in diameter and is turned to face the wind with the smaller wheel at the back. Two sets of blades are cloth covered and the other pair have moveable shutters. The Flowerdew Post Mill can take care of itself in all West Texas winds."

Flowerdew Hundred Post Mill.

Our outside tour was complete. 

The inside exhibits: Upon entering, we paid our admission. The docent came out from behind the counter and handed us a free, 64-page book titled, "The American Windmill Museum," copyright © 2018 by the American Windmill Museum; The Donning Company Publishers. Brief passages can be used in connection with a review. I have put those brief passages in quotes in my blog.

Bob had a phone call for work at this point. It came in just as the docent started telling us about the museum. He sat on a bench and took the call while the docent told me all kinds of interesting facts about the museum. 

First, he oriented me to the different exhibits: G-scale (garden-scale) model train layout throughout the first building, the different types of windmills produced by many different companies, where to find the mill stones in the museum and where the mill stones came from, miniature houses, and another connected building with lots more windmills, as well as bird nests made from wire. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Then he explained some of the unique wind turbines in the hall in which we were standing. There were four we discussed. The first two wind turbines (Japan and China) are very flimsy. They do not hold up well in Texas and Midwest winds.

1. The Zephyr from Tokyo, Japan (2011)

The Zephyr from Tokyo, Japan is the
light green wind turbine above.
WinPower from Ningbo, China is white.

2. WinPower, Ningbo, China (2011)

Contrast #1 and #2 above with #3, the wind turbine created by Coy Harris's company, Wind Engineering Company in Lubbock, Texas. You can see how much bigger and more sturdy it is. It can hold up in our windspeeds.

3. WinGEN 28kw Wind Turbine. Coy Harris, who owned WinGEN, is now the Executive Director of the American Windmill Museum. The driving force to start up this museum was Billie Wolfe, a professor of home economics at Texas Tech in Lubbock who had a passion for windmills. She worked with Coy Harris to expand the collection of the museum. After Wolfe's death, Harris secured this 28-acre site and raised funds to pay for the initial collection and erect two large exhibit buildings.

WinGEN 28kw wind turbine
from Lubbock, Texas.

This turbine was restored by Coy F. Harris, and John Baker, the Chief Engineer for Wind Engineering Corporation. The controls on this exhibit were designed and built by Lubbock Electric Company.

The design of WinGEN.

4. There was one last wind turbine in that exhibit and it looked completely different. I asked the docent about it. Apparently, the Honeywell Windtronics wind turbine was a dud. "This machine never produced a single watt of electricity."

Honeywell Windtronics
Wind Turbine, Windsor, 
Ontario. (2012)

I finished chatting with the docent and started down the row of windmills by manufacturer. I'll post a few so you can see what you will find when you visit here, or at least know what you might be missing.

• Sunflower Windmill, Sunflower Windmill Company, Topeka, Kansas. (1890)

The Sunflower Windmill.

• Dempster #10, Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company, Beatrice, Nebraska. (Manufactured between 1914 and 1925).

Dempster #10.

• Australian windmills - see photos below bulleted list.
• Metters
• Baby
• Ding Dong
• Early Ding Dong
• Alston 33

Metters, Baby (Australia).

Ding Dong and early Ding Dong
(Australia).

You get the idea.

What windmills do: I knew that windmills pumped water for different purposes and also ground grain. New knowledge was imparted when I found out that some windmills (called wind chargers) early on were also used to charge batteries and generate electricity. During World War II, some ingenious soldiers on the Pacific Islands in WW II created a marine wind washer in 1944 from scraps found on the island to make a washing machine!

Pacific Island windmill
washing machines
during WW II.

I was blown away by this!

While Bob was still on his phone call, I watched a video that showed how a huge wind turbine is shipped and installed on a wind farm. The wind turbines are immense. You have probably seen them being transported at odd hours of the day on secondary roads or freeways. You can't miss them!

Bob finished his phone call and we each explored on our own for about a half-hour more in the main building. Windmills were not the only subject. I will fill you in on more of the surprising exhibits in this building and the second building in Part 2 for today.

To be continued...