Steam power is an almost forgotten aspect of our industrial past, being long superseded by the efficient internal combustion engine, and now, New Age technologies like hybrid motors. Trinidad was an early entry into the steam-engine arena, when Lacourse Mandhillon installed one to power the crushing mechanism in his sugar factory at Pointe-a-Pierre in 1806.
Steam engines were complex and dangerous to operate since they involved the creation of much water vapour, which had to be contained under very high pressure, being released in controlled quantities to provide kinetic energy for various purposes.
The most extensive application of steam engines was in the sugar industry, which was the mainstay of the economy until the dominance of oil in the 1930s. Intricate and powerful systems were installed in factories, both large and small, to replace animal, wind and water power; the most potent units being brought in by the Colonial Company in the 1870s for Usine Ste Madeleine, which was the leading sugar refinery in the British Empire.
Steam was also being used for transport. In 1864, the Cipero Tramroad, Trinidad's first railway, replaced its mule-drawn trucks with a small tank engine called the Forerunner. From 1876, until it closed in 1965, the Trinidad Government Railway (TGR) utilised steam locomotives, as did the numerous private cane railways that fed the refineries. As early as 1888, Spring Estate in Couva employed an innovation known as the traction engine to plough its fields. These looked like locomotives mounted on huge steel wheels and were basically steam tractors.
In order to provide technical support for the steam engines of Trinidad, a downstream industry developed, which supplied both mechanical services and technical expertise. Large operations, like Usine Ste Madeleine and the TGR, had their own in-house steam repair facilities, but the smaller outfits had to rely on specialist machine shops like the East End Foundry, near the TGR workshop on South Quay (PTSC headquarters today), which was founded in 1878 by FT Bruce, former TGR chief engineer and Englishman James Inglis.
East End Foundry became the largest engineering works of its day, capable of every type of metalwork and fabrication, from casting of replacement parts in bronze to the manufacturing of steam boilers. Their portfolio also included work on the various government steamboats, including the Island Steamers, which connected the remote, roadless areas of the island from 1818-1928.
The coming of the oil age, from 1914 onwards, saw a gradual replacement of steam engines in light industry with internal combustion units fuelled by oil, and manufactured by companies like RA Lister of England. The oil industry itself used huge, wheeled steam boilers in its early days, when wells were drilled in virgin forests in the south. These were used to power drilling apparatus.
Steam engines gradually disappeared from the industrial scene. In 1956, Caroni Ltd replaced its last steam locomotive with a diesel unit; and with the closure of the TGR in 1965, the age of steam in Trinidad ended.