Kempton Steam Museum

Kempton Steam Museum stands beside the A316 Country Way near Sunbury-on-Thames, a former waterworks built in the 1920s to lift Thames water into London’s reservoirs. Two vast triple-expansion steam engines, each over 19 metres tall and weighing more than 800 tonnes, dominate the engine house. Ordered by the Metropolitan Water Board and made by Worthington-Simpson, they once pumped nineteen million imperial gallons of water daily to Cricklewood, Fortis Green and Finsbury Park. The engines were the last working survivors when they retired in 1980, and one has been restored to full working order. Engine No 6, renamed The Sir William Prescott, can still be seen in steam on selected weekends, while Engine No 7, called Bessie, remains as a static exhibit. The engine house also contains two steam turbine pumps, one now motorised to show its inner workings. The site once supplied drinking water to the north, east and west of London. Visitors walk beneath the towering engines and along the adjacent two-foot-gauge railway, the Kempton Steam Railway, which offers short rides on certain days. The museum occupies the old waterworks buildings, and the flyover of the A316 crosses the site just beyond the engine hall. Films including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and several Titanic productions used the pumping station for their scenes.