Torque to me.

A billion lbs. feet of torque here, generated by this is one, of four, steam engines that pumped Leicester’s sewage from the city up to Beaumont Leys from about 1860 until it was no longer big enough to serve the city in 1964. This week I was privileged to get the full lantern lit tour, even right down into the basement, surprisingly free of odour. There is something irresistible about the slow, rhythmic, almost sexual, movement and hissing of these great engines that has a lasting schoolboy appeal. It looks so powerful that if one were to shove a tree trunk in the gears and stop it, the World would probably spin off its axis.