The Corliss Comes Alive! & Special Lecture

The Corliss engine will run at 11:30am and 2:30pm. A special lecture “The Snow Corliss Engine at NMIH” by NMIH Historian Mike Piersa will take place at 1pm in the Barnette Education Center. 

For more than a decade the museum’s staff, volunteers, and community partners worked to restore our massive 115-ton Corliss steam engine to working order, 105 years after being built by the Snow Steam Pump Works in Buffalo, N.Y. The engine was used by the York Water Company and pumped eight million gallons of water per day. Today the engine, the most powerful operating water works steam engine in North America, is a focal point of the museum’s 13,000 square foot exhibit space, where it has painstakingly been mechanically restored to its former glory and repainted its original color. Join us as we operate the engine and learn more about this fascinating piece of industrial history from the museum’s historian.

Included with Museum admission.

The Snow Corliss Engine at NMIH
NMIH historian Mike Piersa details the 115-ton stationary steam engine at the center of the Museum. This illustrated talk tells the history and operational restoration of the engine, built in 1914 by the Snow Steam Pump Works in Buffalo, N.Y. for use at the York Water Company in York, Pennsylvania, USA. Once capable of pumping eight million gallons of water per day, the engine is now most powerful operating water works steam engine in America.

This lecture is presented by NMIH Historian Mike Piersa. Mike graduated with a bachelor’s in history from Moravian College and a master’s in history from Lehigh University. He has been with NMIH for over 20 years and has been instrumental in the research and interpretation behind the museum’s collections as well as the restoration of historical industrial equipment both at the museum and at outside facilities. His quarry machinery preservation work resulted in him becoming an MSHA Certified Miner and taking leading roles in important restoration and preservation projects across the country, including the Bangor Quarry Hoist Project, a collaboration between the Totts Gap Arts Institute, the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, and the Borough of Bangor, PA. Mike has presented across the country on his work with industrial heritage and in 2019 published The Big Green Machine, a short book detailing the history, preservation, and operational restoration of NMIH’s 115-ton stationary steam engine.