The maintenance info I got was from a Lykes Lines 1st engineer who was a customer of mine, when I was in college. His ship was the last Steam Bulker under US flag, All it did was deliver grain to Russia, and come back. He had been on that ship since he was a wiper and could tell anyone anything they needed to know about it. Lykes used to love sendinding its Diesel ships to Russia as due to the slow unloading time they had plenty of time to do maintenance while the Russians unloaded the grain. aparently it took a while. They could as he put it chip out they diesel residue out of the heads. He described it as fun to park next to a ship of his company and tell them no he wasn't gonna help them as he was smart enough to be on a steam ship. According to him they had more work when underway then when they were docked and the diesel guys had it opposite.

T-Dog and Major

I'll hand the answer over to Hobbs.

I would say lube and cool running and no gearbox the steam engine wins but diesel would be better sealed.

I never worked on Steam ships. 

BTW Chipping diesel residue out of the heads might well have been a dry dock job for us.

BTW Flattop is doing an aircraft carrier thread on WW2

The workings of a triple expansion steam engine, and Flash doing a check.

Jimbert

 

   

Jimbert

 

Thanks I thought a triple expansion engine worked out of a single cylinder like the  Puch Doppelkolben

 

 

Yes forget spark plugs and scavenge crankcase

And I also thought some were a single stepped piston. I sit corrected, thanks Jim.

 

Diesel Flash

I thought the quadruple was the final fling. Have you got one of those drawings of a turbine?

As you know Flashman, the animated drawing I posted, is not true to scale. I found a better representation, which should bring back memories for you.

Jimbert

 

 

This engine, made possible by advances in metalurgy that led to stronger materials, used the same steam three times through a series of cylinders. The steam would be fed at high pressure into the first cylinder and be exhausted, at a reduced but still considerable pressure, into an intermediate cylinder where it did its work again. Upon exhaustion it went into a third (low pressure) cylinder where it used the last of its energy up.

This is the basis of the engines that powered the old trawlers. Coal fed into the boiler heated the water which produced steam.This the entered the high pressure cylinder and on through the intermediate and low pressure cylinders. The only change to this configuration was when the coal was replaced by oil which was burned to produce the steam. This last picture shows the final configuration of the triple expansion engine although there was one variation in which a fourth cylinder was employed making a quadruple expansion engine.

Hey, JimBert

Major will love these when he returns. Thanks! lovely pix. 0056 A here Hitting the sack.

Cheers

Bottom pic there is the router on your PC isn't it?

Ooohh goody gumdrops, engines! Y'know, there's something slightly mysterious and menacing about steam engines. More than any other kind, they seem to have a life of somekind....all sounds bull, but you know what I mean and if not, wait until you stand alongside a slightly hissing traction engine, you always feel it's got it's eye on you.

Flash, your 121. Never seen that engine before. The fuel is travelling around the crank, but..... where are the transfer ports and why only one plug? You'll have to put on your best explanation head.

Major It's a single cylinder with 2 pistons.

LH port is shown with black arrow middle pic RH port RH pic.

The middle wall separates the 2 firing chambers.

 

JASUS! An' you on holiday an' JimBert an' me up all night gettin' the holy fathers to draw this