On 03/22/2017 05:16 PM, Vic Smith wrote:
On Wed, 22 Mar 2017 16:05:39 -0500, philo wrote:

On 03/22/2017 03:11 PM, Vic Smith wrote:
On Wed, 22 Mar 2017 11:20:53 -0500, philo wrote:

Right now I'm reading the book "The Sand Pebbles" a Navy tale that took
place in 1926 China.

Though the author, Richard McKenna give a great explanation of the
ship's engine I really wanted to see the thing so found this:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xsfEv0v5bA


That's a small one. I was a watertender (CG license lingo for
boilerman) on a couple Great Lakes ships with triple expansion steam
engines. The Standard Oil "Indiana" and Cleveland Tankers "Rocket."
There were a number of them steaming circa '71.
I think they were all scrapped by the '80's.



The one in the video, if it's like the one in the book was from about
the year 1900. The story takes place in 1926 and the engine is described
as obsolete.


The Rocket was built in 1913. Towed to Spain an scrapped in 1974.

Amazing how little I know about steam engines.


That's because you had no reason to be around them.
I worked at US Steel south works in 1968 and ran into all kinds of
machinery with the year 18** on their castings.
Probably my most memorable work there was when I was part a crew ( I
was a millwright helper in the Power division) that reactivated a
number of blast furnace gas engines used to generate electricity.
They hadn't been used in decades, but electric rates had spiked, so
they decided to get them going. Those engines were probably built
about 1905.
Double acting piston with a cam turned generator at the other end.
Each one was about 60' long. There were about 20 of them in a massive
building.
Used a 1000 lb open end wrench to loosen or tighten the shaft gland
nuts. Riggers world build a platform over the cylinder and 6 or 7
would get up there and swing the "hammer" onto the wrench.
One overhead crane would take a strain on the wrench, and another
crane would suspend the "hammer," which was a 10' steel rod weighing
maybe a ton and a half.
We felt like a lilliputians running back an forth swinging that
hammer. Funny enough that we were laughing.


As to the Great Lakes, I've lived in Milwaukee 80% of my life and love
the Great Lakes...to me all the other lakes in this world are just puddles.

A friend of mine who works at the airport said a guy came in from New
Jersey and asked him what ocean was that out there.

Yep. The Great Lakes are something.




One other thing I recall from some of the paper-mills is that they were
using those large old-style dynamos