The goal of my channel is to document the operation of steam ships while there are still a few in service in the US fleet. The art of steam will be lost in the next few years and I want to document as much as I can in the slight overlap of the steam age and internet RU-vid age. When I'm off the ship I'm going to do fun videos of my hobbies and projects
So if the 900lbs/sqare inch steam went through a leak with the leak diameter being a 10th of the size of 1 inch...... while its also flowing and not bottled up, it wouldnt be less than 90 pounds of force?
@@stevem2245 you are in the ballpark. The old sea story was any superheated leak would cut a mans arm of and cortorize the wound. 90 psi is basically a warm compressed air nozzle. I’m sure larger volumes would burn flesh but not likely to cut anything
Fascinating machinery. I have spent my whole career working on big airplanes, but steam ships are on whole other level of complexity compared to a plane. Below decks is a bewildering array of machinery that must take years to learn to operate.
6:57 there was nothing wrong with that head gasket. It's normal for the ridge there to be missing. Usually it stays behind on the block when you pull the gasket. The gasket is the MLS style, which stands for "multi layered steel", that means it's several sheets of steel gasket sandwiched together. Overall, nothing looked out of the ordinary on that cylinder head. If it was passing coolant, the combustion chamber and piston would be squeaky clean. It's called steam cleaning. The water evaporates, and steams the cylinder clean. All three of those combustion chambers look identical, black and carbon. The way they should be.
That’s the skewed view of social media. Engine didn’t run, pushed up driveway. only change was head gaskets. Engine has run for years since. The camera doesn’t always pick up everything
@@steamman9193glad it worked out for you I have a 2014. Not my daily so it is in good condition still. But if this happens to me I would rather rebuild a 5.7 same gas mileage anyway easier engine with more aftermarket support.
Thank you for this very informative and easy to understand video, always fascinated to learn about the older steam plants that we don't see much of today. I'm guessing these turbines must be a lot more quiet than diesel engines?
Significantly quieter than diesels. We had a sound study done when I was onboard and the only place requiring hearing protection was in the diesel generator spaces. This ship had a caterpillar power box added and an emergency generator room
One of the most impressive machine room I've seen. What is the logic behind the alignment of the 2 electric motor on the same shaft ? Redundancy ? Power ? At least this removes the need for a heavy gearbox,were they paralleled. The controls must be tight. thanks
@@halimturqui5007 this was a reaserch vessel. And had quite a bit of acoustic considerations in design. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it or it was a redundancy thing. It was an SCR drive so very noisy power supply
Another reason for very high voltage is to reduce the amount of loss when transmitting power over such a long distance. It’s the same reason why the powerlines you see on land the big metal towers run at hundreds of thousands of volts; to reduce the loss between the powerplant and the substation which transforms it down to a lower voltage that’s usable in your home.
I have an E maxx with the short arms and short chassis and I don’t think they sold it with the short arms the 3906 model has the long Arms so I think the .15 t maxx was there only model that included the narrow stance
@@CJTJBI1 I’m not sure what you mean. Mine was the original model, short chassis, narrow wheelbase. It had the 2 speed transmission with dual brushed motors.
Find a super heated steam system and try that. I saw what a super heated steam leak can do. I arrived on my first ship in November 1990. My first ship was the USS Iwo Jima LPH-2. At the end of October 1990 the bonnet of a main steam valve blew completely off filling the fire room with super heated steam in a matter of seconds. Was so glad I wasn’t there to see what it did to the 10 guys who were killed. Did see what it did to the fire room since I was part of the crew restoring to get underway December 23rd for Desert Shield.
I’ve had 900psi leaks straight out of the superheater, they still don’t cut a broom. The incident you are referring to wasn’t catastrophic because of the superheat but the volume of steam that leaked
It would be hard I don’t have a steam ship To work with. They all had different personalities too as what was more critical. I ve had plenty of tubes blow you learn how long you can run each size hole for, sometimes it’s a long long time, like weeks. Other times it’s minutes. I’ve had wires melt and kill a boiler. Other boiler still cruising fine. I’ve had wind box fires all kinds of crazy failures, not sure how I’d ever re create them
@@user-bx3hz6wl5m that’s weeks worth of discussion and classes I don’t see that as practical. In simplest terms possible need water add water. Need fire add fire. When in doubt call for help experience is what knows what to do. I’ve had tubes blow out where I have 15 minutes to shut down a boiler and leaks that I could manage for weeks. You have to know your equipment
$0, I made this when I was building my channel requiring views for Monetization from RU-vid not the manufacturer. It’s a sincerer and honest review I found a product that had no good English or scientific anything and made a video. It cost me $5 many many years ago and I believe it did work in that vehicle. It definitely does not in my newer vehicle
Hi, I have bought this train Last week and IT cant move in curves, so If you can send me some short Videos or a list of parts I need to buy to get this train motorised and in curves, than you Help a lot, otherwise I will send Back The train because only as an Decoration IT isnt usefull For me, thanks a lot
Hi, ist this The onliest Video you have. I am in Germany and I have bought The Jie Star Big Boy but it doesnt go in The curves of The lego system and The secound The model isnt motorised. Can you make a Video of only to motorised your model? Thanks man. Sierk
I’m not happy how it runs so I’m trying to get it right before I make another video. 4 M motors isn’t working well. I had to delete the front carriage and remove wheels from the coal car
I'm curious as well, been out the navy a while and this is making me think back on ring bus safeties hard. I know they won't be the same but I'm thinking some of the principles might be. I know trips would be designed to open breakers as close to the fault as possible to prevent taking down any necessary and still safely operating equipment. So if the hr1 and lr1 breakers to transformer 1 tripped it was prob an issue with the transformer? You would want this to trip before it could cause a problem that would trip up stream which we see as it does not cause the main hv breakers connecting the generator to the bus, dgr3 and dgr4 to trip. It could be a fault on the lv bus but in theory there would be breakers down stream closer to sub circuits and pannels supplying them and equip that should have tripped before tripping the transformer hence breaker pannels. That and tripping both to a piece of electrical equip was usually an equip fault if I remember correctly. But the crew manually closed hr1 and lr1 putting the transformer back on line. And in less than a minute dgr3 and dgr4 trip. This is also when smoke starts bellowing. could this be under volt or over throttle trips bc they could not supply some insane load bc of a fault in the reconnected transformer? I seem to remember there is a brief time after large breakers close that the trip is not "rearmed" bc an initial transient could re trip them. Again I'm almost 20 years out from my operator days. I deff get that insufficient fuel would cause rpm and torque to reduce resulting in and under power trip of then generators but would that cause all the smoke? Or was all that smoke dgr 2 coming on and loading hard? They also never say if dgr 2 shuts down or any other trips occur once they change to transformer 2 and dgr 2, but if it was fuk and the dgrs are on common fuel lines it should have dropped after a spell. If it was in the lv or hv bus it would have also eventually re tripped as the fault (if not in trnasformer1) would have not have been isolated. Im also surprised and curious about immeadiate actions why not split the bus and bring both transformers online bc there are some basicish (at least how we ran) indicators it might have been thr transformer. Also dont know how much civilian ships are set up and capable of runing split bus. I do get why, sort of, they never tried to restart the main engine. It doesn appear that they kept main power restored for any significant time so that they could. At 0125 they tripped, 0126 and seconds first restoration, then 0127 second trip, dgr 2came up but it took 30 more seconds to restore power to 440v bus using transformer 2 mere sends before impact.
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about since too if there was a piece of failed electrical equipment like a transformer it should have been discovered by now. My thought is there was an electrical load not seen since the accident and they haven’t been able to reproduce while stuck
OK, I have a theory on the black smoke before the collision. In the blackout days before, the #2 generator was shut down due to closure of a damper. In a four stroke engine, if the exhaust is gagged, it will either blow up the exhaust piping, or the exhaust valves will float. The back pressure pushes down on the tops of the exhaust valves, and can make them float if the pressure is high enough to overcome the spring closing force. This can cause contact with the piston, and this can either hole the piston, bend the valve, or break the valve. If they caused damage to one or more cylinders and then didn't test generator #2, they could have sailed with a broken engine on generator #2. If they later tried to start generator #2, the disabled cylinders would put raw fuel into the exhaust, which would be seen as black smoke.
@@steamman9193 Absolutely! I've been very curious about the smoke. This could be one possible explanation. We'll have to wait until they look over generator #2.
@@sirenbleu 2 stroke diesels at least modern ones almost always have exhaust valves and ports for intake. But we were discussing generators which are almost always 4 strokes. There is no record released of the Dali main engine attempting to be restarted
Steam man i have some thoughts i am curious of your opinion. I think the TR1 differential protection relay may have opened the breakers on both sides of the transformer as it is designed to do during an internal fault of the transformer. Immediately the crew should have tried to close in TR2 instead of TR1 again. Now i know that the diesel generators, unlike the main propulsion diesel engine, generally have gear driven oil and jacket water pumps. However, this jacket water is often cooled by either a salt water or a freshwater cooling loop driven by pumps that probably come off the LV board. So i wonder if the second trip happened due to the LV board being without power for some time and hese pumps not running causing the disel gens to overheat. Also i believe the fuel oil supply pumps are off the LV board so maybe that was the result of insufficient fuel pressure. I imagine the ntsb are looking at the fuel pressure as well as the cooling water temp trend graphs as well. Finally i am curious to ask why the crew doesnt run in an open bus tie arrangment while manuvering? It seems much safer to have gens on both sides online of the HV bus aith both the LV and HV ties open and both transformers energized. I worked on drill ships and we have 3 main electrical 11kv busses and our ties between them all were always kept open. Lastly, there should be some tie of ATS switch employed for the transformers that will automatically switch to the second transformer in a loss of power. What are your opinions on all this? Thank you i love all your videos chief
So I have doubts there is anything wrong with anything on the switchboard and the need to change anything with it. To put it simply if there was a definite fault there the crew would have immediately identified it to the inspectors as that would be a no fault of their failure. But we don’t have that and by now we should have if it existed. I’m not saying it isn’t possible just not likely
Two questions: 1) does the BT motos start across the line, Wye Delta start or soft start? 2) You referenced hydraulic head tank and Pumps. Does that mean the BT is variable pitch prop>
suggestion: Next time get an online copy of the report. You can highlight it and then just scroll through it when reporting. Will be steadier and easier to do, ie www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA24MM031_PreliminaryReport%203.pdf
I’m not a marine or electrical engineer but am curious: why not run all four main generators and close LR1, LR2, HR1, HR2 to have redundancy at least while you're in restricted navigation? Would this possibly damage things or is it not done simply because it burns more fuel than needed and this stuff is usually so reliable that extreme redundancy isn't needed?
More reason than not to only run the number of generators required. Cooling, contamination, turbo charger loading. Etc etc. I don’t truly know why both transformers aren’t used I have never worked on a system like they have but I’d guess it has to do with synchronization or the inability to synchronize transformers
@@steamman9193 the fuel supply stopped the same time the lights went out while the main engine kept turning causing the smoke cause the fuel wasn't lubing the piston or pistons, the timing is suspicious as well as the loss of power 24hrs previous that is new information, not to mention the gas pipeline the dollie has hit underwater that could have been disastrous, wouldn't a breaker have to be manually turned back on going to each transformer and have the contact points been inspected ? At the same time a train overpass is laying on the deck of a barge in Galveston
@@guytelfer1353 you need to go back through the report. The main engine stops and there is no record of it re starting. I’ve never heard of an engine that could billow black smoke when it’s off. And I don’t know where you are going with the rest of it
@steamman9193 someone mentioned a couple weeks ago that the main engine doesn't stop turning right away even if it's not getting fuel or loses electric because it takes a long time to slow down and stop and the propeller has come to a stop before restarting the motor, I'm just sharing conversations but I really don't give 2 shits 1 way or another any outcome to the situation it just looks like you clowns need all the help you can get especially when Biden turned his back on the situation after saying he was going to pay for it obviously he didn't know what he was saying again.
Steam man, thank you for taking the time to respond to so many comments. It made reading through the comments useful. Others, please read through the comments. Most questions and comments have already been addressed. Note, most of seem to suspect the type of problem that we had to deal with in the past. It will be a wait to see the final report.
Let me join in here; really appreciate that chief Steam man takes the time to reply to many questions and also makes `hands-on´ videos showing engine room & machinery. Bit of a pity that YT software team doesn’t spend bit more effort by e.g. introducing more than one indent level which would help to structure conversations & threads in better way (and possibly avoid recurring questions 😉). But of course, primary YT target of the `comment section´ is to simply create `clicks & likes´ rather than `deep-dive forum discussion´… It’s remarkable once it comes to YT clips dealing with technical topics, there’s always a certain portion of comments where one can notice also experts sharing their knowledge & experience, which I really appreciate and enjoy. I could imagine this must also have been the spirit during the early days of the Internet (with DARPA being one the initiators as far as I know, possibly also other scientific institutions). Like here for the MS Dali incident, I believe it’s beneficial to share experience from maritime experts as well as pro’s from corresponding fields like US Navy chiefs, land-based power grid and aviation, plus safety experts. It’s important to take both mechanical and electrical perspectives into account. Yes, partly it’s speculating and also controversial due to different background & requirements from regulations. But best case everyone can pick up some beneficial insights & learnings, and if there’s differences, trying to understand why and where do they come from.
Great analysis. My hypothesis - First outage occurred because of TR2 differential protection operation for a transient fault in the transformer. Full electrical power was restored to ship by the manual close of the transformer breakers after about 60s. The emergency generator is expected to automatically start and come online with 45 seconds of the initial power outage but did not appear to do so. The emergency generator came online (and disconnected the emergency LV bus from the main LV bus) sometime after power was fully restored. The main generators LG3 & LG4 tripped causing the second (partial) blackout because of a re-occurrence of the low fuel pressure issue. As you say - lots of questions for the final report to answer. Give a thought to the engineering crew trying to manage this issue in their control/switchboard room. They would have been plunged into darkness, alarms going off all over the place and unexpected behaviour occurring.
Would they have been in darkness? My only experience with sea-going vessels was in the US Navy and we had lanterns all throughout the ship so that if we lost electricity those automatically came on (main electricity caused the lanterns to be open-circuit; when power was lost the switched closed and the lanterns came on almost instantaneously). Not sure how different the requirements are for a commercial motor vessel but I would have imagined something similar would be at play.
That isn’t my area of expertise but my understanding is bow thrusters are only effective at low speed. I don’t believe the status of it’s running is in this report to anylze
I have found no way to message or email you. So please forgive my being off topic. I think you would find the workings of the Mark-one-able [M-1a] gun fire control computer found on WW-2 destroyers mechanically fascinating. Covered in steel with portholes, about 4'w x 3'd x 3'h, and started by spinning very small crank. The thing actually ticked. Computation was by metal disks separated by a ball bearing. It was Fair shooting at socks towed by prop aircraft. Even attempting a lock on a MIG was a joke. but not a funny one when 10 miles off Cuba escorting one of our spy ships located in Havana harbor just after the capture of the USS Pueblo by N Korea. I am enjoying your sharing and wish you well in bringing together the age of steam with the age of RU-vid. Also motorizing that 4-8-8-2 Big Boy.
This low sulphuric fuel sounds like JP-5 used in military jets. The same type similar fuel is what are trucks on US highways are burning and has been a questionable fuel source on these vehicles for excessive wear of engine parts, that’s my 2 cents 😊
Am I correct that 1] You have indicated that parts of the fuel transport system to the generators are or can be dependent on the lubrication in the fuel itself for long term operation? 2] If #1 is correct my suspicion that a cylinder or ball valve could expand then partially jam thus reducing fuel pressure is valid? 3] #2 being valid, design, age, maintenance, or exceeding published non-lubrication limits are all possibilities? The thought arises from my past in USN M-1a gunnery fire control system maintenance followed by a career as a Methods Analyst. Are such limits published and accessible, or is it an "Oh! Everyone knows that." situation. I have checked out ". . . injection control unit, problems from bad fuel" and "Diesel electric marine propulsion" on your Steam Man site. They have helped, but a video project illustrating this or similar shipboard fuel supply system, pointing out components that may be designed as fuel lubricated only, or partially fuel lubricated as you have done with the electrical would provide, I think, a good basis for understanding what you are communicating about the fuel part of the NTSB report.
I plan on doing a high pressure fuel injection pump video when time is right. Unfortunately the report lacks key information on zeroing in on the true cause. Basically the fuel injection pumps I’m focusing on are solely lubricated by the fluid they are pumping hence their susceptibility to wear and getting stuck and are an hours based overhaul or replacement item
As a Chief engineer, my thoughts would be......as pointed out, there is something wrong with the fuel system setup on the vessel.... wrong lining up or forgetting to line-up after maintenance could be a factor.... which in turn can lead to low fuel pressure in the system....tripping of DG breakers may be due low frequency where the tolerance maybe just 5%....low fuel leads to lower RPM of DG which leads to low frequency which may trip the breakers...
So what are your thoughts on this is related to securing the bow thruster and possibly a 3rd generator, then the other generators not being able to adjust to the load? I know it’s hypothetical but it fits very well
@@steamman9193 it's possible... unless we have the fuel system lines to guide us, we will have to wait for full report... but I strongly feel that something went wrong with frequency.... only reason being that the DGs were running, both blackouts were breakers tripping....why?? .
@@steamman9193 Using the opportunity to have 2 knowledgeable Chiefs in the conversation here; and just for my understanding since I’m quite interested in following all this tech-talk: I’d assume the bow thruster has been used for doing the 180° turn when leaving the pier. So does `securing it´ actually mean bringing it to a stop by controlled reduction of the motor’s RPM (thus also reducing load on the 6600V HV bus accordingly)? And 3rd generator might have been connected during the time when the bow thruster has been active to support with additional electrical power? More generally wrt manoeuvring using bow thrusters: will it make the ship turn around its centre of gravity (which is expected to be somewhere in the middle), also causing stern to move (I would expect this to certain amount except the situation when it is still fixed due to the pier)? Or will stern remain almost constant?
@@NRZ-3Pi10 I can’t comment on the maneuvering characteristics it’s outside my world. Every bow thruster ship I’ve worked requires 3 generators. Or is a separate diesel engine, but Dali was electric. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done with 2 especially due to Dali s very large main generators I just don’t have that information
Given the criticality during maneuvering watch, I wonder if there needs to be two fuel pumps and two water pumps on separate buses being fed by two different generators. That way if there's a problem on one bus it doesn't effect the other bus.
That’s a far more complicated question than on the surface. You would have to add additional components to regulate flow that would be subject to failure themselves so would it be better? Also in this case it would not have prevented the accident so now we are solving a problem that didn’t exist. I don’t believe the core failure exists with the busses or switchboards
I am not a marine engineer, or indeed an engineer of any sort - just a pilot who is very interested in how these systems work and the various factors at play in how this accident unfolded. One of the minor things that has bugged me is this description of 6600v to the reefer containers, just doesn't seem right. So I Googled it- all the results I can find show standard reefer containers operating on 3 phase 440v, which makes more sense to me. So - my guess is the NTSB simplified the HV bus feed to reefer containers, and they are perhaps fed through their own dedicated T/R, or pair of them, from the HV bus. The alternative is that it's just an error in the preliminary report, and they are fed from the main LV bus, but are just pictured in the wrong place. And, as commented above, it does seem odd to me that the standard elec config in critical phases of the journey is to have everything tied together rather than split.... But I'm not a marine guy, so I'll defer to those with expertise on this matter.
@@cpazdzior so I don’t have the drawing but it’s likely the container reefers have their own transformers, it’s a better option. grounds in the marine industry are a big problem since the ship itself is grounded. There is a lot of focus on redundancy in the switchboard from non marine people, but we don’t have any indication that there was actually a problem with the switchboard. My theory is the problem is with the generators and they experienced multiple failures
Not a marine guy but I've got to wonder about clogged fuel filters. If the pump is running and operating properly the next question is the condition of the filters. Thanks for the review, Chief.
Definitely an area to be investigated but I doubt the problem as the regular heavy oil they burn is much dirtier, plus each engine should have its own filtration so more than 1 becoming a problem at the same isn’t very likely
@@steamman9193 , I figured there was likely some separation and/or redundancy but I'm not a marine engineer. Thanks for the response and clarification.
Sal recommended you. I very much appreciate you sticking to the known facts. In the late 70s and early 80s I was on active duty in the Coast Guard at MSO Paducah. I was the investigating officer. I do not have even 1/100 of your experience. It will be interesting to see what started the chain of events that (proximate cause) that lead to the root cause. The engineering spaces aboard ships like the Dali are so complex. Filling the facts between the main engine shutting down and what caused it is going to involve a lot of analysis of the interrelated systems. Finding which cause effect events that are in the proximate cause chain to the root cause and those that are not will drive the investigators crazy.
I'm not a marine engineer. I'm curious what design requirements or compromises led to the coolant and lubrication pumps being on different electrical busses. If the HV bus is required to run the main engine anyway, why are the coolant pumps on the LV bus? Also, are the engine and pump control circuits powered by the HV bus or the LV bus?
I really don’t know why they did it for sure. Higher voltages require smaller wires aka save money on construction costs. Personally I wouldn’t put too much effort into any of this as I am highly suspect that there is nothing wrong with the switchboard and breakers at all. It’s far more likely there was a fault with the ships generators and the breakers opened because of that. Having different power or switchboard arrangements wouldn’t have changed that and the accident still occurred. That’s just an educated theory for now though until the final report
Thank you for posting video. Wondering if engineering team didn’t inadvertently introduce an issue during earlier power outage in port? Was the electrical system returned to the normal setup / lineup once the issue was resolved or was something locked out? PS - Think generators 1, 2, 3 and 4 are service by individual day tanks and require electrical power to run the fuel pumps to keep that day tank full. Wonder if second outage was just caused by fuel starvation?
Most likely all the generators get their fuel from a single service tank, but with redundant electric feed pumps. And no indication so far this was in any way related to the event, there should have been alarms associated with and discrepancy’s
