@herbgarratt That's exactly what an old ships' engineer, now in his 80's, told me, and once turbo chargers for big conventional diesels became reliable, the Doxfords and their kin passed into history without too much regret from the engineers.
@douro20 Those are the RUBBER hoses conveying cooling *water* to the upper pistons, and sometimes, the ****ing hoses woud come off their bottom (plate level) fittings, and if you were REAL quick, you could run up the ladders, grab the hose end flailing around like a demented viper, ignore the stream of HOT water spraying all over you, shove the rubber hose back on its fitting, and then tighten the Jubilee clips up a bit more to KEEP the bloody things where they belonged. Fun, eh?
The only time at sea I ever woke up was when #1 unit broke a side rod top end bolt, and the upper piston was in the process of starting to climb out of the bore, allowing the transverse beam to bash the bottle guide tie bars....97 times a minute. In my jeans, I went down below, to find the 2nd (duty) engineer in the frig flat, charging the gas, UNAWARE that it was happening! I tapped him on the shoulder, semi-dragged him out, and pointed up from the middle level (Port) to what was happening.
When they where running these machines let running in the Wilton Fijenoord factory it was not allowed to do chirugerie in the hospital near by the Wilton Fijenoord shipyard because you could feel it in the hospital and surrounding of the shipyard! For my Wilton Fijenoord museum I picked up the Doxford model which was made by the Wilton Fijenoord school and was missing for 22 years! 🙂🎉🎊
As an engineer on these six leg Doxfords, they worked well but by todays technology a bit too large and outdated,, good fun though and the sound was like music, mv Baharistan, mv Turkistan, Strick line uk
Hej! Zou ik deze video kunnen gebruiken voor mijn youtube kanaal? Ik deel alles over de zeevaart. Van vrachtschepen uit 1960 tot nu, olieboor platformen, vissersboten, binnenvaart etc. Natuurlijk geef ik credits naar de eigenaar van dit beeldmateriaal. Ik kijk uit naar je antwoord. Groeten
Doesn't this take me back. My first ship was fitted with a 5 cylinder Doxford. Average speed 97 rpm. We slept next to the engine room casing. After a couple of days you got used to it. Only a change of speed would wake you up.
@douro Fortunately it was caught just in time. Five (max .... ?) more minutes and it would have been beyond catastrophic. The stuff of horror movies, but for real in this case.
The big breakthrough for Doxfords (just after Queen Victoria died) was having NO cylinder head. The head was initially a very troublesome and fracture prone bit of kit, until metallurgists came to the rescue. Brilliant in its day, but well and truly Old Testament gear.
