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One for steam fans


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Guest catweazle (Banned Member)
Degsy, after I posted, I noticed he was on the forum, so obviously not still in the bilges. :-D

Wasn't him it was me,he's in Russia.PW.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Back to the photo, where is that engine? It looks like it is plumbed in to run so must be a museum somewhere. Is it a picket boat engine as it looks like the right size?

 

Steve

 

I cannot remember the name of the vessel it came from, it was a HMS something and is out of a pinnace. Wonderful word that eh? 'Pinnace' has a nice ring about it to my ears. Dont know what one is by definition, but I bet it was good :) The observant ones will have noticed the screw at the rear, rather than the bucket at the front ;)

It is on loan to the steam museum at Markham Grange in Yorkshire. Most of the content are mill engines but there is a sprinkling of marine ones too. Including one half of a naval paddle tug, the other half is in another museum somewhere I think. Bit careless that. They fire up every first Sunday of the month, fuel supply permitting.

Next time I'm over there I will take a pic of the 'details' board and post it in this thread, for those who are interested in such things.

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Thanks, I shall look forward to seeing the notes.

 

In my youth, I used to act as engine or boiler room hand (greaser or stoker to you nautical types!) on the Royal Naval Museum's steam picket boat 198 which had a very similar engine by Mumford. The main difference was that it had a wet sump and the mechanism was closed in which helped things along greatly. In typical steam boat fashion, it had a huge low-speed propellor. If I remember correctly, it was 2' 9" diameter but at 13 knots, it was doing only 120rpm. At that speed, the out-of-balance forces were so much that the bottom of the boat used to bounce and you could feel the deck plates moving up and down. If on the engine, I would throttle back a bit until it stopped as I really didn't want the engine falling through into the 'oggin with me after it! Oh, happy days.

 

198 can be seen in the mast pond on the rhs as you go through Unicorn gate into Portsmouth Dockyard.

 

Steve

Picket Boat.JPG

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I'm pleased to see it being looked after. The trouble is that it absorbs so much money and labour. I spent a day on the brasswork and ended up with green hands and by the following day the shine had gone again. An old marine engineer once said to me that 'a metal is something that corrodes in contact with sea water' and I think he was right!

 

Steve

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