As my username suggests, I have my background in shipping. Started my professional life on the river Rhine as a deckhand, later first mate and captain. Later in service of the city of Amsterdam (portauthority, ferries). I worked with several engines of that time and still have a weak spot on them.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to join on a trip with the tugboat Elbe, formerly owned by Smit tugs in Rotterdam. The boat was first in service in 1958, later sold to the US Coastguard, later to Greenpeace and since a few years back home as active museumship.

With the help of many volunteers the ship has returned in it's original state including the original engines. It is driven by two 6cylinder Smit-M.A.N. engines of 1750Hp each. The two engines are connected to a shared transferbox, from there a single propellorshaft is driven.
The two engines can be engaged or disengaged via a pneumatic clutch, each engine can be started in forward or reverse. When manouvering there is one engine running forward and the other in reverse, whatever is needed the respective clutch is engaged. Once out on the trip both engines can be started forward to get the full 3500 Hp.

When not pulling the ship sails on one engine, for obvious reasons. I made a short vid of the running engine (partly with my phone) to give you an idea of these engines of the '50s. I thought I might share my weak spot.

https://youtu.be/sPEghZqLcxE

That's some engine, don't fancy doing the tappets though, so is that the sort of tug that guides the big ships in ?

The boat's the same age as me and in a lot better condition!
I've never really thought in depth about how the single prop designs would have been engineered to give instant forward/ aft changes. Two engines and a clutched transfer box. Very elegant and "proper" engineering.
Nowadays of course, all done with azipods and variable incidence props. Not half as much fun!

It doesn't have tappets though, all manually adjusted on top of the rockers. When adjusting the engine must be cold and set the play at a certain value. These massive heaps of steel stretch a lot at different temperatures, therefore the operating temperature is set at 55ºC. They were used for the long haul, towing dredgers from Japan to the US, crossing the Pacific with an average speed of 5 knots...

The is a sistership also, the former Clyde now rebuild as a yacht. There is a vid 'Elbe meets Clyde' on youtube when they met in Rotterdam.

Yes, there old style tappets, manually adjusted with feeler gauges. Been a while since I've played with any, certainly a powerful bit of kit, I like the older boats, they knew how to make them back then 😁

Just to be clear, as the owner and main admin of this site, this post is hugely and completely offtopic and I want to see more like this.

Thank you Gordon, if not I'll accept the punishment.

145 rpm! it make a rover v8 look racy! :)
Great noise though, love it. I spend a lot of my spare time messing about in canal boats, some of them have some great old engines, but obviously nothing like 1750HP :)

That is music to my ears... I love the sound of a finely crafted piece of engineering at work!

I could do another thread with some of my model railroad engineering that I've worked on in the past (mostly animating models that were never designed to 'acutally' work.. but I'm not going to hijack Ferryman's thread with my links...

I'm about to post some more pictures of what might turn out to be Rover V8 engine porn, but maybe after that I'll put a thread up about my other hobby that I haven't even looked at in about 5 years now!

Marty

Tony, were you ever involved with the Volans by any chance? Around 1989?

Richard by that time we were involved in a hydrofoilproject for a fast ferrieconnection Amsterdam-IJmuiden if that's what you mean. We knew they were for sale in Riga and we worked out a businessplan, I even did a testrun on the IJsselmeer with such hydrofoil, capable of 80 passengers and equipped with two Russian aluminium V8 engines. A private party went away with the plan though, probably faster decisionmakers.

No, the Volans was a Dutch salvage tug that took part in an operation I was involved in, just wondered if our paths had crossed in the past.

No I'm sorry, doesn't ring a bell. Did a search, this is the one that comes up:

That's the one, it went out to deal with this one.......

Unfortunately for me, I was on the shore crew so didn't get out to join in.

Ha Ha, that's the Mi Amigo, 199 Radio Caroline.

No it isn't, it's the Ross Revenge, the one that replaced the Mi Amigo which sank in 1980. Ross Revenge was an amazing vessel, 980 tonnes displacement of ice strengthened former deep sea trawler, she even survived being beached on the Goodwin Sands where most ship break their back. Stayed there for a few days before being floated off again. She lost the 90m mast in a storm sometime around November 1987 after it had been weakened in the storm of 15th October 1987 and later used a wire T aerial strung between two smaller masts. She's now been restored with a smaller version of the original mast installed and is moored on the River Blackwater estuary in Essex. She's open to the public as a museum to the days of the pirate ships and I suspect smells a bit nicer than she did when I was out there in 1985..

Still can hear The Fortunes, in the Amsterdam docks we have our Veronica

145 RPM.....?? Fantastic, a mighty engine with (almost) a 'Heartbeat' !

As for Mi Amigo/Ross Revenge/Caroline etc I recall their MW fade well...... and that the BBC had to invent Radio 1 in 1967 !

Hmmmmmmm.......
Interesting that so many P-38 aficionados have a maritime heritage? A trend? A vast conspiracy?
That is one very fine looking Tug!
When I decided to give up the boats with flappy bits and strings you had to pull at 4 AM, I looked at doing a restoration of an old coastal tug that was slowly dissolving in NZ......Too much work and waaaayyyyy too much $$
Love the Waveney Lifeboat we ended up with though.
Oh, yea, Narrow Boats ROCK as well!

If you can cope with the curved balls that boats throw at you, anything a P38 tries is child's play.