2008 Week 43 in Review
October 19 to October 25, 2008
The Duwamish, completed!
Last week I finished rebuilding the Duwamish's air compressor, but didn't have time to test it. This week, I ran it for a few hours while I cleaned up the engine room a bit. It worked great! Before the rebuild, it basically didn't work at all because the air compressor's valves didn't get a seal and therefore didn't compress any air. When I turned it on after the rebuild, I had one tank at 450 psi in about half an hour - way better.
This will also make our next Engineer for a Day class much easier to set up for, since it won't take so much effort to get enough air pressure to start the engines. For one class, we had to run an air hose from the Arthur Foss over to the fireboat so we could start the mains.
Tire-kicking with Brian
Occasionally, Old Tacoma Marine leads a tour of old boats with old engines in Seattle. This week, after Brian brought three drums of oil down to the Arthur Foss (thanks, Brian!), we drove all around Ballard on the grand tour. We visited the Northwest Marine Propulsion Museum to see Mike's little three-cylinder Atlas-Imperial and the Washington that was never installed in a boat, as well as the Ruby XIV and its Washington. We then visited Dan Grinstead's tug Lorna Foss with its direct reversing Atlas-Imperial (the only model with a sliding cam), and then went over to the Angeles, a project tug with a DMG-6 Enterprise.
Jason, who owns the Angeles, hopes to sell the boat to someone unafraid of woodwork. I hope he finds someone, since the tug would make a great cruiser.
After this whirlwind tour, it was back to work - mostly in the office this week, as we're getting ready for the Catalyst to arrive for her winter engine project.
"New" tugs and engines on the website
Old Tacoma Marine Inc has located another few heavy-duty diesel engines: an Enterprise in the CN Tugboat #6, another Enterprise in the tugboat Lake Superior, another enterprise in the tugboat Edward H, and an Atlas-Imperial on display at Antique Powerland in Brooks, Oregon.
The CN Tugboat #6 ("CN" stands for "Canadian National") has a DMG6 Enterprise rated for 575 horsepower and is owned by the S S Sicamous Restoration Society, which operates the Okanagon Inland Maritime Heritage Park. Until 2006, it was owned by the City of Kelowna, but it sounds like they had no idea what to do with an old tug and finally donated it to people who know boats. The Society has three other old boats, so I hope that they know what they've gotten into:
We couldn't find as much information about the Lake Superior or the Edward H, but according to the Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping News, they're both WWII tugs of the same class as the Maris Pearl and the Red Cloud and all the rest, powered by the big Q Enterprises. They've both been based in the Great Lakes for several years, have been bought by new owners, re-located to the Duluth area, and are being put back to work. If anyone has any more information - or engine pictures - about either of these tugs, please let us know.
Finally, the Antique Powerland folks have a four-cylinder Atlas-Imperial on display at their grounds in Brooks, Oregon:
According to user Bluedisk, who took this picture and uploaded it to Wikipedia, this engine came out of a tugboat. If anyone reading this knows more about the engine, please let us know!
As always, send us any updates, corrections, or other heavy-duty diesels that we haven't "found" yet.
On the subject of preserving old stuff
Last week and this week got me thinking about old engines in museum collections again. Mostly, I'm very happy to see museums accepting engines into their permanent collections, but I see some downsides to it. The biggest problem is that museums don't necessarily understand how to care for a diesel engine. They're used to preserving artifacts by making storage mounts and keeping them in a climate-controlled space and not letting anything damage them - which works great if the artifact is a hat or a map or a sea chest or something like that:
Engines are different, though - they have to be exercised and maintained in order to preserve them. If you let an engine just sit, even if in a climate-controlled room, it will slowly destroy itself. The oils and lubricants degrade over time, which then allows rust into the unpainted parts of an engine. Even worse, if it was ever seawater cooled then the cast iron pieces have salt permanently stuck in them, which will rust an engine from the inside out. If you just let the engine sit, then the interior parts of the cooling system will fill up with rust and then start pushing out. Eventually, the engine will literally explode - very slowly, but the rust will push its way out and break the castings.
The way to prevent this from happening is to exercise the engine as often as possible. This means lubricating everything and running it if it still runs, or barring it over if it doesn't. Doing all this will also let you inspect the engine, clean it up, and hopefully notice any problems that need more attention. I know that actually using an artifact like this flies in the face of a lot of museum theory about conserving the original fabric of the object, but since it's impossible to preserve it without exercising it, I think that museums need to widen their definition of collections care if they have engines in their collection.
Exercising an engine also creates more opportunities to involve the public with the artifacts. A static engine quickly gets boring to all but the most ardent enthusiasts, but a working engine that the public can watch and listen to is interesting for a lot longer to more people. Running an engine also means that a museum can hold repair workshops and engineering classes, which provides yet another layer of "interpretation."
With all this in mind, I propose that all museums that own an old diesel at least occasionally run the engine, to both preserve the moving parts and also to give members of the public more opportunity to understand 1920s diesel technology.
