QE2 Engines (diesel-electric powerplant)

[skilly56]

Engine Room - continued

No. 1.3493   Aft engine room - looking across the turbochargers and charge air coolers. Large pipe on the left is engine exhaust pipe - the compressing of the air charge in the turbocharger generates a lot of heat so the air then has to be cooled before being admitted to the cylinders. The large casing on the right is the top of the cooler, with cooling water pipes attached on top.

No. 2.3494   Aft Eng. Room - looking across the top of the 5 main engine turbochargers.

No.3.3495    Electric motor driven cylinder lubrication pump (as shown at the start of the movie clip I posted). This pump injects oil into the cylinder liner to provide lubrication for the piston and rings.

No.4.3496    View between 2 of the 5 engines in the aft engine room

No.5.3497    Looking across the aft end of the aft engine room from port to stbd. Engines 'Gulf', Hotel', and 'India'.



Cheers
Skilly

[Clydebuilt1971]

Hi Skilly,

Thanks very much for your photos and explanantions in this and other threads. It is good the get an idea of the scale of QE2's machinery!

You mentioned Waverley in an earlier reply - she is diagonal steam triple expansion 2100ihp with grease lubricated piston rod slides (the slippers referred to before) with all steam ancillaries. Steam supplied by 2 x Cochrane Thermax IV package boilers modified for marine use (I think this is mostly down to the arrangements of the fire tubes to minimise the chance of them being uncovered when the ship is in a heavy sea)

Cheers & keep these posts coming!!

Gav

[cunardqueen]

Amazing photos!!! Are we to assume that all we are seeing was  fitted during the 86/87 refit?
 Just how much (if anything) is left from before 1986 ?
The photos do go someway to show exactly what a major refit it was.

[Twynkle]

Hello Skilly

These are amazing!

You can almost feel the heat, and smell the smell
at the same time as being almost deafened!

Thank you, they are such good things that you keep giving us.
The first time you saw them - did you smile too?!
Cheers
Rosie


PS to Myles
Rob's done a lot about the context of these here:
http://www.roblightbody.com/liners/qe-2/1987_Refit/

[skilly56]

OK, time to continue. Just a couple more in this area of the machinery spaces:

No. 1.3498   Shows why it is not a good thing for engine room personnel to be over 6' tall. Taken at the aft end of the Aft E.R.

No. 2.3512   Shows the camshaft side of 'engine 'Charlie'. Note the monorail above (ie, the 'I' beam with the yellow & black Blazeon. This is fitted with heavy wheeled bogies from which chain blocks or 'turfer' blocks are hung. This lifting gear is used to remove heavy items from inside the engine (e.g. a camshaft section, bearing cap, or connecting rod). Yes, the connecting rod
is unbolted at the joining face just below the piston skirt, then comes out the crankcase door, not out the top of the liner like most engines. Because of this, the deckhead over the top of the engines is much lower than seen over most other engines, and would probably have been a major reason why these engines were selected. Not many others of this output would have fitted.

No. 3.3514, 3515 and 3516. Three views of the Aux Machinery Room - contains air conditioning equipment, air compressors, aux systems pumps, domestic F.W systems, etc.

[skilly56]

Continuing the theme on the lifting gear, if you go back up to the first two photos showing the engine tops, you will again see large 'I' beams extending from one side of the engine room to the other, at the forward and aft end of the engines (they again have the yellow & black Blazeons so they stand out). Parked at the stbd side of these beams is a mobile gantry crane which is electrically driven. It can be moved anywhere across the engine tops, and also driven the length of the engine. It is then used to lift off the cylinder heads and then lift out the pistons, and any other heavy components that need to be moved.

I'll downsize some more photos after dinner.
Cheers
Skilly

[skilly56]

1.3482   Part view of the Engine Control Room, looking towards port side aft.

2.3483   Shows 10,000 volt bus from the main generators to all services that they supply. Shows which main circuit breakers are closed (ie, which generators are actually connected to the bus), any earth faults, which machines are ready to come on line, whether anti-condensation heaters are on or off, the state of the domestic services transformers, power consumption to the propulsion motors, etc, etc.

3.3484   Stabilizer controls – which hydraulic pumps are selected for duty/On/Off, controls to extend/retract the fins, which gyro is selected (the gyro senses the ship’s roll and then angles the fins to counteract that roll). No fins were extended when I took this shot.

4.3485 – Chief engineer Paul Yeoman explaining how the various systems operate.

5.3486   Generators & prop motors control and monitoring panel. Shows which engines are running, available, and not available. Also engine cooling pumps controls & temperature controllers, which steering motor(s) are operating. Gauges show generator outputs, prop motor torques, Megawatt outputs, shaft speed, shaft torque, and total percentage power output.
The bottom panel adjacent to the telegraphs has the controls for the controllable pitch propellers, CPP pumps, and Mode Selectors (ie, Bridge or Engine Room Control for the propeller pitch). The ECR telegraph levers are in the Zero Pitch position, but control is from the Bridge Telegraph levers because the ship is actually travelling at 24 knots.
The motor/shaft instruments are reading:
12.6kNm torque and 21 Megawatts at each motor. 51% shaft torque, at 144 rpm and 70% power, 5 engines running.

6.3487   Central cooling system controls & instrumentation. Each engine room has it’s own fully independent central cooling system to handle just the diesels in that room. If a major failure occurs in one engine room you’ve still got all the diesel generators in the other engine room to get to port on.

[Twynkle]

Mighty Thanks to you, Skilly

These have got to be far better than the 'conducted tour' that so many passengers craved!
 
Because the ER alleyways are so narrow, is there a one-way system?
And I wonder too, how do the crew communicate with each other when 'hidden'in either ER - if they need info, advice, help etc?
Is there just one OOW for both ERs?

With the lifting, and all the heavy stuff -somehow it seems incredibly precarious - Little wonder that injuries are easy to come by!

[skilly56]

Hi Rosie,
No, no one way systems here - you just go where you want to go. The space between the engines is far greater than on some ships I've been on.
Both E.R's are controlled from the one ECR, which is occupied by numerous engineers who will come in, check something or get some info they need to continue a job, then disappear out the door again. BUT,  a senior engineer had to be in here at all times.

Hey Rich, did the ship have a Control Room when it was powered by kettles???  Hadn't thought about that one before.

Changing a cylinder liner at sea was probably not required at sea on QE2 - you shut down the faulty engine and started another one. I have had to change a couple of liners at sea, whilst slow-steaming on the other engine. Everything has to restrained or tied to some stout part of the structure while also being lifted out, moved sideways, then lowered to the deck and restrained permanently until it is refitted. If you lift off a half-ton cylinder head with the crane, it will do it's best to fly around as the ship rolls and smash people and equipment - and it does happen.

Communication - when you've done the job enough times, hand signals normally suffice, and maybe a few hits on the engine room plates with a hammer will get someones attention if you cannot see them on the other side of the engine. Trouble is, we seem to be getting deafer by the day for some unknown reason

Cheers

Skilly

[Chris]

Thanks for the fantastic posts Skilly!!

[Beardy Rich]

Hey Rich, did the ship have a Control Room when it was powered by kettles???  Hadn't thought about that one before.

Hi Tony, some fantastic photos there. Thanks for posting them... it's so much easier looking at parts of the engine room than trying to explain what it was like in there.

Regarding your question... yes, there were 2 control rooms down below. A Main Control Room (MCR) and a Turbine Control Room (TCR).
The MCR was where the current ECR is now and the TCR was in the engine room proper, just aft of the bulkhead to the original boiler room.

[skilly56]

A Question for the Engineering Team (ie, for the "ET" people, not the "IT" people for a change).

I have a query on the stated MAN 9L 58/64 engine weight. On a handout that was distributed by the chief engineer's department, and was also posted on the Cunard 'QE2' website information pages, the stated weight for each main engine was "about 120 tons".

Having been around marine engines for a little while, the figure never did quite 'feel' right, so last night I went on to the MAN website for the 9L58/64 engine and found the actual engine weight is 208 tons 'without the flywheel'. The bed plate is an additional 50 tons, so, adding in the 2 ton flywheel, then the generator weight of approx 70 tons, the total weight of each diesel electric genset as installed on QE2 is around 330 tons.

I then checked my copy of "The QE2 Refit", REBIRTH OF A QUEEN", produced by Marine Propulsion International in May 1987, in association with Lloyd-Werft, and MAN B&W. This publication gives the engine weights of 220 tons each, generators are 70 tons each, and the 17 metre long bedplates that everything sits on are 50 tons each

Carol Thatcher's book on page 179 refers to the "220 tonne engines". I am sure this lady did her research thoroughly.

How did the Cunard blurb get it so wrong for so long? Did nobody actually read it or query it?

For the technophobes, here is a bit of the info I found on the engine manufacturers website:
  Cylinder liner weight                          1178 kg each
  Cylinder head weight                         2200 kg ea.
  Connecting rod weight                        962 kg ea.
  Fuel injection pump for ONE cylinder      154 kg
  Gudgeon pin weight                            163 kg ea.
  Engine length (exc generator)                12.6 metres
  Engine height                                        5.14 metres
  Coolant vol to fill engine                        1240 litres
  Lube Oil - minimum                                295 litres.

For Myles, to answer your question above about how much new machinery was installed, this gives the total weight of the 9 new gensets only as approx 2,970 tons. But, the total weight of ALL the new machinery installed was 4,500 tons, being new propulsion motors, props & propeller shafts, shaft bearings, 2 new oil-fired boilers, 9 new exhaust gas boilers, all the pumps, systems, coolers, condensors,  evaporators, separators and whatever else added up to another 1,500 tons.

Rich, thanks for the TCR/ECR info. Just looking on page 36 of Carol Thatcher's book it shows them both. I should look before I ask, but then, it is much more sociable to ask is it not?

And Gav, thanks for the kind words. You have probably realised that I just love getting into the nuts and bolts of things. When my son was posted to the QE2 in Jan 2007 I was very happy that he got the chance to sail on her. I didn't realise that he was going to arrange for his parents to sail on her as well. Some engineers in the wardy probably thought I asked too many questions about 'the job', but that interested me as much as the people who operated the ship. QE2 felt so "right" to be on that I came off her, have spent 20 months revalidating my tickets, and am now back at sea again myself.

Cheers

Skilly

[Twynkle]

A Question for the Engineering...
 QE2 felt so "right" to be on that I came off her, have spent 20 months revalidating my tickets, and am now back at sea again myself.

Cheers

Skilly

Hi Skilly,
That is Very good news - about your ticket! 
Think you and QE2 must have got on really well together
As they say - 'It takes one to know one!'

What interesting detective work, re. the engine size and weight etc
This is definitely The Place To Be!

Congratulations - and Cheers,
Rosie

[Twynkle]

....Hey Rich, did the ship have a Control Room when it was powered by kettles???  Hadn't thought about that one before....

Cheers

Skilly

and

....Regarding your question... yes, there were 2 control rooms down below. A Main Control Room (MCR) and a Turbine Control Room (TCR).
The MCR was where the current ECR is now and the TCR was in the engine room proper, just aft of the bulkhead to the original boiler room.

Regarding the cutaway...
Post #12 on here:
https://www.theqe2story.com/forum/index.php/topic,166.0.html

Here's another of Rob's cutaways that is interesting in the light of seeing Skilly's recent images above.
http://www.roblightbody.com/liners/qe-2/1987_Refit/engine%20room%20model.jpg

[Rob Lightbody]

Absolutely fantastic stuff, thanks so much for posting!