Giant ship engines, especially of the piston type are amazing machines. Even in today’s high-tech world, their construction is mind blowing, so when we were tipped off to an awesome collection of photos and information showing the engine building process in the 1950s, we were smitten. Taken in England at the William Doxford and Sons engine works, the photos concentrate on the construction and machining of the humongous crankshafts that perform the hard work in the huge engines.
What we love about the photos are the machines doing the work. They are giant scaled up lathes and drills which look like they were plucked from a movie set or something. They are literally cartoonish in size. The cylinder liners are big enough that three grown men could stand on each other’s shoulders inside them. There’s photos of the crank counter weights being flame cut out of steel that has to be close to two feet thick!
All this work is being performed by dudes in lab coats and there ain’t a computer in sight. Gearhead history gets our crank spinning pretty good, but stuff on this massive scale really punches the buttons of our greasy, Bangshifty soul!
Thanks for the tip Chris!
LINK: William Doxford and Sons Engine Works photo collection
As a young child my dad would take me to the machine shop he interned at while studying engineering at U of Cincinnati. It specialized in building and repairing steam engines for the Ohio River trade. It was “land of the giants”…I’ll never forget it.
Not a pair of safety glasses or a hard hat in sight!