NORTH EAST MARINE ENGINE BUILDERS

Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Mon Apr 22, 2013 8:45 pm

Don't know, his diaries record that he frequently visited the "spa" at Hexham. He might have absorbed aliens during bathing!! Don't know what his death was caused by. His diesel engineering, whilst that technology was still in its infancy, was outstanding. Take a close look at the design of the lower pistons and con rods for the submarine engine and you soon realise that he was a remarkably gifted engineer. He did of course have William Hamilton Purdie as assistant. He also seems to be an outstanding engineer, criticised, unfairly I think, for the recessed fillets on Doxford crankshafts that were blamed for many of the failures that did the reputation of Doxfords a lot of harm.
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Wed May 01, 2013 6:29 pm

Doxfords very first experimental engine. After one month of tests it was abandoned
6.jpg


The Prototype P engine on test at Palmers Hill in the late 1950s. hundreds of marine engineers will have been taught on this engine at South Shields Marine College. After being dismantled in the recent past, the Anson Museum took it to try and save it from scrap. No one in the North East had the will or desire to do anything about it. Indifference "rained" and everyone got wet.
Doxford 67PT1.jpg
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Wed May 01, 2013 6:53 pm

Four "modern" Doxfords. Almost modern because the last Doxford engine was built in 1979, but these are some of the last Doxford Engines to be built.



DOX 67J4CP.jpg

A Doxford 760J4 CP (constant pressure turbo charging). If not the last engine, it is exactly the same as the last one that went into the Canadian Pioneer at Port Weller in Canada. Ironic that the last Doxford engine had to cross the Atlantic to be installed.
The last British ship with a Doxford engine went into the last cargo ship built at Thompsons, Badagry Palm. It sank off south Africa so the last ship from Thompsons and the last Doxford engine for a British ship were save the indignity of the breakers torches and are still in existence in part. That would make a great wreck dive.


Doxford 58JS3.jpg

A Doxford 580JS 3 engine. One of which still survives at Beamish Open Air Museum, though sadly the public are no longer very welcome to see it.





DOX.24.1985.EngineBeingErectedinPit.jpg

A Doxford 760J4 in the erecting pit at Doxfords






Doxford 67J6 Engine onTestBed.jpg

Red hot Doxford. Left this discoluored just for fun. Doxford 760J6 on test at Doxfords
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Wed May 01, 2013 7:10 pm

Doxford 760J 6 crankshaft.jpg

Doxford Crankshaft being built up at Doxfords crank Shop. This was a "fully built" type where each pin and journal was cooled before being fitted into the heated webs. When the temperatures normalised, the holes in the webs contracted, the pins expanded and the shrinking was how the bits were held together. There were instances where the shrink "slipped" when the engine was in service with catastrophic consequences proportional to a snapped timing belt in a car. One infamous incident was with a 760J8 engine. The resourceful but unwise engineers on board jacked the fore end of the crankshaft to prevent it turning then attempted to use the engines turning motor to turn the after section and realign the slipped shrink. The shrapnel from the exploding turning motor persuaded the hapless engineers to abandon the exercise.
A "semi built" crankshaft was made with some of the pins and journals as one piece forgings that were then similarly shrunk together in webs.
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:54 pm

Not easy to get pictures of Doxford steam engines, so I posted this one. All the steam engine drawings at Doxfords Engine works were burned by a man who would later become the chief draughtstman there, but as a boy, he dare not defy his boss who told him to do it, it just wasn't done in those days.

dox steam egie.jpg
Doxford steam engine
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sun Jan 08, 2017 7:18 pm

Karl Otto Keller a Swiss submarine engine designer was sent to Doxfords from Vosper Thorneycroft to design a submarine engine for the Vickers K class submarine in World War one, using the Doxford opposed piston design. Up to then Doxfords had not built a "diesel" engine, it was still in the research and development stage. He proposed four, six cylinder, opposed piston engines, driving two propellers. The prototype shown here went to the admiralty for approval but was never commissioned. One of the problems was crankshaft manufacture. Krupps the German engineers apparently far better at diesel crankshaft building than the British. The prototype went to The City and Guilds Institute in London, but its whereabouts and fate thereafter are unknown. The design was applied to the two cylinder generators used in the first Doxford "OIL" engined ships as well as ships built at Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Pensylvania for Henry Fords (Ford Motor Company), two Doxford powered ships Henry Ford 2 and Benson Ford. Doxfords insisted that their engine was not a "diesel" engine as Rudolph Diesel used blast injection whereas they used solid, High pressure injection and so insisted that their engine were "OIL" engines, not "DIESEL"
5.jpg
DOXFORD PROTOTYPE SUBMARINE ENGINE
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sun Jan 08, 2017 7:27 pm

The Vickers K class submarine.
12.JPG
VICKERS K CLASS SUBMARINE
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sat May 26, 2018 11:28 pm

Picture of a North Eastern Marine Doxford engine on test.
I have a list of 424 Doxford engines built on the Tyne:
Hawthorn Leslie: 132 engines
North Eastern Marine: 113 engines
Richardson & Westgarth: 33 engines, some were Hartlepool built some NEM when they were one and the same.
Swan Hunter (Neptune): 95 engines
Wallsend Slipway: 51 engines.
Additionally Vickers Armstrong Barrow are credited with 26 engines but there is some uncertainty about how many of these were Tyne built and how many were Barrow built.
These were only Doxford engines but Sulzer, Werkspoor, Gotaverken and turbines were also built in large numbers. A reminder of thousands of unassuming people whose work has never been appreciated by the public, but who worked with accuracy and skill day in, day out and not only on the Tyne, but throughout the country.
Since posting this, I've been through Tony Wickens list and Joe Clarks tables and found that Hawthorns completed 147 Doxford engine contracts, nine of which were twin engine installations so Hawthorn Leslie built 156 Doxford engines in total as well as being partners in the Seahorse project.

NEMDOXFORD-1.jpg
NEM DOXFORD
Last edited by fitter on Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sat May 26, 2018 11:42 pm

A familiar sight to men of a certain antiquity. How many hours must have been spent looking at these.

engine stand.jpg
Control Station
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Re: NORTH EAST ENGINE MARINE BUILDERS

Postby fitter » Sat May 26, 2018 11:52 pm

The Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock, Pensylvania, Doxford engine, details Posted in 2013, for the steam yacht bought by Henry Ford who had it lengthened and commissioned this unique twin bank Doxford engine with aluminium columns, for it.

sialia 4.jpg
Doxford engine by Sun, Pensylvania
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