View Single Post
  #127  
Old 10th December 2017, 08:56
Tony Skilton New Zealand Tony Skilton is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posts: 20
Got to agree Malcolm - the sound is definitely different! I have only heard them on rail traction.
Just clearing out all my marine records & notes and found an item on high-speed technology relating to the Deltic development.
As said, the engines were originally developed as a marine engine to replace the high speed & very explosive petrol engines in MTBs & MGBs.
But the roots go back to Hugo Junkers in 1889, when he built his first opposed piston diesel engine prototype. By 1892, at Dessau, he had his first double-piston production engine ready, and took out Patent No. 66961 to cover his work. Junkers later granted their licences to Doxford, Fairbanks Morse, and many other manufacturers.
Napier took out the licence in 1930 to build the opposed-piston Jumo 203 & 204 engines, which they called the 'Napier Culverine'. However, work ceased when war broke out, but then Napier was asked to produce a light-weight, compact diesel for marine use, and came up with the idea of joining 3 x 'Culverines' together in a triangular configuration, and so the 'Deltic' was born.
Although appearing to be a very complex 2-stroke, it was in fact a very reliable engine, with 18 cylinders & 36 pistons. A smaller version of 3 banks of 3 cylinders/bank was also produced for power generation for the minesweepers. The Junkers Jumo 205 and 223 engines share many features of the supercharged Deltic engine, some of which produced up to 1838 Kw per engine, with the later turbocharged versions producing up to 2280 Kw each.
The last 5 newly-manufactured Deltics were built in 1982, but Napier (later incorporated into Paxman, then English Electric, then Rustons), spent much time rebuilding these engines well into the current century.
Skilly

Last edited by Tony Skilton; 10th December 2017 at 22:26.
Reply With Quote