360 Views of the Olympic class reciprocating room

[Stevefury]

Hello, this is my first post here. Thank you for allowing me to participate in your forum.
I've spent the last year or so working with the good folks at Titianic-Model.com to create certain technical areas of the Olympic class ships in 3D computer graphics. Certain people were super helpful but I don't have permission to post their names.
A member here was asking about the technical areas of the ship so I thought I'd share.

I've been a Titanic fan for about 50 years, mainly about the technical aspects of the ship but have never seen a steamer myself and have had a lot of help from more knowledgeable folks to create these images. They were produced using plans of all 3 ships. Certain aspects of the room are conjecture such as the bridge telegraphs, placement of the engineer desk etc. My main goal was to create an engine space as close to original as possible but don't take every detail here as authentic. For example, I believe the pipes would have been wrapped in a white consultative material.
The electric winches on the floor level are the wrong type. I just haven't updated them here.

These were produced using NewTek's Lightwave 3D, a 3D modeling software.

Be sure to click somewhere on the image(s) and drag to look around.
These images are copyright but you can be viewed on a viewer such as Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR etc which is exceptional as you will literally be standing within the room looking around.

If folks here find these interesting then I can post more images.
Thanks for looking.

Center of the starting platform:
SP1

Floor level, aft:
AFT1

Catwalk at the main steam cut-off valves:
CAT1b

Catwalk against the forward bulkhead:
CAT1

Catwalk at the base of the 2nd set of ladders:
CAT1c

Cylinder head level:
CT1

Pumps port side:
PORT1

Pumps starboard:
STARB1

I have also completed a similarly done model of boiler room #1. May be doing the turbine room, I haven't decided yet.
I have some really cool animations of the room above which will be processing for quite some time before posting on YouTube.
Thanks for looking.

 

[Stevefury]

Please let me explain a few things which may be confusing on my images below.
Below are early renditions of the starboard engine under construction. Please understand that the port engine is really just a mirror of the starboard. The port engine contains more controls than the starboard engine. As an oversight, I had included the port controls on this starboard engine. In the end it was not an issue as I went back later and deleted the ones in error.
Man that sounded crazy.

The controls which do no belong on the starboard engine, but only on the port engine are (1) the emergency steam cut-off levers, (2)the turbine change-over lever on the reversing gear and (3)the turbine start wheel. To make things more confusing, there's an extra control wheel located on the port engine near the forward drain cocks which is connected to an auxiliary steam relief valve.

There's also a couple errors, which at the time I hadn't corrected yet. (1) The auxiliary steam pipes hasn't been installed yet (Runs the reversing gear & emergency start valves) and (2)The barring engine is placed on the wrong side:

Forward end:


After end:


A closeup of the control rods:


Below are the pipes on the forward bulkhead. The pipes are color coded. The 360 views also show these colored pipes but the coloring is extremely light.
Red-Steam supply, both regulated and unregulated.
Green-Steam returns
Blue-Feed water


These are the pumps in the room:


Engine controls:




Someone had posted somewhere else about starting these engines.
There was no central steam starting valve as portrayed in Cameron's movie. His whole room has little resemblance to the Olympic class liners.

If both outside props were to be started at the same time, a person(s) would be required to attend each engine and start them simultaneously.
I'm taking a lot of things for granted here- (Please correct my errors)

My best guess is they would start the process at the forward and aft drain cocks. They would open them to release any water which had condensed within the cylinders or else risk blowing a head.

The forward/reverse lever would be set to its position on the reversing gear.

The crankshaft would not be able to start rotation if it happened to be stopped on top or bottom dead center of the high pressure cylinder. It would have to be moved off of that position and so one of the emergency start valves would be opened to force steam through a different cylinder to change the crankshaft position.

Then the maneuvering wheel would be turned to allow a low steam setting through the engine. The drain cocks would be closed after a few revolutions. When more speed was required then the main throttle wheel would be opened to a certain degree and the maneuvering valve closed.

An Aspinall governor is used on each engine to keep it from over-speed (about 78RPM) and to shut it down in case of a rapid acceleration such as a propeller shaft breaking etc. The governor is coupled with the HP cross-head as shown on the lower right corner of the control rod image above.

A cycle counter is linked to the forward cross-head and used to calculate RPM.

When underway then the turbine start wheel would be moved to direct steam through the turbine which will cause it to rotate. Then the changeover lever on the reversing gear would be operated to change the main engine steam output(s) from the main condensers to power the turbine.

Please let me know of any errors in this..... Thanks!

 

[Harland Duzen]

May I just say Congratulations! These 360's Images are Amazing and is the first time I truly been able to imagine the Reciprocating Room! Well done and may I wish you a happy 2018!

 

[Rancor]

That is some excellent work Stevefury, well done and thanks for sharing.

The level of detail is amazing, especially all the pipework. Did you have a piping diagram or plan of some kind?

Also what is the difference between the maneuvering valve and the throttle valve?

*EDIT*
You could also consider getting in touch with the Titanic Honor and Glory team. Your work would probably be invaluable to them considering the level of detail you have gone to and one would hope it would be possible to come to an arrangement of some sort.

Well done again.

 

[Stevefury]

Thank you for the compliments.
I had started the project with publicly available documents such as here Encyclopedia Titanica. Most of the piping arrangements came from The Titanic Ship Magnificent vol 1 and also naval publications from a period around 1910. The diagrams were mainly of the Olympic with references to Titanic. Both the ships were very similar but a few changes such as the additional cooking surface heater on the port side.
The style, shape and appearance of the weir pumps mainly came from those old publications.There's still some pump images around which helped a lot such as these smaller ones:

By far the most guidance and help I received was from a few people at Titanic-Model which suggested changes to the many errors I was making. It took 3 or 4 major engine complete re-do's before I got it right (It still isn't exactly perfect).
The room is really a combination of all 3 ships (as we know) the available plans tend to blur one to another. I tried to make it Titanic exclusive as more information became available.

Some of the other aspects of the room such as ventilation came from plans sourced from the 1920 Olympic refit.

I have 3 dedicated PC's running 24hrs/day rendering a flyby starting on Scotland Road on E deck which turns and goes down the catwalk into boiler room 1 and tours the room before doing a good flyby through the reciprocating room and ends up on the boat deck. It's currently rendering the reciprocating room which is 26,000 frames and it takes about 1.5 hours to render each frame. It will take some time to finish. Both engines are running about half speed and most of the auxiliary pumps are pumping.

 

[Stevefury]

This is an updated version of the reciprocating room electric winches which should be more historically correct:

Speaking of boiler room #1, here is some of what was worked out:

Scotland Road- I didn't spend much time building this area. First door on the right leads to boiler room #2, we go down the next door down to boiler room #1:

We enter the Scotland Road door, make a U-turn and go around the boiler uptake onto the bare metal plate which forms the top of the coal bunker. A few steps and we're looking down into the boiler room #1:

On the platform, looking to port at the ladder leading up the side of the bunker:

The ladder on the left of the image above leads to the boiler tops illustrated here- Valves such as the starboard main steam cut-off are shown:

Boiler level, facing starboard:


Facing port:

This is the framing along the aft water tight bulkhead. This forms the forward end of the reciprocating room:

An interesting view of the coal bunker, doors & framing:

This is the boiler piping worked out along with the folks at Titanic-Model. Yellow is the auxiliary pump supply, blue is blow-off, gray is main, green is the dynamo supply:

That's about it for now, thanks for looking.

 

[Rancor]

Brilliant work on the boiler room there as well. The detail especially of the pipework and stoking indicators is extraordinary. Well done.

My father has a VR setup using a HTC Vive - hoping I can pop round and see if it's possible to get your 360 views to work in that. If so it will be the closest you can be to standing in the main engine room of an Olympic class ship these days.

Would be very keen to see your video tour once you have it rendered, though by my rough calculations it sounds like it will take a minimim of 540 days. That sounds like some Pixar level quality there!

 

[Roxas84]

This is a really amazing work ! For the first time I can really imagine how this room looks precisely.

You should really work with the Titanic Honor and Glory team, your help could be great for this awesome project. Ask them.

 

[Kyle Naber]

You could also consider getting in touch with the Titanic Honor and Glory team. Your work would probably be invaluable to them considering the level of detail you have gone to and one would hope it would be possible to come to an arrangement of some sort.

Agreed!

 

[Stevefury]

Thank you.
I have a correction to make on one of my posts of the boiler room. I put:
"Scotland Road- I didn't spend much time building this area. First door on the right leads to boiler room #2, we go down the next door down to boiler room #1"
The boiler rooms are on the left side of the corridor not the right side (The camera is facing aft).

About the VR goggles-
I am using the Momento service. One feature they have is if the 360 images are viewed on a smart phone then a 360 goggles icon will appear on the side. Click that if you choose to view in a VR goggle.

I've used the Samsung Gear VR extensively in this project, mainly to look around the room in various places to discover errors. For someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of money on VR gadgets but still want to experience it, they can go to Walmart etc and get the Google cardboard. I think it's only about $10 (or so) and they can see it using that along with their smartphone. You may need to install a VR app but those are usually freeware.

These rooms have had one revision after another over the past year....I located one of my stereo renders from an earlier version. It contains a LOT of errors which hadn't been revised yet. You'll notice the telephones on the wrong post, no winches, no rivets or ventilation ducts but it's pretty cool to see through VR so I thought I'd post it in case you have a chance to view.

I had talked with the Honor and Glory team earlier on in this project.

 

[Stephen Carey]

T

This is an updated version of the reciprocating room electric winches which should be more historically correct: https://i.imgur.com/uzd7gDG.png

Speaking of boiler room #1, here is some of what was worked out:

Scotland Road- I didn't spend much time building this area. First door on the right leads to boiler room #2, we go down the next door down to boiler room #1:
https://i.imgur.com/02S7Uy4.png

We enter the Scotland Road door, make a U-turn and go around the boiler uptake onto the bare metal plate which forms the top of the coal bunker. A few steps and we're looking down into the boiler room #1:
https://i.imgur.com/cO7064b.png

On the platform, looking to port at the ladder leading up the side of the bunker:
https://i.imgur.com/4R7DWJS.png

The ladder on the left of the image above leads to the boiler tops illustrated here- Valves such as the starboard main steam cut-off are shown:
https://i.imgur.com/dslC6S9.png

Boiler level, facing starboard:
https://i.imgur.com/wFNAwKt.png

Facing port:
https://i.imgur.com/0Var3se.png

This is the framing along the aft water tight bulkhead. This forms the forward end of the reciprocating room:
https://i.imgur.com/tTmp5t5.png

An interesting view of the coal bunker, doors & framing:
https://i.imgur.com/KspGUNy.png

This is the boiler piping worked out along with the folks at Titianic-Model. Yellow is the auxiliary pump supply, blue is blow-off, gray is main, green is the dynamo supply:
https://i.imgur.com/uB4dFen.png

That's about it for now, thanks for looking.

View attachment 39218

This is truly amazing stuff! I am interested - almost exclusively - to the machinery of these ships, and have been trying to get schematics of the piping systems for years. You mention the starting document in your other post, which is probably one of the ones I posted on here a while back. I did that because most people, whilst knowing all about the 1st Class accommodation, don't know much about how the engineers and staff actually got these ships going from cold. I have uploaded it here (also a work in progress). I also got some schematics the other day from someone which I have yet to look at, and keep meaning to draw out the systems with pipe-sizes etc., but haven't got round to it even in retirement...
I need to look at your pictures on a bigger screen (some won't load - I'm using a Mac) and maybe can give some input. Regarding the telegraphs, I would think they were mounted by the manoeuvring platform (by the reversing engine, mid-engine per your model), one of which would have been the bridge telegraph and the other the stoking telegraph, but I don't know where the latter would have been situated, or if there was one for each engine, though I doubt it. One of the engineers would use it to inform the boiler rooms of the engine movements - relayed to the wonderful reproductions you've done in the boiler rooms! It's likely that the engineer's desk would have been "per engine" as well, in order to record the movements in the Movement Book, alongside the telegraphs (see two motorship views at the control stand). That's how it was in twin motorship enginerooms prior to the days of control rooms, so it would probably have been carried over from steam to diesel, likewise the gauge panel which would have been above the desk - all to hand.
As others have suggested, I also think you should get on to Honor & Glory, as they haven't started their engineroom level yet (damn), and also offer your representations to the Chinese resort who are building the replica Titanic, as apparently they are going to do an engineroom and boiler room mock-up in concrete! I'm sure they would be interested as yours are the only views I've ever seen of these arrangements. You are a world-beater!
PS: A look round the "Shieldhall" is also a good source of data on twin steam reciprocating units.

Finally I am amazed that you have never been on a steamer! I was 18 years at sea as a marine engineer, and have also done some 3D CAD work, but what you have done is outside my capabilities...

 

[Stevefury]

Thanks for the input Codad1946.
Bridge telegraphs- Wow the placement of those have been a huge mystery and IPA throughout the project. I don't think we will ever know their positions for sure.
These were the things I discovered or known about them through trial and error:

*There's a photo of the telephones mounted on what is apparently the aft center pillar of the Olympic as well as the aft electric winch. At least that's not likely going to be the position for them.
*We know from the inquiry testimony there were two telegraphs per engine. Each one had a main telegraph and an emergency telegraph. 4 altogether.
*We know that the position of them could be seen from the turbine room water tight door (Per testimony)
*The actual size of the ER telegraphs are also not known.
I made them the standard size as shown on other H&W reciprocating rooms of the period (I think 22 or 24" diameter).
* I discovered that mounting them on an engine column one above the other placed the top one too high for practical purposes. The column footing (With the big bolts) made the bottom telegraph sit about 4 feet off the ground and the top telegraph about 7-8 feet off the ground (With room to operate the handles). Setting the bottom one out away from the bolted footing made them stick out too far into the area.

How they came to the final position in my project
I had tried to make them work in a number of places: Between the aft & IP cylinder columns, mounted on the IP cylinder column, on pedestals in the aft area and between engine columns, on the forward engine columns (See them on the engine columns in the 3D stereo render in post #10).
*Since they didn't work well on any of the engine columns then I considered mounting them on one of the pillars.
*It seemed sensible they should be visible and accessible near to the starting platform.
*Considering the visibility of them from the turbine room WTD, the center pillar seemed more likely than the forward pillar- So there I had placed them at 45 degrees stacked one upon the other.

If new evidence comes along of where they should actually be, then I'll move them.

Engineers desk-
That is also a thing of confusion. You can see from the stereo 360 in post #10 it started off as a multi-drawer chest. I came across the photo of a H&W engineer desk of the period which was mounted on a large pole, so I cut the bottom off and put it on a pole. Other people (Smarter in this than me) suggested that I put it just aft of the center stairs but before the aft pillar. But it really didn't work there so I just put it behind the forward pillar.
I guess we'll never really know.

For the sake of discussion-
The appearance and position of the gauge board was also a big issue for me. One of my engineering books published around 1910 suggests the Olympic had a central gauge board. But where? How big? How many gauges?
I considered that it should be clearly visible from the starting platform and it probably had a ship's clock and some gauges.
It's another one of those things I had spent a long time working on. It started pretty close as it is now in my renderings. I also tried a similar board hanging from the catwalk above between the reversing gear. Also a gauge board with about 12 gauges which was too big for the area. It didn't work well after I put the telegraphs on the center pillar, so I moved it back where it started- facing aft on the center pillar. Someone far more experienced that I suggested 3 gauges per engine so there it is.

I had mentioned that I am currently rendering a HD fly-through of these spaces and that it will take a long time to finish.
I had ran an ultra-low version to preview and verify everything was OK before doing the time commitment.
I decided to upload it as a teaser, linked below.

-All- the fancy rendering stuff is turned off. No shadows, no shading, no transparency etc etc etc. As bare as can be. It's only 320x180 resolution so very blocky and jagged. The signs identifying the various pumps have been removed and will rely on narration. The black block around the human figure will not be seen. The human figure appears as a wireframe shape which is placed as a size reference in various places within the tour.

The auxiliary pumps are not animated in the video below. Some of them are running in the final version.
I noticed there's at least one eccentric which is 180 degrees off. Too late to correct it now.

So here's my teaser on YouTube:

 

[Luke Arnold]

Stunning work Stevefury, your work certainly puts a fresh perspective on the engineering material currently published. I have always tried to imagine what these areas looked like and what it must have been like to work a shift while full ahead mid Atlantic.

 

[Rancor]

Love the video Stevefury. With this and your 360 images, coupled with Codad1946's starting documents I think for the first time it's possible for me to really have a good appreciation of the scale and complexity of the machinery spaces on the Olympic class ships. Cameron's movie did a good job with the few fleeting shots he gave us but none of the auxiliary pumps were shown, which add a lot to the overall feeling of the space, with the mighty main engines towering over everything.

I note the lack of any sort of railing/barrier between the engine room floor plates and the cranks of the main engines. You would really have to have your wits about you on a ship of this vintage.

If I may ask, and not wishing to pry, how far did the discussions with the Honor and Glory team go? It would make sense for them to use your work with suitable reimbursement of course, no point them reinventing the wheel given how much time you have put into this already. Assuming that your modeling could somehow be imported with minimal fuss you would be saving them lots of time.

Also have a few questions that your work as raised. Thought I'd open them to the panel here...

Difference between the maneuvering valve and the throttle? You mention that the maneuvering valve is for running the engines at a slow RPM. Could the throttle not be used for this just only slightly cracked open? Why two separate controls?

You show and mention the cooking surface heater to the port side of the forward bulkhead. What was its function?

Finally what is the large pressure vessel on the top deck for, just before you exit outside in your video?

Many thanks, great work. And Happy New Year!

 

[Stevefury]

Hi Rancor.
A barrier blocking access to the crankshaft area may have existed- The H&W reciprocating engines on other ships have all been the wrong angle for me to see if they used one, or what they looked like so I just left them out. Either way I wouldn't want to fall in there.

Maybe someone else can shed some information about the maneuvering wheel. It connects to a link on the side of the throttle valve and I assumed it would probably be a more graduated and precise control than the main throttle.

The galleys were located right above the reciprocating room on D deck. The plans show 2 returns from "Cooking" and one line from "Heating". I'm not sure why, but I understand only the Titanic and the Britannic had the auxiliary cooking heater but not the Olympic.

The large object near the door on Boat deck is a big salt water tank/heater.