Photographic passion and some industrial history.

Railway photography can be filled with passion especially when it comes to steam, I was brought up in the diesel age but that too has changed and there is plenty of passion out there for photographing older and often much more photogenic diesel traction of old. 

A reminder to you all that today’s everyday image may be so valuable to you personally in 20-30 years time, re-creating the past is difficult but of course it can be very enjoyable to immerse oneself in the eras of times gone by.

Here is one of my oldies…

In the late 70s my family moved within a mile and a half of Ely station, I could see the railway from my bedroom but could not normally hear it.  One summer evening I was awoken to the most amazing sound…  Diversions had been made from the East Coast Mainline through Ely… A Deltic of course

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Most of you UK bods will know about the Class 55 Deltic history, but what of its namesake; the Deltic engine itself?

In the mid 1930’s Napier and Son licensed the design of a two stroke diesel engine from Junkers in Germany, the Jumo 203/4.  Under that licence there were able build an already successfully proven diesel engine for use in aircraft.  I guess at the time the Chancellor of Germany did not foresee war with the UK, otherwise the licence would never have been allowed.  Later versions of the Jumo with supercharging allowed the JU86 bommers to fly higher than allied aircraft.  The Napier version called the Culverin was never really used in the war and development ceased in 1940 in favour of continuing development of the petrol Sabre engine (used in the typhoon for catching V2 flying bombs)….

The British admiralty knew of Junkers designs for a rhombus version with 4 crankshafts, but alas it was not until after the war that Napier were given a contract to build a triangular engine (using 3 banks of the Jumo design) for marine use with a “Mr Penwarden of the Admiralty Engineering Laboratory” coming up with the idea of a contra rotating crank to solve piston timing issues.  The first Deltic engine was built in 1950, the rest I assume you all know…..   

A Deltic in action.

However:

In 1945 the Air Ministry gave a contract to Napier to build a high power but economical engine for aircraft, called Nomad it was a very costly development and was a combination of two stroke diesel supercharged by a gas turbine!  Eventually after an expenditure of over £5M the project was cancelled due to the improvement in jet engines.  With the project being cut Napier decided with Navy influence to use what it had learned with the Nomad and to take the Deltic engine further by adding a gas turbine.  A prototype was tested in 1957 and could produce up to 5600 hp before the con rods exited the crank case!  Again the Admiralty cut the development off before it was fully finished, imagine a class 55 with 2 of these installed say rated at a safe 3000 hp each? 

 

I conclude that the licensing of the Jumo was not a success, at least not for the original purpose intended. Napier did go on from this to use the design to develop the Deltic engine which gave us the utterly unique class 55 and was still in Navy good books when the Deltic engine was chosen for powering the Hunt Class mine sweepers in the 1980’s