Kelvin K2 + twin props

[davidwheeler]

I may be on the wrong forum but here is my problem:

I am a wooden barge, formerly a ketch rigged Severn trow. My dimensions 74.6" x 17.1" x 5.7" . Built in 1901, and derigged and motorised in 1927. By August 1953, when I am in the drydock at Saul Junction, I have been fitted with two small props either side of my massive wooden rudder. My net registered tonnage is 47. By 1964 when I am dumped on the bank at Purton, my engine is a Kelvin K2. My understanding is that the Kelvin K2 was introduced in 1931, so perhaps my engine has been changed. My question, please is this: given the technology of the times, how does my Kelvin K2 drive my twin propellers? Would I have needed independent port and starboard transmissions, which would have been expensive? And money has always been tight in my trade, which was carrying coal from Lydney to Bristol. Would I have had twin Kelvins, even more expensive perhaps? if so where is the second one? Because my Kelvin K2 is now fitted to a narrowboat.

 

[Bee]

My guess us some sort of lash up involving whizzing chains and belts and plummer blocks any one of which would take your leg off. Probably a couple of hefty sprockets on a short shaft from the Kelvin running chains to each prop shaft. Came across a clip on You Tube recently of a motor on the front deck of a Dutch sailing barge with a shaft running across the boat and a gearbox to turn it 90 degrees, that was coupled to a long shaft with a prop on the end and lowered over the side, it had a triangular frame to keep the prop away from the boats side, getting along at a good speed too. Not uncommon in the early years of motorising sailing barges but a bit scary to say the least.

[David Mack]

38 minutes ago, Bee said:

Not uncommon in the early years of motorising sailing barges but a bit scary to say the least.

A bit like this then!

Edited March 7 by David Mack

[magnetman]

The dutch barge version was with the shaft hanging off the side of the Boat with engine at the front. 

 

A bit like a longtail but instead of sticking out the back it was over the side. 

 

Odd arrangement presumably for Boats not going through locks and a predecessor to the Opduwer pusher tugs. 

 

 

[BEngo]

Twin props off a single engine  would be unusual, but lnot impossible.    The two props showm look similar, so ig is not a main engine/ less powerful wing engine set up.

 

The Kelvin K series ( except the K6)  came with a built-in,  non reducing gearbox as standard. (It is a part of the engine, effectively.)  This has the peculiarity that the output shaft moves fore and aft in order to change  between ahead and astern, and the propellor thrust is what holds it in gear.  A chain lash up as suggested above would therefore be difficult.

 

It seems to me more likely that two engines were fitted when photographed  on dock at Saul. And the  K2 was installed after that.   Only one engine need have reversing gear fitted, used for manoeuvring, with the other only  used for ahead work.  The large sailing rudder would have helped.

 

What was the propellor arrangement when dumped at Purton?

 

[davidwheeler]

Thank you for responding. Facts are hard to come by. One suggestion I have received is that 'on good authority the Kelvin was the donkey engine and the Edith's main engine was of a make and type unknown.' As I understand it the Kelvin K2 was a 44hp engine, used in fishing boats. A bit big, and a bit of a luxury, to have been installed  as an auxiliary in a cut down wooden barge, with no cargo handling equipment,  operating at the very bottom of the economic pile. So given the size and tonnage of the Edith, do you think a single Kelvin K2 could have powered it, given its trade and its operating area in the Severn? 

[BEngo]

I think a single K2 at 44 hp would have been fine in Edith in the hands  of an experienced skipper.  Knowing the tiver and the estuary seems to have been an exssential part of working Severn, and fools ( and  their craft)  did not last long.   A good skipper  would know how not to get into situations where 44 hp was not enough to get out again.

 

Good decisions come from experience.  Experience- what you get from poor decisions.

 

Regardless,  the props on the Saul shot do not look suited to a K2 at all, though they do appear to me to be of the right hand.

 

N

 

 

[davidwheeler]

Thank you again. Facts, rather than conjecture, about the Edith are hard to come by. Reliable sources indicate that she was motorised in 1927, that she worked in the Lydney - Bristol coal trade until about 1960, that a photo taken in March 1952 shows quite clearly disturbance from twin props, and what looks to be exhaust fumes venting from the port side close to the stern, that the photo taken in 1953 at Saul shows twin props, that in about 1960 she sprang a leak and was beached at Pill. Then the story is that her Kelvin engine was removed and stored in a barn at Frampton Cotterell until 1992, when it was reconditioned and fitted into a narrow boat. In the meantime the Edith was beached at Purton in about 1964. I photographed her in 1965 and again in 1969. There is no sign of any propeller but I would not expect it since anything of the smallest value would have been taken out and any breach in the hull temporarily repaired for the journey up the Severn and onto Purton foreshore. I remember seeing in 1999 or 2000 a Kelvin engine in a narrowboat, which I think was called Albion, and being told by the then owner that it had come out of a barge. I remember meeting the same owner later and being shown a Gardner 2L2 or 2LW which he had installed in place of the Kelvin, because of the special petrol start system. I remember also the impression that the Gardner looked small in comparison to the Kelvin. I remember also feeling a pang of disloyalty to our own Gardner 2L2 ex Admiralty side hand-start engine when faced with the glorious Kelvin. But that is irrelevant. So the only real certainty is the Edith had twin props in the early 1950s, towards the end of a long life. And, thanks to your opinion, a Kelvin K2 could have powered such a vessel in the hands of a competent skipper. What I am left with is whether it would have been possible for such an engine to have powered twin props. If not then perhaps the Kelvin did not come out of Edith at all. 

[MtB]

If one is intending to motorise a barge like this, then twin props are probably massively easier to install than a single prop given the design and location of the rudder. Then having installed the twin prop shafts one is faced with buying two engines, or one engine and devising a way of splitting the drive. My guess would be that even though complicated, linking the two prop shafts inside the boat with gears or a belt would be much cheaper than a second K2, so this seems quite probable to my mind. 

 

I suspect both props would have turned in unison whatever the engine speed and gear setting, rather than independently like a modern twin screw boat. 

 

The Kelvin reversing gear would not have been a suitable gearbox though as it relies on prop thrust to keep the cone clutch engaged. I wonder what gearbox that narrowboat mentioned had, with the K2 from a barge. 

[davidwheeler]

Thank you. I think it rather unlikely that a second engine would have been fitted because of cost. Absolute economy plus improvisation regulated these elderly wooden vessels approaching the end of their and their owners' profitable days. The Edith had a counter stern. Of the other two motorised trows still operating on the Canal and Severn in my youth, one had a D stern and the other, in fact a billy boy, had a counter. How they managed with a propshaft I cannot remember even if I ever knew. Which I probably did since I thoroughly explored both of them. It was easier to drive a single shaft through the stern post of a D stern, and cut out part of the rudder. This was done with the Jonadab, one of the last to survive. So I am left with either Edith did not have a Kelvin engine, or that someone devised a system which could well have lasted thirty years or so. Any more informed ideas would be welcome. And not just by me. I am not the only one interested in this particular subject.

[David Mack]

On 07/03/2024 at 09:57, Bee said:

My guess us some sort of lash up involving whizzing chains and belts and plummer blocks any one of which would take your leg off. Probably a couple of hefty sprockets on a short shaft from the Kelvin running chains to each prop shaft.

Perhaps more likely that the engine was mounted in line with one of the props, using the standard kelvin gearbox, with a chain drive across the two propshafts.

[billh]

Edith was motorized in 1927, as you say this was before the Kelvin diesels were in production. Kelvins that were available at that time included the new models E, F and G paraffin engines . It occurs to me that possibly 2 x model F4 or 2 x G2 ,  at about 30 HP each may have been installed? Examples of 2x F4s were  in  passenger boats  on the Thames and the mail boat on Loch Lomond still has them as far as I know. As soon as the K diesels came along they would have offered much better fuel economy but cost of new engines would be a big consideration. Are we sure  that a diesel was installed? I cant see some kind of chain drive working reliably with all that torque from a K. How about a hydraulic drive, one pump on the engine, 2 motors for the props? Hydraulics became "a thing" after the its rapid development for aircraft   in WW2. And you could put one prop in forward and one in reverse for a sharp turn!

[BEngo]

Possible, but I rather think that the misalignment needed to operate the Kelvin box would mean the chain had a short life.

 

One Kelvin characteristic which might help, if there is any internal information about Edith, is that they needed a transverse engine bed.  Very few, if any other diesels did.  The design  of the engine is such that it will not fit conventional longitudinal beds.

 

[davidwheeler]

The Edith was no great star of her day. She was basically a short-haul truck. Such claim as she had to note was that she was among the very last of her kind to survive - and that it is said that her engine, stored for thirty years, lives on in a modern narrowboat. Some of the Purton ships were surveyed by notable maritime historians of the day but in the main during the 1950s. I don't think Edith was. I clambered over Edith in 1965 and noted her number as 111392, registered tons 45 20/100 and that she had a Loveridges New Deluge Pump and an engine room which I accessed. There was nothing in it. Since the Edith was totally destroyed by an arsonist in the 1980s there is no way of checking the layout of the engine room now. So the only reliable facts are that she was motorised in 1927, before the Kelvin K2 was introduced, and that in the 1950s she had twin props. So if she did have a Kelvin K2 at some point, her original engine, whatever it was, was changed to a Kelvin. Economics might tend towards that being late in her working life when possibly a cheap second hand Kelvin might be available. But given that in 1953 she had twin props, it seems unlikely that any great expense would have incurred in changing that configuration. She was by then over fifty years old. So there is a bit of a mystery. I take it from all your comments that the general consensus is that a Kelvin K2 would not easily adapt to running twin props. I will see if Paul Barnett has any more facts to tie the Edith to this K2 engine. He describes it as a Berguis K2. In the meantime thanks for all your comments.