Battleship New Jersey 1:48 Model of Engine Room No. 3

[Builder 2010]

The last time I published here was during construction of my 16" turret system for the Big J. I stopped posting because the picture posting routine was too onerous and other forums were much simpler to comply with. The 16" Project and the subsequent 5" Secondary Battery Project are on permanent display in the Ward Room Lounge on the New Jersey. After completing the 5" I volunteered with Ryan Syzmanski, the musuem's curator, to build and engine room. I chose #3 for three reasons:

1. It is unavailable for viewing by the public and therefore, the model would be the only way for folks to experience it.
2. It is the "master" engine room being the chief engineer's station where he can monitor performance of the other three rooms, and
3. It is the only engine room with sides square with the fore and aft bulkheads. All the others are tapered to some degree depending on the angularity of the hull at their location. The model would be complicated enough with that aspect to deal with.

The build, unlike the previous two, was heavily dependent on dimensioned engineering drawings. I was able to craft the other models with some basic measures and a lot of dead reckoning. The complexity of the engine room precluded this. At first i thought I lucked out finding original drawings located at the National Archives in College Park, MD. My hopes were dashed where, after further examination, I found that they were for BB16, the Battleship New Jersey built in 1905. It was a dreadnaught. The project was dead until John Miano came through. John had written a book, "A Visual Tour of the Battleship New Jersey" and had obtained original microfilm of the New Jersey from the Archives. He had 40 plates of highly detailed Westinghouse engineering drawings of ER #3. It was not everythign, but it was enough of the highly complex aspects that the project was a go.

There were three aspects of the project that I saw as critical to realizing my ideas. The first was learning how to draw massive herringbone gears for the main reduction gear. I wanted to make this vital piece a cutaway and that required the gears. With the help of readers of other blogs that I do, I found a plug-in for SketchUp that enabled me to make a 1' thick gear. The second was gratings. Most modelers today would use photoetched brass to replicate gratings. I didn't have that capability and didn't want to have to contract for it. These models are entirely donated to the ship and any costs I have to bear directly. With my latest generation Elegoo Saturn 4 Ulta produced scale-like gratings with not only correct hole spacing, but also scale-like depth. Lastly, there was the steam turbines. Again, I wanted to make cutaways. This meant drawing and printing reasonable turbine wheels. It took five iterations to get passable turbine wheels that not only printed, but were able to hold together in the real world. The model took 14 months to complete.
The model also includes:

• Main Condenser, main condenser pump and sea inlets
• Both Turbogenerators for ship's power, their condenssers and auxiliaries
• Main and Auxilary Air Ejectors
• Electrical Control Consolde and Switchgear Cabinets
• Triple-stage Evaporators for boiler and potable water desalination
• Lube Oil Separating Tank
• Lube Oil Purifier
• Lube Oil Cooler
• Steam and Electric Powered Lube Oil Pumps
• and, Main Gauge Board

LED lighting provides light in shadow areas.

With the five file limit I will start another post to show more.

Piping was kept to the essentials: steam in and exhaust out plus main condensate lines. To attempt to include more would have been folly—as if building something like this isn't folly itself.





The only normal entrance to this space is the hatch at the model's top. It's in a vestibule leading off Broadway. Sitting above the engines rooms are the 5" magazines.



Engine room #3 has propeller shafts #1 & 4 passing through from engine rooms 1 & 2. Head room is limited so there are duck unders to pass under the spinning shafts to other parts of the room.



The graphics are two-side since the model is designed to be viewed from front and back. The diagram shows where ER#3 lies in the engineering spaces. The key relates to numbers found on each piece of equipment.

 

[Builder 2010]

To continue...

When the lights are on in lower ambient lighting, the model takes on another level of interest. The bronze condensers are quite hard to visualize on the real thing. The lower level is congested and there's little room to move. You really can't move between the condensers. I had to "fake" the suspension system for them since the photos revealed basically nothing.



The electrical control consoled is illuminated with florescent fixtures on the 1:1 model. I 3D printed the consoled and the details were so startling, I was compelled to attempt to light it. The result exceeded my expectations.



While there's a lot of things to drew your attention, the reduction gear and cutaway turbines is on the top of my list, followed by how cool it is to see things below in the very finely rendered gratings.



The model features a detailed triple-bottom in the visible areas and double where you can't see. The lattice of frames and longerons is duplicated although most of it is out of sight. I suffer from AMS (Advanced Modelers Syndrome) where were are compelled to add details on top of details even though they will never be seen. The bottom lattice was hand cut out of styrene sheet and took a couple of weeks to execute. It was also nuts!

The bottom structure and the cutaway bulkheads are the only styrene parts on the model. All the rest was drawn by me on SketchUp and 3D printed. There are hundreds of parts. If you'd like to see the entire build in gory detail, go to this site.

Iowa Class Engine Room #3 Model for BB62 Permanent Display

For all of those followers that had the patience to spend almost a year each for the two models that I created for the Battleship New Jersey Museum & Memorial (16" and 5" gun systems), my next (and final) major project for the ship has now begun. Here’s Ryan Syzmanski talking about those models...

forums.kitmaker.net

In case you haven't visited the New Jersey Museum and Memorial in the last four years, here are the other two models I built and donated to the ship.

The 16" gun system is 1:72 scale. Its creation hinged on the issuance of a Takom plastic model of the gun house/metal barrels and the arrival of my 2nd generation Elegoo Mars 3 printer with the capacity to handle the larger parts of this project. It was my first contact with Ryan Syzmanski and between many illustrations from the operator's manual, some rudimentary dimensions, pictures taken by me and Ryan, structural drawings by Jim Slade, and my visits to places not open to the public, i was able to create a respectable model of the entire Iowa Main Battery down to the Powder Handling room.



With the success of the 16" gun, and my increasingly close working relationship with Ryan, I offered to build the Secondary Battery, again showing the entire system down to the Magazine on Deck 3. To my knowledge neither of these systems had ever been modeled like this before. Unlike the previous model, this one had no commercial parts and was fabricated out of 3D parts from my drawings or sheet styrene. And like the first one, I had lots of illustrations, but very few dimensioned drawings. It so impressed Ryan that he made a video segment on his New Jersey Video channel on FaceBook specifically about this model.



I was on a roll and volunteering for the engine room was a natural outgrowth of this journey. Here's the video:

.

It has over 40k views and he asked for suggestions on the next project. Most folks mentioned and engine room. Who am I to not obey their wishes.

I'm 80 years old so doing more of these year-long+ projects has a limit somewhere in the future. That said, I really get a kick out doing models never done before, and love the Iowas. In 2011 I built an award-winning Tamiya 1:350 Missouri that was fully documented on this web forum. Dick Landgraff (Rusty Battleship) was still with us and helped me with technical details to make a superb model. I was offered a space in the Captain's cabin in the Missouri, but I had to get it there on my nickel and was unable to figure out a way to do it. The model remains in my house. I thought that was the last chance to have my work in the ships I love, and then along came the New Jersey and the models. While I live in Louisville, Kentucky, I am originally from the Delaware Valley and we get back there several times a year. Hand carrying the models to the ship, therefore, is quite doable.

For the next model, I'm thinking of either the Diesel Emergency Generator Rooms. There are two these one before the engineering spaces and another just aft. The latter is the only place on the vessel to see all four spinning propeller shafts. The diesel is an ALCo 359, and I've drawn and printed a good rendition of an ALCo prime mover in 1:48 so this project shouldn't be too difficult. The other would be the steering gear. The apparatus, while robust, is not that complicated—certainly less so than the engine room, but there's the rudders, propellers and surrounding ship's structure that greatly complicates the build and makes it more fun. I'm taking a break for a couple of months and then get into it. Stay tuned.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

Fantastic

 

[TopHatter]

The last time I published here was during construction of my 16" turret system for the Big J. I stopped posting because the picture posting routine was too onerous and other forums were much simpler to comply with.

It's great to have you back, don't blame you a bit for going elsewhere considering our chronic problems.

I've doubled the attachment limit to 10 and also increased the size limit a bit. Both should make uploading attachments a bit easier.

 

[Monash]

Brilliant work.

 

[tbm3fan]

Fabulous work having been all over the engine and fire rooms on the Hornet and Iowa. On an Essex one can see all four shafts run through Aft Aux which happens to be a very, very wide and tall compartment. Bad place for a torpedo that's for sure.