FSG TOUR - SLOVENIA 2008
LETNA EKSKURZIJA FSG - SLOVENIJA 2008
POWER STATION at FORT BRIONI by MIKE BROCK
MIKE BROCK: POROCILO O STROJNICI
Photo/Foto: Caspar Vermeulen, A.J.Potocnik
16.5.2008
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.The remains of this power station, installed in 1898 by the Czech firm SKODA, are an interesting survival of an installation technically well advanced for its time. The system was designed to raise steam very rapidly and to maintain a fast steaming rate. It shows similarities with the propulsion systems installed in fast craft for the Royal Navy at around the same time. The principal duty was to supply electricity for the carbon electrode searchlight, where the rapid steam raising ability would have enabled the light to be brought into action fairly quickly. In addition, it provided electricity for lighting is some areas and steam for pumping water.Three direct current generators, driven by compound reciprocating steam engines each provided 50KW of electricity. The basic design of these engines shows significant similarity with latest marine engine practice of the day (fig. 1) A horizontal single cylinder engine (fig. 2) operated two well pumps to provide a water supply to the fortress. The baseplate of this engine (of which the cylinder and connecting mechanism were missing) was a cylindrical steel pressure vessel containing the condenser. Crank pins on the two engine flywheels drove the pump rods, which lifted water from a fresh water well into a tank, the steel cover of which formed the floor of the engine room.The boiler installation seems to have been particularly advanced for its time. The three under-fired, water tube boilers, with brick construction fireboxes, were made under licence from the US boilermakers, Babcock & Wilcox by the Brno firm BRUNNER (fig. 3). They are very similar to the boilers designed by Babcock¹s for US navy gunboats in about1896. The three boiler exhaust flues were commoned into a tall stone chimney. Unusually for a land installation of the time, the boiler room was pressurised by an electrically-driven centrifugal fan (fig. 4), increasing the draught to the manually-fed grates. The boiler room door and the coal chute doors were fitted with seals to help maintain pressure. This closed-stokehole forced-draught system was used by the Royal Navy in the torpedo ram Polyphemus in 1881, albeit with a locomotive type boiler. Boiler feed water was supplied by a marine type direct acting steam pump from a fresh water well. Coal was landed in 1,000 tonne loads at the island jetty and carried in side-tipping rail trucks to the roof of the boiler house, where 5,000 tonnes were stored. The installation owes much to the advanced marine engineering technology of its day, and what remains is probably a unique survival, worthy of preservation and conservation.
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FSG members entering the part of the fort where the power station was.
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Slika zgoraj: Clani FSG vtopajo v del trdnjave, kjer je bila namescena strojnica. |
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Copyright for all photos held by authors, 2008
Vse fotografije so avtorska last avtorjev. 2008
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