If you are not a marine engineer chances are that you haven’t seen an engine room, for most people avoid the place considering it as an underground dungeon full of dangerous machineries, noise and heat. Contrary to this the engine room is an interesting place and the heart of the ship. Take a tour!
Introduction
The word “room” normally brings forth the image of a small or average sized room which is used for domestic purposes. If I mention the word “engine room” the best you might imagine could be a compartment with a small engine placed at the corner. But remember we are talking in the context of ships and everything related to them is huge in size. So when I talk about the engine “room”, I am not referring to any small room or compartment but a space which is several stories high and many times bigger than an average sized house. So let us begin this journey in Wonderland of the ship engine room and bring out the Alice in ourselves.
The Engine Room
As the name itself suggests, the engine room is space on the ship where all the machineries are located. Well almost all, if not all for there are several machineries or equipment which are outside the engine room such as say the cranes, winches and so forth. Firstly you must know where the engine room is located and for that you need to see the two pictures given below.
The first image shows the real picture of a ship from its back side (aft) and the adjacent picture shows a cut away section of the ship from its aft which also shows through the ship so that you can know in relation to a real ship which component lies where, as far as the engine room is concerned.
You must have got an idea about the size of the engine room from the above pictures. As you can note over there the engine room extends right from the bottom most level to the level of the funnel. The main propulsion plant of the main marine diesel engine which drives the propeller is located at the bottom but is several stories high. The next picture shows a human being standing near one of the cylinders of the marine engine and that will give you the idea about its size.
Engine Room Images
Location on Ship
There is no hard and fast rule regarding the location of each equipment or machinery but normally the engine room would consist of several levels having machineries such as auxiliary engines or diesel generators, boiler, inert gas plant, fresh water generator, purifiers, pumps, storage tanks, engine control room, waste incinerator and several other paraphernalia such as electrical panels at various levels.
The engine control room is the command center of the engine room and is the only air conditioned place within the engine room having computer and delicate controls, which is otherwise full of heat and noise. Of course it also depends on the area where the ship is sailing since in very cold areas, the engine room is cold rather than hot.
I must also add here that apart from the location of the machinery, the location of the engine room itself isnt fixed for all types of ships. most ships have engine room at the aft, while there are other variations where it is located either midships or front side of the ship
Control Room
Safety & Manning
You are always supposed to wear the safety gear when entering the engine room which is through a air tight door. When you enter that door you come to a changing room where you remove your normal shoes and put on accessories such as boiler suit, safety shoes, safety helmet, gloves, and ear-muffs. A positive pressure is maintained inside the engine room most of the times by running engine room blowers.
Engine room can either be manned or unmanned which basically means that either there are duty engineer and crew present 24 hours in the engine room on a 4-On-4-Off duty roster or it is typically 9-5 type of office job. The actual mode depends on the type of ship, level of automation and certain navigating conditions such as navigation in restricted waters and so on.
When any watch-keeper enters the engine room he is typically adviced to follow funnel to tunnel path where he starts inspecting the top most sections of the room and ends at the bottom most level. This helps to detect any leaks, abnormal noises and other faults which may not be detected by the alarms and monitors installed on modern ships.
We will learn a lot more things about the engine room in our later articles.
Image Credits