[HN Gopher] The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire ...
___________________________________________________________________
The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)
Author : mstngl
Score : 172 points
Date : 2025-11-03 20:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bangshift.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bangshift.com)
| MisterTea wrote:
| Ah, the Mack Super pumper. Shame Mack started to struggle in the
| 60s until the 80s and got out of the fire truck business. They
| had some very interesting designs in terms of cab design and
| components. I always loved the F model cab-over which were
| produced until the early 80s which is what the CF fire truck was
| built on.
| giobox wrote:
| That "deltic" engine just for the water pumping is incredible,
| I'd never seen that cylinder layout before.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic
| ggm wrote:
| The type 55 "deltic" locomotives, named after army regiments
| used to do the east coast Edinburgh-London train run, there
| were 22 of them in service and one in the science museum
| London. They had the first 100mph rating for diesel passenger
| service.
|
| The engine had a unique characteristic whine or whistle. As an
| avid train spotter at Waverley station in edinburgh I loved
| hearing it, saw every one and was in the cab of two thanks to
| long suffering kind engine drivers.
|
| There was a mini deltic too. I'm not sure it went beyond a
| testbed loco.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those are amazing engines. It's a pity that in the future
| we'll just be using magnets and coils, there something about
| these designs that moves me in a way that nothing electrical
| ever will. And I'm a great fan of renewable energy, and
| realize that the pollution that has been created (and is
| still being created) is absolutely unsustainable.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| There are people working on internal combustion engines
| with a very similar design currently, for many applications
| (military, trucking, etc) diesel or diesel electric is the
| only realistic option for the foreseeable future:
| https://achatespower.com/
| lmm wrote:
| A series of 10 "baby deltics" were built and ran for some
| years, although they weren't particularly successful on the
| whole.
| ggm wrote:
| They were basically out of service by the time I was out of
| short trousers. I made special trips south to see the
| "warship" class 43 hydromatic transmission in Western
| Region out of Old Oak Common in London, the type 44 "peak"
| series and the diminutive type 3 diesel shunter at
| Birkenhead. The baby deltics were probably parked in a yard
| waiting scrapping.
|
| I have dim memories of being held up over a bridge to watch
| steam trains pass, but by the time I was obsessively
| writing down numbers they were special trains like "Sir
| Nigel Gresley" and "the Flying Scotsman"
|
| I left britain before the east coast electrification. I do
| still see my favourite type 8 Diesel shunter, the most
| ubiquitous kind in Britain, when I pass by.
|
| If you want sheer power, It's a Deltic every time. That
| high pitched whine, it's unmistakable.
| dboreham wrote:
| > avid train spotter at Waverley station in edinburgh
|
| We probably met. I was there every day traveling to and from
| school but did casual trainspotting on the side. Oblivious
| someone would one day write a book with that title..
| ggm wrote:
| If you're the guy who flung a football pie at my head from
| a train window, I remember that pie crust.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| About 12 years ago they used to use 55022 as a shunter at
| Springburn yard, because it was "road legal" and could couple
| up to older carriages that were being taken in for
| refurbishment. Nice cushy retirement job, easy shifts and a
| well-appointed engine shed to park up it at night ;-)
|
| I used to hear it all the time, working in a nearby
| industrial site. I'd maybe just take five minutes to sit
| outside and drink my coffee, listening to that weird
| shimmering howl.
|
| There are no good recordings of it on Youtube and I suspect
| like a lot of things you have to experience it for yourself.
| whycome wrote:
| > The Napier Deltic engine is a British opposed-piston
| valveless, supercharged uniflow scavenged, two-stroke diesel
| engine
|
| Any tech that includes the word "scavenged" must be cool and
| efficient
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Scavenging here means getting the exhaust from the previous
| cycle out of the cylinder and replacing it with fresh air.
| Technically all internal combustion engines do it one way or
| another, but usually you hear the word in relation to two
| stroke engines. Two strokes don't have discrete "suck" and
| "blow" steps so those need to be done at the same time. With
| two stroke diesels, that was done using blowers to basically
| force out the exhaust by blowing in fresh air.
|
| Generally speaking at least, two stroke diesel engines
| weren't super efficient, but did offer great power output
| relative to their size.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| They're unique. Originally designed to power fast torpedo boats
| during WW2, three of these powerful and compact engines would
| churn out plenty of power for the boat up to 50 kt.
|
| https://everythingaboutboats.org/napier-deltic/
| mrlonglong wrote:
| They're still in use by our UK navy. Nine minesweepers still
| on active duty.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I just realised they re-engined them with cat engines in
| 2008. Pity.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Napier was on the cutting edge of certain kinds of IC engines
| for a long time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre (1938).
|
| Powered the absolute _monster_ that was the Tempest (up to the
| Mk 2 - they did have reliability issues they never quite solved
| but 3000+HP out of an engine that weighs barely more than a
| tonne dry will do that)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Tempest
|
| Was happy to see the name re-used for our upcoming fighter.
|
| We also called the Eurofighter the Typhoon and the (WW2)
| Typhoon (also a Sabre engine) was the predecessor of the
| Tempest - it started as a re-wing of the Typhoon but enough
| changes where made to give it a new name.
|
| Just a devastating superprop in its day.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Piston engines got pretty wild before turbines eventually took
| over the world. The most efficient ones were more efficient
| than today's turbines in terms of BSFC[0]. One of the most
| interesting to me was the Napier Nomad[1], which used turbo-
| and super-charging. However, the turbo had secondary fuel
| injection and effectively ran as a turbine to drive the
| compressor.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-
| specific_fuel_consumptio...
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Nomad
| jabl wrote:
| Napier Nomad is one of my favorite engine designs. More info
| at https://oldmachinepress.com/2019/08/05/napier-nomad-
| compound...
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Those exhaust driven turbines didn't just drive the
| compressor like is typical with turbochargers, but was also
| mechanically linked to the crank shaft so the turbine
| contributed to the overall power output of the engine
| directly, not just by forcing more air into the cylinders.
| That's what made them "turbo-compound."
|
| The youtube channel "Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles" has a
| nice video about turbo compound engines.
| shawn_w wrote:
| Speaking of turbines and fire apparatus, back in the 60's a
| few jet turbine powered engines and one ladder truck were
| made: https://www.aeroflap.com.br/en/when-fire-trucks-used-
| boeing-...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Gas turbines aren't generally noted for their _efficiency_ ,
| but rather:
|
| - Power-to-weight ratios. Critical in aerospace applications.
|
| - Long duty cycles. Everything spins, reducing wear-and-tear
| relative to reciprocating designs. Maintenance on piston
| engined aircraft during WWII was a major logistical concern.
|
| - Raw speed. Supersonic flight requires high rotary speeds,
| and the few propeller-driven aircraft which achieved this had
| ... issues. Ground crews _and pilots_ suffered health effects
| _from the noise alone_ , and notoriously often flat refused
| to work with the XF-84H "Thunderscreech": <https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech...>. At near-
| supersonic speeds and above, propeller blade tips themselves
| break the sound barrier, losing aerodynamic flow over the
| blades, making quite a racket, and greatly reducing
| efficiency.
|
| Propeller-driven planes _remain_ more efficient than jets in
| many instances, though last I checked US military forces rely
| on turboprops over reciprocating engines in virtually all
| instances, possibly excepting some civilian-based (e.g.,
| Cessna / Piper, etc.) trainer or observer variants.
| enopod_ wrote:
| Two of the three crankshafts rotate in the same direction,
| whereas the third one moves the other way around!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are numerous "atypical" piston engine layouts, though I
| cannot recall precisely where I'd seen a reference, probably on
| YouTube ~10 years ago.
|
| The basics are a single piston, dual (often opposed at an angle
| or flat-head design as on older BMW motorcycles), in-line
| (usually 4-cylinder), or V (as in V-6, V-8, V-12, etc.)
|
| Then there are _radial_ engines used in piston-driven aircraft.
| These virtually always have an _odd_ cylinder count, to prevent
| locking (there 's always an unbalanced force in the direction
| of intended rotation, or so one hopes).
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine>
|
| There are various rotary engines, with the Wankel design best
| known. _Very_ high power-to-weight ratios as a result of having
| three combustion chambers per rotor, but a relative short
| lifecycle due to wear, and some compromises in efficiency.
| "Flying car" company Moller International, out of Davis, CA
| (and apparently inactive since 2015) had at its core a Wankel-
| based powerplant, with four pairs of counter-rotating engines
| powering four ducted fans. It sounds like _all_ the angry
| hornets in operation.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar>
|
| Wikipedia lists some other unusual designs as well: <https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocating_engine#Miscellan...>.
|
| I believe that the axial engine may have been featured in that
| video mentioned in 'graph 1:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_engine>
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| It amazes me what we manage to figure out on the mechanical
| side of things. Just look at motorcycle engines. Screaming
| along at upwards of 20k RPM and just taking it in stride and
| moving people down the road at what might as well be supersonic
| speed.
| mtmail wrote:
| How do you extinguish an oil-well fire? Enter the "Big Wind" with
| two jet engines on a tank chassis. "The water is moving at a
| maximum rate of 220 gallons of water a second,"
| https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15138374/stilling-the...
| hakoda wrote:
| You could also nuke it;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtabulak_gas_field
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And since we're in this thread, you can also pump out the
| fuel from the sides:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
|
| Of course, you probably want to put out a leak a bit faster
| than after 55 years.
| dewey wrote:
| Tangentially related and recommended. Werner Herzog's film that
| also features longer sections on the fire fighting efforts on
| the oil fields.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessons_of_Darkness
| nchmy wrote:
| Someone just recommended this to me the other day!
|
| I must also recommend the recently-deceased legend Sebastiao
| Salgado's photos from Kuwait oil fires.
|
| https://publicdelivery.org/sebastiao-salgado-kuwait/
| slybot wrote:
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3674140/
|
| I watched this movie on cinema a decade ago. Highly
| recommended.
| nchmy wrote:
| It is, indeed, a tremendous documentary. He's one of my
| greatest inspirations.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| For lighter viewing there is Sorcerer (1977) [0] with Roy
| Scheider.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_(film)
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Great Tangerine Dream soundtrack too.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| firefighter and tangerine dream fan, eh? we should cross
| paths ...
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Pretty sure I'm just down the road from you too.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| north-central NM ?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Not sure I'd call that lighter viewing, but it's a truly
| excellent movie.
| mtmail wrote:
| Video is hosted on archive.org
| https://archive.org/details/lessons-of-darkness-1992
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| I have a question for folks who handle pumps regularly. Almost
| all pumps are made for water, or sewage. How do you identify if a
| pump is rated to handle liquid metal or hot fluids (heated
| chemicals, or contents under extreme pressure)
|
| I have never heard of a standard class of pumps for this....other
| than basically finding a manufacturer who specialized in these
| sort of pumps.
| korse wrote:
| You're thinking of temperature and viscosity parameters.
|
| Read the data sheets and look for those terms, or look for
| manufacturers of pumps that maximize both.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Those are pretty extreme applications that require extremely
| specific pumps. You are very firmly in the "call for pricing"
| territory
| mindcrime wrote:
| That's a bit outside my wheelhouse, but in regards to
| firefighting specifically there is another such distinction
| that comes up, and that is in regards to pumps that are
| designed to regularly pump seawater, versus pumps that
| primarily pump freshwater. The difference is mainly in the
| materials used for building the pump, and relate to the
| corrosive effects of seawater. You _can_ pump seawater with a
| "normal" fire pump, but if you do it's imperative to flush the
| pump (and other hose and appliances) thoroughly with freshwater
| as soon as possible to avoid damage. The seawater rated pumps,
| on the other hand, can handle seawater all the time. As you can
| probably guess, the primary application of seawater rated pumps
| is for fireboats or onboard firefighting on other sorts of
| ships.
| jedberg wrote:
| My dad worked on the Space Shuttle main engine program in the
| 80s. One of the things they built was the turbopump [0], which
| generated 23,000HP (and could drain your average home swimming
| pool in one minute).
|
| Seeing the test firings of the pump was pretty amazing, draining
| one "swimming pool" and filling another in a minute.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Turbopumps
| interroboink wrote:
| To say nothing of the launchpad sound suppression water
| system[1] that dumps 7,300 gal/sec (about 2-3 seconds for one
| swimming pool)!
|
| Though that's just gravity-fed, of course. Still pretty cool
| though, I think (:
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_suppression_system
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The article uses various measures, so here's a quick table:
| Baikonur Cosmodrome: 4,800 gal/s (peak) Space Shuttle
| Launch Complex 39: 7,317 gal/s (net) Wallops: 4,000
| gal/s (?) SLS: 18,333 gal/s (peak) Mack
| Super Pumper (this article): 146 gal/s (net)
| Replacement new Super Pumper 1: 87.5 gal/s (net)
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| The numbers on rocket engines are just ridiculous. The turbine
| on the F1 engines on the Saturn V's first stage generate about
| 40MW just to pump the fuel and oxygen. 5 of them on the rocket
| is 200MW which is a respectablly sized power plant, or about
| 1/2 of a Nimitz aircraft carrier (which is able to push a
| floating city through the water at nearly 40mph).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The comparisons which stick in my head are that the Saturn
| V's first-stage _fuel pumps_ were roughly equal in power to a
| naval destroyer 's engines, and the five F1 engines delivered
| as much energy as France's entire electrical grid (presumably
| contemporaneously). This from books read as I was a wee lad.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's always blown my mind about rocket engines. If the FUEL
| PUMP has that much power, the overall machine energy flow must
| be insane. Especially in such a small package.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Something the article doesn't mention is why this was phased out.
| Was it replaced with something similar?
| plasticsoprano wrote:
| Better building fire suppression systems. Not to mention
| improvements to flame retardant materials.
| mindcrime wrote:
| FDNY reintroduced the "Super Pumper" concept in a somewhat
| different form a few years ago.
|
| See:
|
| https://www.firefighternation.com/lifestyle/new-fdny-super-p...
| dublinben wrote:
| Some interesting history here:
| https://www.firerescue1.com/firefighting-history/articles/th...
| michaelt wrote:
| The article says the "super pumper" could supply 8,800 gallons
| per minute, and it came with three "satellite trucks [...] not
| burdened with a pump of their own"
|
| Your basic modern fire pump unit can pump 2,200 gallons per
| minute (if you can find a water source that'll give you that
| much) and it'd typically have a crew of 4-5 firefighters on
| board.
|
| So you'd probably replace it with 4 regular fire trucks? Then
| you've got just as much pump capacity, plus you've got the
| flexibility to send the trucks to different places.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _(if you can find a water source that 'll give you that
| much)_
|
| Note that, for what it's worth, fire pumps are generally
| rated for their capacity when drafting from a static water
| supply (think, pond, lake, river, etc). Basically all modern
| fire pumps can easily exceed their rated capacity by a pretty
| good margin when pumping from a pressurized source, but then
| you're back to your point of "do you have a source that can
| supply that?" Still, there are ways. In my firefighting days
| we had some hydrants in our district (the ones on the big 30"
| main that ran right down the middle of the county in
| particular) that could individually supply 2000gpm. And
| nothing says you are restricted to using one hydrant! There
| are also all sorts of complex water supply evolutions one can
| run, involving relay pumping with multiple engines, drafting
| _and_ using hydrants, etc.
| michaelt wrote:
| In the UK a large-scale fire will often be attended by far
| more fire engines than the local water network can supply.
|
| At the major Grenfell Tower fire, the water network could
| only supply ~4,320 litres per minute (1141 us gallons per
| minute) [1] despite firefighters asking the water suppliers
| to maximise the water supply.
|
| And that fire was attended by _seventy_ fire engines and
| _two hundred and fifty_ firefighters, as they needed pretty
| much all the breathing apparatus in the city. So they had
| substantially more pump capacity than they had water
| available.
|
| [1] https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/lfb-did-not-
| follow-even...
| mindcrime wrote:
| Oh it happens in the US as well. I know of at least one
| relatively large metro area fire department here in NC
| that has a few sections of the city with known water
| supply issues - to the point that structure fires in
| those areas get dispatched with automatic mutual aid for
| tankers from surrounding rural departments.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| There was a fire station we used to walk past when my little boy
| was about 2 years old. Often the fire trucks were out the front
| being cleaned. The fire fighters always let him sit in the cabin.
| Heaven for 2 year olds obsessed with trucks.
| xnx wrote:
| 2400 hp sounds like a lot, but a Model X Plaid is 1020 hp. I
| assume it couldn't output 1020 hp for as long though.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| torque is the more important figure. Which is why 13l truck
| engines output only about 600hp.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I never understood why people care about torque from an
| engine when it's going to be connected to a gearbox that can
| convert the torque to whatever you want anyway. So why is
| torque a more important spec than power for an engine?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's usually because there's an implicit "everything else
| the same" - and so if you build a car engine entirely
| focusing on peak horsepower you might end up with a dog
| because the curve isn't well suited to the rest of the
| design, whereas if you build it for maximum low-end torque
| you get a kick in the pants (and then strip all the gears
| or snap an axle).
|
| Especially since people often consider "horsepower" to be
| things like turbos, etc that have their own spool-up
| requirements and result in inability to launch well.
| devilbunny wrote:
| An F1 gearbox can convert your torque to HP, but the
| gearing may or may not survive very long. If, like marine
| or rail applications, you need a fairly constant output
| power that isn't brutal on the spinning bits of metal, you
| will optimize for high torque at relatively low RPM.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They are related by the shaft speed anyway.
|
| The reason that a lot of applications consider torque is
| that's more efficient to operate near the required shaft
| speed than it is to run faster and gear down. You fight
| more inertia in the engine at higher speed, and you add
| rotating mass with your gearbox.
| uncorkthe wrote:
| I had an old coworker who had a fox body Mustang. He liked to
| say "Horsepower doesn't win [drag] races, torque does."
|
| One day we were out servicing a conveyor drive with a 5hp
| motor attached to a gear reducer. I pointed out the spec
| plate on the reducer, it claimed an output of more than a
| thousand foot-pounds of torque.
|
| "So this thing should be able to beat your Mustang in a race,
| eh?"
|
| Horsepower is just torque * RPM.
| trogdor wrote:
| The Plaid can only output its maximum power at 100% state-of-
| charge (or close to it).
|
| As state-of-charge decreases, so does the overall battery pack
| voltage. Since the motors can only pull some peak number of
| amps, doing so at lower pack voltage will always deliver less
| total power.
|
| I own a Model S Plaid and I used to pay close attention to the
| OBD-II data, out of curiosity.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| This thing feels like a mortal danger to the (up to 8x!) iron
| pipes / hydrants it's pulling from, that it'd want to just chew
| up the very pipes themselves! Or to the building it's hurling 37
| tons of water a minute at! I don't understand how a connector
| hose wouldn't collapse, how it maintains any cross-section rather
| than being sucked into collapse.
|
| Also wondering: what replaced this!
|
| (Ed: great reply from Mindcrime. Also, the new Ferrara Super
| Pumper shows a very impressive ribbed(?) 8-inch "hard suction"
| hose! There's a whole wikipedia section for these drafting/vacuum
| hoses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suction_hose)
| amluto wrote:
| I imagine the hydrants were operated at positive pressure.
| Water mains are generally somewhere between 40 and maybe 120
| psi gauge. You don't gain a whole lot by sucking on them - at
| most you get to -14 psi, and you do not want to boil the water
| (aka cause cavitation) in your pump.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _This thing feels like a mortal danger to the (up to 8x!) iron
| pipes / hydrants it's pulling from,_
|
| When pumping a fire engine supplied by a hydrant (or any other
| pressurized source, as opposed to drafting from a static water
| source like a pond or lake) there's an idea of "residual
| pressure" which is monitored by a gauge on the pump panel. The
| engineer is responsible for making sure the residual pressure
| doesn't drop below the level where damage would occur to the
| water system, supply hose, or the pump itself. It's been a few
| years, but I think most departments spec somewhere around 20psi
| as the minimum residual pressure they allow.
|
| _Also wondering: what replaced this!_
|
| The Super Pumper[1], of course! :-)
|
| The new one isn't quite as extreme, not tractor drawn and no
| separate engine. This is more of a traditional fire engine
| style platform, but the specs are still pretty impressive.
|
| [1]: https://www.firefighternation.com/lifestyle/new-fdny-
| super-p...
| topspin wrote:
| > Also wondering: what replaced this!
|
| A collection of smaller pumps and monitors, which is likely a
| better scheme, in terms of flexibility and fault tolerance.
| While a remarkable design, the single pump with long hoses to
| multiple hydrants, then radiating to multiple monitors, is a
| system that takes great coordination and precious time to
| deploy and rework in action.
|
| The Napier Deltic engine is the party piece in all this. It is
| an ambitious and yet successful design, intended to push the
| limit of power-to-weight in a diesel engine. I investigated the
| state of current diesel locomotive engines in comparison to the
| Deltic and it remains, _to this day_ , the highest power-to-
| weight diesel engine in use for locomotives. (There are half a
| dozen still running in the UK today in limited service.) I've
| personally visited the Bay City museum to see this engine.
|
| These engines require forced induction; they cannot run
| naturally aspirated. In its various naval, rail and other
| applications there were many different induction designs
| applied to the Deltic: turbos, superchargers and combinations
| of both. Today, we have _electric_ forced induction, enabled by
| the high performance electric motors that have emerged
| elsewhere in transport applications. One thinks of what diesel
| wonders might be created by combining the Deltic design with
| electric forced induction.
| jabl wrote:
| I believe most contemporary marine two stroke diesels use
| electrical blowers for scavenging at low speeds. At higher
| speed the turbocharger spins up and takes over, and the
| electric blowers are shut down.
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't bust this out until the building is already at risk
| anyway, so the amount of water is considered "the better
| option".
|
| (Which is why almost ANY fire is a total structure loss unless
| you can contain it nearly instantly, because the _water_ used
| to fight it destroys nearly everything. Only if the building is
| large, concrete, or the damage limited is it worth repairing;
| most fire-damaged houses get pulled down as it 's cheaper
| overall.)
| kazinator wrote:
| That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic is pretty
| interesting.
|
| You would initially think that the ignition events would be
| evenly spaced, but that's not the case. For every delta triplet,
| the ignitions come rapidly one after another, close together in
| the cycle.
|
| In that second animation on the page, showing the firing order
| among 6 delta piston assemblies, if you keep your eyes fixated on
| any of the six columns, you can see the three firing events.
| Always C, B, A order.
| jabl wrote:
| In case someone is interested in the engine powering this thing,
| a good writeup at https://oldmachinepress.com/2019/09/05/napier-
| deltic-opposed...
| mindcrime wrote:
| And while we're talking about highly specialized firefighting
| apparatus... while I don't think Chicago FD ever ran anything
| quite like the FDNY Mack Super Pumper, they are well known for
| their use of a piece of apparatus known as a "turret wagon".
| Basically, it's a big-ass truck with a huge deluge gun (aka
| "monitor" or "turret") mounted on the back, and with a big intake
| manifold for receiving multiple supply lines. You could think of
| a "turret wagon" as being conceptually akin to the "Satellite"
| units that were part of the FDNY Super Pumper System.
|
| Anyway, one of the best known Chicago Turret Wagons was "Big
| John" (aka 6-7-3).
|
| https://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2013/04/chicago-fd-turret-w...
|
| https://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2013/04/chicago-fd-turret-w...
|
| Not sure if CFD still maintain any Turret Wagons in contemporary
| times or not, but variations on the concept are still found,
| particularly in industrial fire departments that protect high
| hazard sites like oil refineries, certain chemical plants, etc.
| bitwize wrote:
| Wow. Those things could Dip Toontown off the face of the earth.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting to think about - because Big John obviously
| takes some time to connect/setup but then can (apparently)
| deliver 10,000 gallons per minute as long as there's water in
| the pipes.
|
| Whereas a modern tanker truck can do 1,000 GPM for 2 or 3
| minutes, but can do it immediately upon arriving onsite.
|
| https://www.piercemfg.com/fire-trucks/tankers/bx-tanker
|
| It's also relative to how fire-fighting has changed over time,
| modern buildings that are big enough to NEED the Big John are
| also much more fire-resistant (concrete instead of wood, etc).
| 7402 wrote:
| Anyone else struck by this bit?
|
| _Mack was awarded the contract to build the truck in 1964 and by
| the end of the year, the unit was nearly ready to hit the streets
| of NYC._
|
| Seems amazingly fast by current standards. Those were the days!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Think about all the processes they just didn't have to do back
| then.
| garbagewoman wrote:
| just less massive amounts of waste, fraud and corruption
| anjel wrote:
| Thanks private equity!
| https://markorton.substack.com/p/fire-engines-monopolies-
| and...
| dmix wrote:
| There was a senate investigation in Sept 2025 and it
| sounds a good case for an antitrust investigation:
|
| https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/Musharbash-T...
|
| Whenever there's market centralization the first question
| is why aren't upstarts taking over the market if there's
| such a backlog and high costs. Briefly reading into this,
| there's a large barrier to entry for fire engines in
| terms of extensive certification, local/state
| regulations, and the large emergency operations buying
| them need safe supply lines so they won't risk betting on
| newbies. You also won't easily find foreign suppliers to
| help fill the void (euro companies will focus on euro
| certifications). Plus you'd need to make deals with other
| mega-corp truck manufacturers and other specialized
| equipment.
|
| Combine that with 2008 financial crisis + flood of cheap
| capital, it was easy pickings for
| financialization/consolidation.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Indirectly related, for anyone interested in the topic, Pirault
| and Flint's Opposed Piston Engines[1] is a nice survey.
| Unfortunately it seems to be commanding a shocking price these
| days though.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Martin-Flint/dp/0768018005
| joemi wrote:
| > During a fire in the Bronx, firemen laid 7,000ft of hose to get
| to a suitable water supply and the truck pumped as though it was
| dipping its feet into the ocean.
|
| "7000 ft" sounds wrong to me. That's over a mile of hose. Feels
| like that's unnecessarily long. I'd love to learn more about
| this. Anyone know when or what fire this was?
| maxerickson wrote:
| It could draw from 8 hydrants. So average of 900 feet in that
| case.
|
| Which still seems like a lot, but not so incredible.
| permonst wrote:
| It's not uncommon to see an individual fire engine in the US
| with 800-1000 feet of supply hose. I don't know if that's a
| common configuration in a dense city like NYC, but it's
| certainly a reasonable amount per engine.
| dleary wrote:
| The article mentions that the main pumping unit could draw
| water from 8 hydrants at once. So 7000 ft of total hose to get
| to 8 hydrants sounds like it makes sense.
|
| I wonder if maybe it can't even use hydrants that are too near
| each other in the plumbing graph.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I wonder if maybe it can 't even use hydrants that are too
| near each other in the plumbing graph._
|
| There's a lot of variables in that equation. For example, say
| you have a "dead end" main that ends somewhere near the fire.
| If you connect to the last hydrant on the main and start
| flowing water, there's a good chance you won't get a lot of
| _additional_ water by connecting to the next hydrant up the
| street. But if you connect to a hydrant that 's on a main
| that is part of a loop, there's a better chance you'll be
| able to get more water by doing that.
|
| And without getting into too much detail that would be boring
| to non-firefighters (probably)... there's actually two big
| variables for a given hydrant: the maximum _volume_ of water
| it can supply (in GPM) and the _pressure_ available at the
| hydrant. And those two things are related. Anyway, net-net,
| you can have a hydrant that is capable of - in principle -
| flowing, let 's say 2000 GPM. But the pressure at the hydrant
| is only, say, 40 psi. That means you only have 20 psi
| (approximately) available[1] to overcome the friction loss in
| the supply hose between the hydrant and the engine. And that
| friction loss in turn is a function of the hose size and the
| flow rate.
|
| Anyway, that results in a situation where you might have a
| hydrant that _could_ supply you 2000GPM, but if your fire is,
| say, 1500 feet away, you might effectively only be able to
| take advantage of maybe 500GPM of that.
|
| And that in turn leads into stuff like using a "four way" or
| "hydrant assist" valve, or having a relay engine sitting
| right on the hydrant (to minimize friction loss between the
| hydrant and the engine) and then using its pump to boost the
| pressure going to the attack engine. By using multiple
| engines like that, you can get closer to achieving that
| hypothetical 2000GPM (or whatever) flow.
|
| It gets pretty complicated, but fortunately fires in urban
| areas where the municipal water system is the limiting factor
| seem to be relatively uncommon (but not unheard of!) in this
| day and age.
|
| [1]: because you don't want to pull the residual pressure
| down too low or it can damage the water system, supply hose
| or your pump.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| If they were all in a single line it probably wouldn't have
| worked -- series hydrodynamic hose impedance adds just like
| series resistance in a circuit and the pressure at the end
| would have been too low to be useful. But if it was 7000 feet
| arranged in several shorter parallel lines it's possible.
| linsomniac wrote:
| SysAdmin related: I was once talking to a fire chief and I asked
| about how much water the fire engines carried. He said that they
| carry about enough to put out the typical house fire. The first
| engine on scene immediately jumps to fighting the fire. The
| second engine on scene hooks the first engine up to the water
| supply before going on to fight the fire.
|
| I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If I'm
| the second on the scene, what can I do to support those fighting
| the fire right now, before jumping in.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Our engine holds 1200 gallons. It goes in first* and starts
| putting the wet stuff on the red stuff.
|
| As the engine drives in it drops a 3" hose along its path. Next
| is our big tender with 3000 gallons. It stops at the street and
| connects to the dropped hose to pump more water up to the
| engine.
|
| The tender also has a drop tank -- think about a portable kids'
| wading pool but much larger and deeper. Shuttle tenders refill
| the drop tank while our big tender draws from it to continue
| supplying the engine.
|
| We don't have fire hydrants, so this is the dance we have to
| do.
|
| * It's very important to park the engine close to the fire _but
| not too close_. Ask me how I learned this.
| jonstewart wrote:
| H-h-how did you learn this?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| The hard way.
| mindcrime wrote:
| "No worries Chief, that'll buff out!"
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Exactly. Back when I was a newbie we melted all the
| lights on the engine as well as on my own truck since I
| was first on scene POV (Personally Owned Vehicle). And of
| course we charred some hose but that's common. Then CHAOS
| happened (Chief Has Arrived On Scene) and he quickly
| moved both trucks farther away from the fire, saving the
| county (and me!) the cost of a new truck.
| mindcrime wrote:
| It's incredibly unfortunate when those things happen, but
| it comes with the territory sometimes. Case in point:
|
| https://www.firerescue1.com/firefighter-safety/photo-
| video-l...
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Details!
|
| Also, please set up something like this or give me a link
| to a North American fire department that has such high
| production value videos:
| https://www.youtube.com/@BrandweerLunteren
|
| I just love that the guy literally bikes to the fire
| station in like a minute and he's not even the first guy
| to arrive or just barely. And the others following in the
| van are like a couple minutes out at most. Where I am,
| the volunteers at the fire department have to be there
| within 15 minutes plus the time it takes to get to the
| actual fire.
|
| (no worries I understand that the Netherlands is a much
| different country with regards to fire hydrant
| infrastructure and closeness to the station from the US /
| NA, at least/especially the rural US/Canada. I just want
| such awesome videos from other places around the globe
| really)
| mulmen wrote:
| > It's very important to park the engine close to the fire
| but not too close. Ask me how I learned this.
|
| I was a farm hand as a summer job to cover beer and books in
| my college years. We harvested wheat which carries a high
| fire risk. Most farms kept a tractor with a large plow hooked
| up so it could quickly encircle and contain any fires.
|
| Pulling a 40' wide plow is _hard_. Tractors can do it because
| they have huge engines that suck in huge amounts of oxygen.
|
| Just like fires.
|
| If you get a tractor too close to a fire it starves for
| oxygen and stalls out. The plow becomes an anchor. There's
| just enough time to bail out before the tires catch fire.
| After a few minutes the whole thing is a pile of ash and
| melted steel.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Didn't know wheat harvest came with fire risk. I know about
| the dangers of grain silos but I didn't know the harvest
| itself was risky.
| mulmen wrote:
| Oh yeah. It's a constant threat.
|
| The wheat is harvested "dry". The plant dies and dries
| out. The drier the better. Moisture leads to mold in the
| silos and clogs up the harvesters.
|
| The wheat is harvested by "combines" which are literally
| a combination harvester and thresher. Both machines are
| extremely complex.
|
| They're used at 110% capacity to beat the fall rains then
| sit rotting for 9-10 months. Lots of seized bearings or
| broken bits of machines sparking and starting fires.
|
| The grain trucks I drove had their air conditioners
| removed to discourage idling and the exhaust pipes dumped
| directly in front of the rear tires to auto-snuff exhaust
| fires.
| jonah wrote:
| Wow. We're probably more rural and can't fit such large
| apparatus in many places we have to go. Out our type 1 engine
| carries 1,000 gallons, and our type 3 (wildland) 500 gallons
| and our tenders have 2,000.
|
| 1,000 isn't going to put out a house fire unless it's really
| small and not fully involved. The past two good structure
| fires we had took 20,000 and 60,000 to gallons respectively.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Agreed. We could never put out a residential structure fire
| with one truck's worth of water. That's why we ask for
| mutual aid and an army of shuttling tenders shows up.
|
| Our big tender never leaves the street; it's too big and
| too heavy for residential driveways.
|
| We do have a brush truck for tighter spots and for use as a
| relay pump for extra long driveways.
| bombcar wrote:
| How did you learned this?
|
| Rural properties I'm familiar with required a 3,000 gallon
| water tank with fire-connection far enough from the main
| structure as to be accessible.
|
| But ask the fire department how they'd approach your house,
| and put the hydrant on that road; it might NOT be the
| road/driveway you normally come up!
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| >I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If
| I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those
| fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.
|
| Great! Now I'll have to see this quote over an image of a
| sweaty firefighter on LinkedIn every 3 weeks for eternity.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/zCjoWIZ.jpeg
|
| I feel gross.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| > I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If
| I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those
| fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.
|
| A lot of it depends on the size and skill-set of your team and
| the escalation routes available to you, but in general (and off
| the top of my head):
|
| - Get the first people on scene to give a summary of the
| problem as they know it. Make sure everyone actually agrees on
| what the problem is and what symptoms have been observed.
| Understand what areas people are currently investigating and
| make sure they aren't trampling over each other or actually
| making the situation worse [1]
|
| - Make sure the situation hasn't evolved whilst the first on
| scene have been investigating the initial symptoms. It's easy
| to get lost in the weeds digging into a handful of monitoring
| alerts only to look up and realise there's now 300 and the
| original problem is only a small part of what's going on.
|
| - If there isn't one already and you're not better doing
| something else, become incident commander. When done right it's
| an extremely important and useful role. - Take
| over external communication and protect the team from
| distractions - Start assessing escalation options -
| Take copious notes and keep a timeline - Act as a shared
| memory and keep people honest - Have a less panicked,
| wider (non minutia) view of the problem - Start collating
| and pulling up documentation/schematics so the people at the
| coalface can quickly query it rather than getting distracted
| searching for it. - Be ready to jump, for when someone
| inevitably asks "can someone check..." or "does anyone know"
| - Keep track of the "shared truth" of the incident as it
| evolves. What have we witnessed, what do we believe is the
| cause, _why_ do we believe that? Have we invalidated anything,
| do we need to reassess, are we sure logical lynchpins aren't
| confirmation bias or dyslexia? - Onboard new people and
| hand over if appropriate.
|
| Being at the coalface when it's on fire is a very different
| view of the world to watching other people panic and singe
| their fingers. It's also very easy to get lost in a chain of
| technical problems [2] when it's mostly irrelevant to the wider
| picture.
|
| If you get a moment, it can also be a good time to assess how
| useful your monitoring is during an actual event.
|
| [1] "Hey, server x has flagged on monitoring and my ssh session
| is hung waiting for a login prompt!" I've been round the houses
| enough to know this is probably OOM and if I just wait, I'm
| likely to finally get in. I also know that saying this in a
| room of 20 technical people, means the server is now processing
| 22 new ssh sessions and now no one is getting anywhere.
|
| [2] The famous Malcolm in the Middle intro where Hal is tasked
| with changing a lightbulb and ends up repairing the car. Except
| in my example the bulb is actually fine and there's a power cut
| we missed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >and flow over 10,000 gallons per minute at low pressures if the
| situation called for it. When the pressure was ramped up to to
| 350psi, it could move 8,800 GPM.
|
| That sounds counterintuitive . What about higher pressure will
| slow water down?
|
| The price of the system was huge. It's a theme that as we move to
| better and more efficient systems they become more boring. Most
| of the magic of driving is lost in electric vehicles, biplanes,
| and the propellor planes of ww2 capture the imagination in a way
| jets don't. The monstrously complicated cabins of old 747s are
| fascinating in a way that modern far more capable planes are not.
| Back then you had 2 pilots and a guy whose main job was stopping
| the plane from falling out of the sky! Now it's a bunch of very
| clever computers under the cockpit that does all of that. It's
| worth noting that steam engine which was the driving element in
| the Industrial Revolution and maybe the most important invention
| in history was originally developed to pump water from mines.
| Some of these distant ancestors of modern engines are on display
| in London. James Watt might have predicted a pump like this, but
| he probably never guessed it would be pulled by anything but a
| team of horses!
|
| Compare that to Sam Altmans wild prediction that agi will capture
| "the light cone of all future profits in the entire universe",
| maybe true, but it will never be as interesting as a steam
| engine, where the collective ingenuity of a century of engineers
| and metallugrists is on display in all it's glory.
| foxglacier wrote:
| > That sounds counterintuitive . What about higher pressure
| will slow water down?
|
| I suppose that means back-pressure. More back-pressure on a
| pump means it can't provide such a high flow rate at the same
| power output because power = flow rate * pressure.
| permonst wrote:
| > That sounds counterintuitive . What about higher pressure
| will slow water down?
|
| It sounds counterintuitive because it's not worded well.
| Imagine a garden hose with no nozzle: The water doesn't go very
| far, but you can fill a bucket with it pretty quickly. You can
| also restrict the flow by putting your thumb over the end of
| the hose. That increases the pressure and allows you to fill up
| a bucket farther away, but it takes longer because you've
| lowered the volume (GPM) of water flowing from the hose.
|
| Firefighters use nozzle tips of different sizes to make trade
| offs between pressure and volume.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's also a huge amount of efficiency tooling added "later"
| - early planes were simple - and they could still be if we
| wanted to not have efficient operation.
|
| I remember a cold-war army manual on how to operate captured
| Soviet equipment; much of it was "long description on what all
| these dials and parts are for the howitzer - to use, ignore all
| that shit and fire it, see what you hit, and adjust and try
| again."
| bolangi wrote:
| Hello hath no fury like a lithium ion battery fire.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Tell me more.
|
| As a firefighter, the training I've had tells me that they're
| generally no big deal. You spray water on them to keep the
| overall temps down, and wait. Not a big deal. The main
| difference is that they don't tend to go out quickly, so you
| may be stuck nursing it as it burns itself out for a long time.
| sklargh wrote:
| Simply posting here to introduce people to the Snozzle.
| https://youtu.be/_DNyAKcEe6A
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| The 'Curious Droid' video on this engine is fascinating. If I
| were more helpful, I'd leave a link to it
| andrewstuart wrote:
| This site is not a charity.
| mberning wrote:
| The Napier Deltic has a very distinctive sound. You can hear it
| in locomotive form on youtube. If you are into that sort of thing
| there are some really good videos on the Rolls Royce Crecy engine
| as well.
| dboreham wrote:
| There are still a bunch of class 55s operational so if you're
| sufficiently motivated you can go hear one first hand.
| Kallikrates wrote:
| the station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tc2Hs8kdwbFcbaxC6
| dboreham wrote:
| For the curious: most locomotive desiel engine designs have
| marine origins. That's because ships transitioned to desiel power
| (from steam) before trains did. At least in the UK. The general
| design constraints are similar and so when folks began looking
| into making diesel locomotives they generally selected existing
| marine designs and adapted them. Often de-rating the maximum
| power to improve reliability.
|
| When the UK converted from steam to diesel it was easier to
| switch the locomotives while leaving the coach stock as-is.
| Modern trains aren't like this: they're "multiple units" with
| more than one drive car. Anyway, a steam engine can generate much
| more power than a 1950s diesel engine can, particularly factoring
| in the UK loading gauge which restricts engine height. So in
| order to make a diesel locomotive capable of taking over from A4
| Pacific steam engines on the east coast main line, it was
| necessary to design a locomotive that had two desiel engines,
| with a high power to weight ratio. Hence the class 55 cited in
| the article. The deltic engines were very complex and costly to
| maintain but solved a problem arising from the transition away
| from steam. In the 1970s they were in turn replaced by trains
| with a DMU configuration (HST), featuring a permanently coupled
| power/van car at each end, removing the need for a single very
| high power locomotive.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-04 23:01 UTC)