Did the workshop lads have a 'pull er round' command where anyone near a belt if the engine was dying had to pull to keep it turning over until someone had refuelled / put plug lead back on / walloped stuck valve rocker etc to avoid a standing start with all the fast and loose belted on the fast pulleys ? I've heard it described in some places.
When I was young I got involved in the Eastney pumping station, pumped Portsmouths sewage and drainage to a better place, 2 remaining out of 3 horizontally opposed twin Crossley Y4 class 180hp gas engines direct coupled to 48" centrifugal sewage pumps, we got one running on natural gas but it was very quiet on no load, then after chasing the auxilliary services piping around, we figured out why the donkey engine (a Ruston) had fast, loose & fast pulleys on its layshaft, one way the compressor pumped up the bottles and with crossed belt it had operated the compressor as a vac pump to prime the centrifugals.
http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/75/63/ ... ddafb8.jpg
Now the outfall pipes were blanked off just outside the enginehouse so on an idle Sunday with the working engine ticking over we tried the vacuum line out and surprisingly started to develop a vacuum, so opened the valve on top of the pump and the vacuum dropped away but then started to build again, the intake was still connected to something liquid
after a few more minutes there was the sound of the smelly stuff hitting the fan then all hell appeared to break loose, the engine governor dropped and both ends started barking, a very loud bang wasn't (as first panic assumed) something old, tired and vital breaking, the vac valve had slammed shut on seeing positive pressure and neatly killed the donkey engine, meanwhile the building shook, windows rattled, decades of dust and spiderage fell from the gantry crane and the old Crossley sounded absolutely glorious (previously, three of us had stood on a sleeper pivoted on the edge of the flywheel pit, bearing against the rim with no effect) we couldn't do this for long as after about ten minutes we found we had an uncalibrated dynomometer, couldn't touch the pump casting and paint started to peel in places.
We had two more runs, one was recorded but the cassette has long since been eaten
then someone from the Museum Service banned any more live working,
despite the City Engineer saying it was good for the engines to work.
I also played a tiny part in the Mary Rose project, one of the other buildings housed a division of the City Engineers and had a compressor and filtration rated for breathing air, they sponsored recharging the divers air bottles, well we were easy meat, in exchange for use of their machine tools the City guys could go home early and leave us to watch air pressurise - it was before Margaret Rule started to dive herself so it was often she who brought the empties and generally had interesting finds in the van.
They were desperate for secure, wet storage for the tons of iron & bronze cannon being lifted so I suggested she asked the CE if the cooling pond for the beam engine house could be seawater flooded, a week later there were two guys pitching over the cracks and a week after that it was full of seawater and filling with Tudor ordnance
I was absolutely horrified to see her almost completely sidelined when the wreck was eventually lifted and all the ba$£ards who had tried to sandbag her & the project took the limelight
as a result of that I've refused to visit the displayed remains, not that they will notice the lack of one admission fee