SS Rotterdam Engine Rooms

[Lynda Bradford]

We visited the SS Rotterdam in October and in addition to the tour of the ship we decided to pay the extra to tour the Engine Rooms.  This was a really informative tour and my husband Tom had taken these photos, which I hope gives just a little insight into what we saw. 

[Lynda Bradford]

More photos enjoy the tour:

[Lynda Bradford]

Even for a non technical person, like me I found it fascinating to see the well preserved the engine rooms onboard SS Rotterdam

[Hank Hargrove]

Nice photos of the Engine rooms.

[June Ingram]

Yes, very good photos, and I am amazed at the apparent degree of preservation. 

[Adam Hodson]

Thanks for posting Lynda - great photos.

[Lynda Bradford]

It was a wonderful experience to have the tour of the Engine room and well worth the additional cost, especially as we were the only people on the tour and the guide spent a lot of time with us. 

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

It was a wonderful experience to have the tour of the Engine room and well worth the additional cost, especially as we were the only people on the tour and the guide spent a lot of time with us.

Many of the guides are former crew members who actually worked in the Engine Room. I was lucky to have met one of those, who also, like Lynda's, took his time to explain and show the love he felt for the ship. Some parts of the Engine Room, like the others are well preserved, but behind plexiglass, as the asbestos there has not been removed.

I too found the Engine Room visit most impressive, and it is great for an ignoramus like me to walk around this HUGE area and realise how much machinery and power is needed to keep the ship moving and working.

Rod might enjoy the fact that this was a steam poered ship!

[Rod]

I did enjoy that. Far better than going round the world on a series of mis-timed explosions!

[Twynkle]

Ha ha, Rod!

Lynda - so good to hear you visited that grand ship, looking forward to hearing much more when we meet!
Way off topic - and please delete when you have seen this!
If you have got the 'fascinated by engines' bug, and if you haven't already, you'll enjoy the wee powerhouse on  HMY Britannia - it's brilliant and much nearer and dare I say, 'easier' than the great Rotterdam V
R.

[June Ingram]

Very interesting posts, all !

[Bob van Leeuwen]

All of the aluminum that is visible in this picture, that act like walls are there because behind those walls the asbestos have not been removed.
The reason they are there is because during the conversion, they didn't want to remove the asbestos everywhere in the engine, and since it was at save levels, they kept it that way. They needed to take samples every week I believe, and around those times there where no guided tours in the engine room. Soon people toke pieces out of the engine room with them, and the situation became dangerous.


They shut the tour down, plated even more in, and since that moment of time there have been guided tours, and in my opinion this is a lot better. I have toke the tour 2 times now, and the first time the host actually worked there and told a lot about it. The problem was time restriction, we had only half a hour for the complete tour.


You don't see everything, there are some parts that are hard to reach with a big group, don't have anything interesting, ore is still used, as is the case with the area in front of the stabilizer room.

[June Ingram]

Thank you very much, Bob, for telling us more about the visible aluminum in the engine room and why it is there.