A promotional film produced by Turner’s Film Productions for Doxford and Hawthorn Leslie Engineering Ltd, a new company created in June 1970 to design and build the Doxford Seahorse, a turbo-charged 2 stroke opposed piston cross-head type unit with maximum continuous rating of 250 break-horse-power at 300 revolutions per minute. The film shows the construction of this new type of engine at both the Hawthorn Leslie Engineers Ltd at Byker and the Doxford and Sunderland Ltd Pallion yard in...

A promotional film produced by Turner’s Film Productions for Doxford and Hawthorn Leslie Engineering Ltd, a new company created in June 1970 to design and build the Doxford Seahorse, a turbo-charged 2 stroke opposed piston cross-head type unit with maximum continuous rating of 250 break-horse-power at 300 revolutions per minute. The film shows the construction of this new type of engine at both the Hawthorn Leslie Engineers Ltd at Byker and the Doxford and Sunderland Ltd Pallion yard in Sunderland where it is also tested. Title: The Doxford Seahorse Title: Designed and developed by Doxford Hawthorn Leslie Research Services Ltd The film opens on the Doxford Seahorse, a high powered diesel engine for general marine propulsion, under test operation at the Doxford and Sunderland Ltd Pallion yard in Sunderland. The film cuts to the works of Hawthorn Leslie Engineers Ltd at Byker where a crane manoeuvres the bedplate for the Doxford Seahorse into position watched over by a group of workmen and engineers. A milling machine mills the mating surfaces. The main bearing keep is then bolted to the bedplate. At Newcastle University a 10th scale model of the crank shaft is tested by a man who takes measurements and records them on a sheet of paper. Back at Hawthorn Leslie the crank pins are forged integral and are lowered into position by a number of workmen watched over by two other men in white lab coats. The assembled crank shaft is machined to standard techniques by men with a lathing tool. The engine is isolated from the foundation to reduce thermal distortion and this can be seen with coloured parallel corrugations. The crank shaft is lowered into position on the bedplate and a hot boxer girder is attached to the top of the bedplate. Outside the works the bedplate is loaded onto a Pickford’s flat-bed lorry and drive across the Tyne Bridge south to the Doxford and Sunderland Ltd Pallion yard in Sunderland. Inside the works the central connecting rod is installed and points lubricated. A man works inside the crank chamber. The connecting rod is then pinned. Next the central cross-head shoe is moved, positioned and slotted onto each side of the guide bars and guide face to receive and discharge oil for piston cooling and top and bottom end lubrication. A smaller piston head is lowered into a bath of liquid Nitrogen so that it can be shrunk for fitting into the cross-head made from white metal. Holes are drilled in at an axis to the cylinder liner. It is them lifted into position already attached to the jacket and exhaust belt and lowered into the bedplate. The upper piston is then installed in the cylinder. The side-nuts are tightened into the cross-heads. At a control station a man sets and checks the setting before starting the engine for the first time. The engine is tested finishing with a 500-hour power test. A data-logger and banks of computers record measurements which are looked over by engineers. The film ends with the engine running at full power with the narrator saying it is ‘a new concept in engine design’.