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The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

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Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#31

Post by amluto »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #25

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.…

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.

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#32

Post by mindcrime »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #25

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.…

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...

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#33

Post by mindcrime »

citizenkeen wrote: post #13

Something the article doesn’t mention is why this was phased out. Was it replaced with something similar?

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...

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#35

Post by slybot »

nchmy wrote: post #20
dewey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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/

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3674140/

I watched this movie on cinema a decade ago. Highly recommended.

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#37

Post by mindcrime »

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.

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#38

Post by topspin »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #25

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 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.

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#39

Post by michaelt »

citizenkeen wrote: post #13

Something the article doesn’t mention is why this was phased out. Was it replaced with something similar?

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.

Re: The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)

#40

Post by mindcrime »

tonetegeatinst wrote: post #5

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.

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.
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