# Old tug"ORION" with Skinner engines????



## Captian Dag (Oct 26, 2008)

saw this 69 year old tug inbound in Port Fourchon,Louisiana and noticed odd sounding engines. her current ABS records show her with Skinner diesels. Never heard of these before. anyone has info to share????


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Like most of the smaller marine diesel's they appear to be a marinisation of an American Truck Engine.


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## Captian Dag (Oct 26, 2008)

After further investigation, ABS possibly could still be listing her original engines from new built as Skinner did manufacture steam engines or at least this sounds like a good explanation......


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

The most common of the marinised diesel truck engine's has to be the Ford straight six, I would not like to hazard a guess at the number of Companies World Wide that have put there own marine kit's on them throughout the year's and still do. A great engine as long as they are not on Keel Cooler's. The name Skinner ring's a bell, I presume they built steam Loco engine's along with the marine engine.


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## Wallace Slough (Mar 21, 2009)

Could the ABS records possibly be referring to Skinner Uniflow engines?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniflow_steam_engine

Skinner Uniflow engines were also used in railroad tugs, and there were at least two of them active in the San Francisco Bay area. I believe the original tugs were of WWII design. A number of them were repowered with diesels after the war such as the Henry Foss.


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## Captian Dag (Oct 26, 2008)

I was able to go down to the Martin Midstream terminal here in Port Fourchon and reshoot this tug . I was fortunate to find one of the captains and the chief on the back deck. they were kind enough to answer a few questions

She is indeed the 1943 built vessel.(see IMO number in photo) 
her original engine was a skinner steam plant. then repowered with fair banks and currently has twin 16 cyl. Alco diesels

her captain said she has less downtime than the other offshore tugs owned by Martin and she 's a great handling tug. he also said she spent a good part of her career working the mouth of the Mississippi river as an assist tug for grounded ships


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