Diesel engine mechanic here and I learned about these during my apprenticeship. "high strung" is the understatement of the fucking century. Deltics are garbag

Diesel engine mechanic here and I learned about these during my apprenticeship. "high strung" is the understatement of the fucking century. Deltics are garbage compared to a modern inline 8 or 16 cylinder locomotive diesel. cheerleaders for deltics will always measure their effectiveness in the guesome "miles per casualty" figure, completely ignoring the fact this system had astronomical service costs as the design compounds stress on cast parts. you had to have starter cartridges (explosives) to start the things, and it wasnt uncommon for them to give up the smoke just cranking them. they have horrendous emissions as well compared to inlines. diesel and lube oil would roll out of the exhaust in massive plumes (you would never get these approved in the US today.) Usually on startup large diesels have monitored exhaust temperatures but in a Deltic your eyes had to be glued to the meter because the stack was always a blond one away from runaway (catching fire.) As tolerances drifted during service most fleets just fed these things more lube oil and in turn, worse emissions and efficiency. again, complexity. Your tolerances for a deltic were insane compared to what you had at the time for an off-the-shelf diesel. repair parts too had to be custom fitted to the engine as it had worn and take into account things like piston bore cavitation damage from overprimed starter cartridges/overspeed/overtemp/etc...The shop down the road could not fabricate deltic parts so lead times were considerable. Whoever worked on these had a dedicated machinist (not just a miller) cutting parts off a dialed-in colchester lathe or something with a very good tolerance.