1967brutus

A change of pace every now and then rejuvenates the mind, Dave...

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Amazing Bert... I'm not really a "boat" guy but that one is truly unique and wonderful!!!

Its funny how so many of us had similar starts - My "engineering career" started with a Mamod engine. Just looked them up and can't believe what they go for now!
I was quite young and wasn't suppose to be firing it up when my Father wasn't around but did so regularly. Got caught once and had trouble sitting down for a few days
Before I switched to aircraft maintenance I ended my "steam" career as an operator of a 52MW General Electric Backpressure steam turbine generator and a 22MW Stal-Laval. The Stal was an amazing machine.

1967brutus

I had to look up "Backpressure Turbine" because in shipping, that kind of set-up is basically never used thus the term was unfamiliar to me.
STAL-Laval on the other hand, although I never worked with them (never even saw one) were studied in-depth back in nautical college as they were back then regarded as the pinnacle of compactness (power vs size) but in fact actually were relatively rarely used in ships: the compactness only was in the turbine itself, the boiler and condenser installation still was HUGE, as were the required fuel volumes, which a ship has to bring along... People somehow completely overlooked the fact that where fuel is, no cargo can be, in the late '60's and early '70's

Back when I went to college (mid/late '80's), educations and competency certifications and such were lagging behind by about 10 years on actual technological trends, so there was still quite a bit of emphasis on steam while by then it was allready clear that steam turbines as a marine propulsion principle was over and done for.
During my career I have mainly operated steam as a pure heating medium, only once for power, and that was only the cargopumps.

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Back-pressure would be a stationary specific Installation I guess - We produced steam at 600PSI(4200KPA) and 1200PSI (8400KPA) (lots of superheat) and dropped it to 180psi (extraction) and 80psi (exhaust) - the Backpressue streams were at mild superheat for "dry transfer" through the headers and desuperheated just prior to use (Plant process heating). Most plant heat consumers were our "condensers" and recovered condensate was sent back to us. The Radial STAL was an amazing machine despite being a dated design when I operated it.. Super reliable and rugged. Because of its design you could take it from initial Roll to full load in 15 minutes- from Speed (3600RPM) no load to full load in 5 minutes... In contrast the GE took 4 hours from roll to full load to heat soak properly.

It seems that unfortunately all technical training suffers from what you mentioned Bert - All that I have taken part in has in both aviation and power engineering has been plagued.. you learn the applied technology while working on it it seems.