WesWorld

Folks:

With two minelaying subs coming into service, India's likely to scrap the three L-1 class coastal minelayers in service since about 1926 or so. They're fast, skinny little things that're over 50% machinery - 15,000 kw each.

I'm thinking it'd be useful to recycle that machinery in something where the age is not so critical, such as a larger sloop. Question is, would 15,000 kw of machinery from a 600 t craft likely be a single set of equipment, or something that might lend itself to being split in half to generate six sets of 7,500 kw machinery?

Most likely 1 or 2 boilers with 2 turbines and 2 gearsets. Would need new piping but could keep the turbines and gearsets. Boilers would need cleaning.

Okay, so that sounds feasible in theory. Perhaps charge myself a 25% refit cost on the machinery I re-use for the new piping, cleaning, and what-not. That still saves me around 20% of the cost of a new sloop, without much degradation to performance.

On further reflection, I can't reconcile the weight of machinery in the L-1 with the weight of a similar powerplant in the larger sloop - maybe a hull size/strength issue. So I think that notion is off.

However, I rebuilt six destroyers into sloops with 6000 kwh powerplants in 1927, and springstyles for them and the 1934-build replacements give me exactly identical powerplant sizes. So scrap those six older vessels, recycle their machinery, and build six new sloops that way. Saves around 25-30% of the cost.