Engine Room(s) on the TOS Enterprise (revisited)

I see, and got it. Thanks. The "opening" normally into the main engine room is closed off by the wall of pipes, so, with we could still be under the new ladder/console/walkway. Something closed off the side room.

 

Hmm it seemed I missed an interesting discussion!
As for the closeup above; Henoch I would avoid putting too much credence into reverse closeups - usually they just grabbed a nearby wall to film against, regardless of whether it made sense or not

 

Thanks for your understanding in my previous mistakes. I'm in the camp for only one engine room in the secondary hull. The engine room underwent a series of upgrades by production order since season 2 started and continued to the end of season 3 as Mytran proposed. I need to rotate the three bottom red pipes to square off the room. The rotating DTD island is the biggest hurdle for one secondary engine room unless this represents the saucer engine room, too, or if rotating them around is an easy maintenance job and Scotty can't make up his mind which way is best. I got to start on the data base, now. One more attempt to reconcile the engine room upgrade to close off the side room and put in sets for both late season episodes:

 

Here's a thought with regard to fitting the Watkins diagnostic room in - why a low ceiling on the DOTD raised area? We never see the bottom of the ladder and consoles, it could easily be 8 or even 10 feet off the ground!

 

FWIW, I also had the consoles further out instead of being pushed in flush. That might get more room for the pipes in Watkin's room to fit.

 

So DTD is the structure called "Impluse Syncrotron Unit" in the FJSTM, the device that the dilithium crystal comes out of?

 

Those "red pipes" may be EPS lines to be controlled by the large consoles in front of them. EPS lines accounts for exploding panels. The new side room is used for matter/antimatter reactor control (Lorisa and Scott mentioned the "emergency overload bypass" or "bypass valve" for short "on the matter/antimatter reaction chamber"), so, the new large consoles in front of this room are probably matter and antimatter flow controls and monitoring panels for the energy output of the M/AM reaction chamber. This reminds me of the dilithium crystal reaction chamber just off the engineering room in TMP. Hmmm. A M/AM reaction chamber upgrade would require new control consoles; more new engineering mods. The pipes run from the M/AM supply lines around the engineering hull and reactor under the floor to the control station then back. The pipes go in and the pipes go out of the small room.

 

I think we are seeing a gradual centralization of the main engineering functions of the M/AM power operations into the main engine room. Originally, the engine room only had the big pipe cathedral (plus controls):

1. We had "lithium" crystals associated to the main power systems of the ship.(Lesser power or same item with old term.)
2. We have "dilithium" crystal paddles that need to be manually re-energized in an off-line station.
3. We get the (Double Triangular Doohickey) DTD in the floor of the engine room with the blue heat-exchanger thing on it. (I guess this replaced the manual off-line re-energizers.)
4. We get the (Emergency Manual Monitor) EMM on the other wall. (More manual controls brought into the engine room from other areas.)
5. We get the DTD with the dilithium crystal paddle holder/loader on it. (Don't have to load crystals manually below decks.)
6. We get the M/AM control room in the new small side room. (Probably was done manually down below decks.)

 

Yes it is. I'm really regretting coining the term DTD at this point when it seems there were so many other, better terms available!

If I can accept the dramatic change from the S1 Engine Room to the S2 rebuild, then why not? And this all makes all kinds of sense in terms of a (somewhat rapid) technological progression.
The only downside is that it would negate the need entirely for a second Engine Room (of the same design, anyway) and due to the presence of the curved corridor it would place Engineering headquarters squarely in the saucer.
This matches up nicely with TMOST and Franz Joseph's plans, but conflicts with DOTD (unless the pinwheel alien took a tour first).
Perhaps there was always a TMP style Engine Room in the TOS secondary hull, only in TOS it was a hazard-suit only area? As a result of the refit upgrades, Engineering HQ was moved to the secondary hull?

 

The engine rooms in the saucer and the secondary hull could all have received different upgrades. No reason to assume only one

From "The Naked Time":

SCOTT: Engineers, man your stations. Engine rooms, report. Cycling station, report. This will be an emergency restart of engines.​

 

Agree entirely about multiple engine rooms, but that means that we only saw one of them during the entire run of the show. And while I hesitate to being up other starships as a comparison, it also means that the USS Exeter did have 2 identical engine rooms (Omega Glory)

 

Well with the Exeter, if they can have two identical engine rooms why can't the Enterprise? Plus, we could tie one engine room (TUC) with the circular corridor to the saucer and all the other ones without the circular corridor to the secondary hull (DOTD). Plus if there was a "reversed" engine room from "The Immunity Syndrome" that could be Engine Room #3. And so on

I think there are enough variations that we can engine rooms with the S2 framework but with different details.

 

We would need to dream up a "main" function for the DTD island other than dilithium crystals though, because it appears in every Engine Room after S2!

 

Take a look at "That Which Survives". I think you will be surprised (I was!) that the DTD is no where to be found in that engine room...

 

This is why I realized some time ago that I could favor the idea of some kind of power transfer conduit ending in the saucer at the Impulse Syncrotron Unit in Engineering in the Saucer, in addition to an engine room in the Secondary Hull. This is copied and pasted from Miriam Webster:

Definition of synchrotron. 1 : an apparatus for imparting very high speeds to charged particles by means of a combination of a high-frequency electric field and a low-frequency magnetic field. 2 : synchrotron radiation

If this system dealt with boosting Impulse output with warp fields, this description could kind of get close, and at least use an existing name for that structure.

We could have seen two engine rooms, but they could have been so alike that we would have a hard time telling which one we were seeing except for expediency in a given story. This actually fits well with the modular nature of TOS designs. It also means that it would be easy for a ship with no secondary hull to already have a space for its warp engineering area. And an added plus would be that would immediately show how a ship with a secondary hull could be more powerful: twice the engine component space for the same generation.

Though, in some episodes, there is a crystal in in the Impulse Syncrotron Unit, it seems to me that in Secondary Hull Engine Room it is the actual crystal related to warp power, and in the Saucer Engine Room it is serving the purpose of an Impulse Defection Crystal, routing the power to other systems on the ship. As I understand it, the Impulse Deflection Crystal does not just deal with impulse power.

Then in TMP and beyond, the much larger Impulse Deflection Crystals are there as part of getting even more warp power into the saucer for better phasers and defense. Reliant's bigger one could note how it has a lot of firepower for a smaller ship.

I am going to keep saying "Impulse Syncrotron Unit" rather than DTD. It sort of works with what a Syncrotron is, as I said above.

 

You better go get a synchronic meter so we can double-check.

 

Time for a bit of numerology? Several players here have traditionally commented on a likely three-reactor setup for the ship, based on a number of references. And what we see behind the grillework is a triangular cathedral of pipes. So why not three engine rooms?

I mean, the curved outside corridor is the real factor limiting our squeezing these things into the secondary hull. The visible parts of the sets themselves could be crammed in there two abreast if need be. Perhaps that's what the triangular setup really implies: two engine rooms atop and one below or vice versa, possibly at both ends of the tri-triangular central reactor thingamabob.

The side-by-side rooms would be facilitated by the fact that the "down" wall in all those schematics is never there - it's the missing fourth wall of the set, hidden by the movable transformer lumps and whatnot. The mirroring of the machinery wall we do see could be just beyond the fourth-wall line, resulting in a more or less symmetrical room that isn't quite double the width of the set, but still allowing for three of the cathedrals in a triangular setup that takes most of the ship centerspace and is the appropriately massive central resource that provides the ship with its fantastic power.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Any chance its the Dilithium Crystal Converter Assembly (DCCA)? Mentioned twice, Mudd's Women and Elaan of Troyius.

 

FWIW, Memory Alpha seems to believe that that the dilithium crystal converter assembly (DCCA) is just the part that holds the crystal and is apparently analogous to the 24th century dilithium articulation frame.

I'm not sure exactly how they reached that conclusion, but that's what I've always thought from "Elaan." It's what Scotty is looking at, but I suppose it could be the whole doodad (syncrotron unit).

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dilithium_crystal_converter_assembly
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dilithium_articulation_frame

 

I think, in the end, there will be a certain amount of arbitrary choices to be made.
I do like the idea of the That Which Survives room being under those stairs.