Very similar to the Bollinder semidiesels that are in some old narrowboats.
You heat a part of the cylinder with a blowtorch. That's the glowplug. Then you open the engineroom doors and pull out a pin from the flywheel.

You stand on the pin and give it an almighty kick. Either the engine fires properly, or misfires and breaks your shin, or throws you through the doors you luckily opened earlier...

Then, once you're going along, there's no reverse gearbox. To put your boat into astern, to say, stop before your 40 tons of loaded narrowboat crashes into something, you have to pull a cord at the right moment which changes the injection and makes the engine run backwards.

Or, if you've done it wrong, speed up so you hit whatever it is even harder!
(Le Misanthrope last procrastinated on, Sat 2 Jul 2011, 0:22, Reply)