Marshall Steam Tractor

1915 Marshall 5 Ton Tractor no.68754

Factory where it was built:

The main entrance to Marsh, Sons and Co office in Gainsborough, UK,
with a Statue of Britannia (the companies Trade mark) over the door.

Google Streetview of the factory here.

Failure to Synchronize

Starboard Engine Room of the City of Paris Steamship After The Accident
looking down

Wikipedia has the story:

City of Paris was launched seven months after City of New York and began her maiden voyage on 3 April 1889. A month later, she won the Blue Riband with an average speed of 19.95 knots on the first westbound voyage under six days. On March 25, 1890 City of Paris was steaming towards Liverpool when her starboard propeller shaft broke, causing the starboard engine to race and then disintegrate. Fragments pierced the hull and the bulkhead causing both engine rooms to flood. Fortunately, the ship's extensive subdivision proved successful and she was not in danger of sinking. However, City of Paris was dead in the water and was towed to Queenstown by the tramp steamer Aldersgate, commanded by Captain - and Master Mariner - George Humphrey James Chesshire. It was ultimately determined that the accident was caused by failure to synchronize the engines, a common problem with early twin screw express liners. City of Paris was out of service for a year undergoing repairs.^[2] In July 1891, her westbound speed record was broken by White Star's Majestic and then Teutonic. City of Paris regained the Blue Riband in 1892 and held it until 1893 when Cunard's Campania entered service.

Bustednuckles got me started.

PS: AI is not to be trusted. I asked Google about this image and it got the name of the ship right, but for context it said: 

After an accident, which involved a collision with the steamship The Agoudent in 1890.

When I asked about The Agoudent steamship, it tells me there is no such ship.

Blondihacks

Let's Build a Locomotive! Pennsylvania A3 Switcher, Part 1
Blondihacks

Jack recommended Blondihacks to my attention a couple of months ago and I finally got around to looking her up. I picked this video because I posted about a live steam model train not too long ago. In this one she spends a lot of time laying out the ground work, including sourcing materials, which turns out to be a bigger problem than I imagined. Very entertaining, if you like obscure technical info.

traveling vehicle powered by water and wood

traveling vehicle powered by water and wood
PROFESSOR PARDAL BRASIL
Man after my own heart.

Update September 2024 replaced missing video.

Let Us Consume Mass Quantities

MORNING RUSH at the WORLD'S BUSIEST AIRPORT - Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Plane Spotting
Alex Praglowski Aviation

I watched another similar video not too long ago and it gave me a feel for just how massive the airline industry is. Normally all you or I hear about airlines is when one particular airplane has some kind of trouble, or about how many zillions of dollars a particular company made or lost, but neither of those things really gives me a feel for what's actually going on. One airliner, while large, complex and expensive is still just one airplane, and a zillion dollar profit or loss is just some abstract, imaginary number. But watching these big, expensive aircraft take off, one after another, endlessly, I start to get a feel for the situation.

Stu Savory got me started this morning with a comment on an earlier post:

I went on board the SS Great Britain once; beautifully restored, an old slave-trader ship harboured in Bristol UK. It has a steam engine too, a HUGE V2, the bore and stroke are each about 2 or 3 meters !!!

(the Wikipedia article has only one mention of slaves and that's in a footnote. We'll come back to that.)

SS Great Britain Steam Engine

Right off the size of the engine grabs me. It's big, so I go looking for pictures. I'm finding all kinds of photos, but none that really show the whole engine and how big it is. That's because it's contained in a room just big enough to hold it, never mind that the room is big enough to contain a small office building. You can't get far enough away to get a view of the whole engine. Bah. Lots of models and mockups and such though. You work at it and you can build an image in your mind. Don't know if you can really get a 'feel' for the size of it without being there.

Anyway, I'm reading the Wikipedia article and I come across this line:

On 22 December, she rescued the crew of the British brig Druid, which had been abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, that's cool. That ought to be a pretty good story behind that. Let's see what we can find. Hmm, seems there were several HMS Druids over the centuries, but none that fit the bill, so maybe it was a commercial ship, so I do some more looking and I find this incident mentioned in a List of shipwrecks in December 1872. WTF? There's like 600 of them, that's 20 a day. Can you imagine if we had 20 airliners crashing every day, day in, day out? That is roughly equivalent to what was happening. Okay, most of them were probably cargo ships, but sailing cargo ships carried a crew of a dozen or so, and the cargo and ship had substantial value. 

As for slave ships, slaving was big business back in the middle ages. Britain outlawed slave trading in 1807. The SS Great Britain (1845–1886), after being rebuilt and refitted a couple of times, spent 30 years transporting colonists to Australia. Australia was started as a penal colony, but that was back in 1788, but fifteen years later there was a real colony.

Meanwhile, I've started reading The Verge, a history of European exploration from 1490 to 1530. The book starts talking about Columbus and his voyages to the new world. I heard all about this when I was a kid, but my teachers didn't talk very much about how his expeditions were financed. The Verge attempts to correct this oversight. The money men got together and financed these expeditions because they wanted to make more money. They had seen the stuff coming from the Far East and knew there was a boatload of money to be made if they could just get around the middle men in the Mid-East. So they started sending ships to look for opportunities. In Africa they found gold and slaves. In North America they didn't find much except people they could enslave, at least at first. Eventually after the pushed further in Mexico and South America they found huge quantities of gold and silver, but that was later. At first there was nothing but a bunch of natives fishing from canoes.

Note: Title from Coneheads sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Update next day: Alt Fin Next Level has a new post about slavery.

 

Steam Engine

Steam Locomotive Detail
90 piece jigsaw puzzle

That's some fancy paint on the wheel - orange around the outside shading to red in the center. Threw me for a bit because my glance of the thumbnail showed me an all orange wheel. Where do all these red pieces go? I figured it out.

Sugar Mills

Java Sugar Mills in Action - 2004
blackthorne57
This video reminded me of the sugar mill on Maui I saw when I was there two years ago.

HC&S Puʻunēnē Mill. Photo 2015 by Wendy Osher.
Photo taken back when the mill was still in operation.

Current Google Streetview of the same mill.

The mill wasn't in operation when I was there, but I remember looking it up and Google Streetview still showed plumes of smoke coming from the smokestacks. Supposedly, Google Streetview has an archive feature that allows you to pull up older Streetviews, but evidently it doesn't work everywhere as I couldn't find any archives for this location.

Update January 2024 replaced missing video. At the end of the new video there are some views of Mt. Bromo.

Railroads!

Completing the Transcontinental Railroad

The Orthosphere tells us that today marks the 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Vunderbar! But then he mentions that "While railroads in the sense of wheeled carts rolling on tracks have existed since antiquity . . .", which sends me on a Wiki-wander, which turns up an ancient railroad, or sorts, in ancient Greece.

Diolkos - Ancient road for transporting ships across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece

Map showing location of the Diolkos railway in Greece

The 5 mile long roadway was a rudimentary form of railway, and operated from c. 600 BC until the middle of the 1st century AD. - Wikipedia

Going from one side of the Isthmus by sea would entail a 500 mile voyage which you might be able to complete in a day but could very easily take a week.

Pic of the Day

Steam locomotives of the Chicago & North Western Railway in the roundhouse at the Chicago rail yards (December 1942)

I haven't been reading much, mostly, I suspect, because I haven't been sleeping all that well. But when I sit down for lunch today I pick up a book that's been sitting on a pile that's due to be sold to Powell's and it pretty much captivated me.

The books is methland by Nick Reading and it is about the methamphetamine craze (epidemic) that swept the nation, especially the way it has affected small town America. The first town he focuses on is Oelwein, Iowa (I'm still reading the prologue.), which has a roundhouse. Cool! I like roundhouses, so I go looking for pictures, but I don't find much. The photo above is the best of the lot and it has a tenuous connection to Oelwein: The Chicago & North Western Railway extended to Oelwein Iowa.

Looking at Google Maps, it looks like there is still a big rail operation there. There is a big yard with 100's of cars. Looking at the Open Railway Map, you can see that the only active line goes to Des Moines, all the other tracks heading out of Oelwein have been abandoned. I suspect the only reason they are keeping the track to Des Moines open is that Oelwein has a big yard where they can store a large number of railroad cars.

Love Never Dies

Extended Montage - Australia | Love Never Dies
My wife and I attended a performance of Love Never Dies at Keller Auditorium last night. It was a very impressive performance, full of singing, drama and elaborate stage sets. As is typical of these kind of shows there were also some dancing girls and a bit of comic relief.

It was an impressive production, but I am not sure how much it affected me. I didn't fall in love with it and I am not going to go out and buy the soundtrack, but then I am a bit of a barbarian. Beer and Rock & Roll are more my speed. However, I suspect there is a subtle effect of being immersed in an event that is the very pinnacle of what our civilization can produce. I am not quite sure what that effect might be, but it has to be better than what you get from being bombarded by commercial messages all frigging day long.

One of the props was an elaborate, ten-foot-tall horseless carriage. I had never seen anything like it, so when I got home I Googled Hammerstein steam carriage and the real thing popped right up. A similar prop makes a brief appearance in the above video around the 2:20 mark.

Trevithick Steam Carriage Replica

Supposedly the original was running around London back around 1802-1803. That was when Napoleon was still running around loose! That was a long time ago! This thing was probably the Bugatti Veyron of its time.

That got me thinking about the timeline of this whole production.

1802 - Trevithick Steam Carriage
1846–1919 - Oscar Hammerstein I (not II)
1850–1930 - Golden age of steamship travel
1881 - setting of Phantom of the Opera
1907 - setting of Love Never Dies
1909 - Phantom of the Opera novel published
1948 - Andrew Lloyd Weber born
1986 - Phantom of the Opera broadway show premier
2010 - Love Never Dies broadway show premier 

What has Hammerstein got to with any of this? I suspect an homage to a great musician. Supposedly he hires Christine to come to New York to sing, which is how this show gets started.

Train of the Day

Steam Train in the middle of the Freeway - Santa Fe 3751
Google Maps show there is such a track in LA. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, LA is a big city. They are bound to have all kinds of weird shit. Via Posthip Scott.

Pic of the Day

1953 Buick Special waiting on the train

The composition of this photo is just great. It really puts you (me) in the scene. I stumbled over it while looking for something-er-other. I don't remember where I found it, and Google's image search wasn't much help. It might be a scene from the movie Emperor of the North, starring Earnest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The movie was made in 1973 and is set during the great depression in Oregon.

Update hours later. I just realized that while it could be a scene from the movie, a 1953 car would be an anachronism.

Chinese Steam

Chinese steam - SY 0770 struggles on slippery rails
I first saw this video a year ago and left this comment on the YouTube page:

Surprising video. The opening scene looks like someone's model railroad. The juddering noise that the train makes when the wheels slip was unexpected. Did you notice the way the second trike tilted when it ran over a rock just before parking? The driver gets out, walks around the back, picks up the rock and puts in front of the left rear wheel. I always thought the chuffing of the steam engine was from steam expended from the cylinders, but watching the wheels slowly turning while the engine chuffs away tells me that is not the case.

Today I got a reply from Varinki that explains the chuffing noise:

 The fast continuous chuffing is the exhaust from the air brake pump.

An air compressor! It's obvious when you think about it. Trains use air brakes, which means you need an air compressor, and since you are running a steam engine what else would you use to power it besides steam?

8 1/2" Cross Compound Compressor.  The steam cylinders are at the top and the air compressor cylinders are on the bottom.  The high pressure steam and low pressure air cylinders are on the right.

These air compressors are quite a hunk of machinery in their own right, but compared to the locomotive they are minuscule, which is why they are often overlooked. I think you can see the one in the video after the 5 minute mark. At 5:45 is just above the motorcyclist's helmet.

The man who made this video, Wolfgang Cloessner, was a bit of a player in the steam engine world. He died two years ago.

Come to think of it, if your train needs any electrical power you are going to have a steam powered electrical generator as well.

Chinese Man

Miss Chang - Chinese Man feat Taiwan MC & Cyph4
I'm not too sure about the tune, but the video is way out there. I mean, steam engines!

More Steam Locomotives

Building of the Jupiter & 119 Locomotives
I meant to include this video with the post on steam locomotives I did a couple of days ago, but I was short on sleep and it slipped out of my mind. This one got my attention because it happened in my neck of the woods (the Western USA), but I had never heard of it. Completing the first transcontinental railroad was kind of a big deal. The video is a little gooberish, but it does have some good info.

Update May 2019 adding "Promontory, Utah" because I spent 15 minutes looking for this post before I found it.

Steam Locomotives

Restoration of Sumpter Valley Steam Engine (Cushman)
I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which has led to watching long videos about steam locomotives. I can't listen to people bloviating for more than a few seconds, but I can watch people working with steel forever. This video is about restoring an old steam engine from eastern Oregon. The work was done in Oregon City, a suburb on the south side of Portland. Sadly, the Daylight Locomotive and Machine Works doesn't seem to be in business anymore.


Building Steam Locomotives - 1930's Trains & Railways Educational Film - S88TV1
This video is about the production of new locomotives in England 80 years ago. A while back I posted a video about building an all new steam locomotive, a replica of one from the 1950's. All of the originals had been scrapped. Looking around on YouTube, there doesn't seem to any limit to the number of  old steam locomotives that are being, or have been restored. Of course, even if there are a hundred, it doesn't hold a candle to the thousands that were built. Isn't it odd that people would be investing so much in these things that are essential toys? I guess that's what you do when you have excess funds.

They refer to the locomotive in the first video as a 'Mikado'. I had heard this term before, and wondering where it came from, so I asked Wikipedia and I got an answer:

The wheel arrangement name "Mikado" originated from a group of Japanese type 9700 2-8-2 locomotives that were built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the 3 ft 6 in gauge Nippon Railway of Japan in 1897. In the 19th century, the Emperor of Japan was often referred to as "the Mikado" in English. Also, the Gilbert and Sullivanopera The Mikado had premiered in 1885 and achieved great popularity in both Britain and America.

The Wikipedia article also explains that the Mikado wheel arrangement produced a better, faster, stronger high speed locomotive.

Steam Power

1832 Steam Engine - Jay Leno's Garage. The comments at the end of video about Britain and steam power provide an important history lesson.
Posthip Scott got me started on steamships this morning. In 1926 the Matson Line placed three steamships in the "in the Australian trade". Can you imagine? Taking a steamship from Los Angeles to Sydney? Books, cards, booze and conversation would be your entertainment for three weeks, at least. If your companions were dull, let's hope the books weren't. So you could take a steamship to Australia in the 20's. That seems reasonable. How far back do steamships go? We had the Monitor and the Merrimac during the American Civil War, so 1860. Anything older? How about 1819?

Steamship Savannah, 1819

    The first crossing of the Atlantic by a steamship was made by the Savannah is 1819. It wasn't much of a steamship, it was a sailing ship that had a steam engine added. The steam engine drove a pair of side-mounted paddle wheels. The smokestack had a swivel to direct sparks away from the sails. The engine only ran for 80 hours on its first trip across the Atlantic. It made a big impression in Europe and it managed to return to Georgia, but that was about it.
    So I got to wondering just what a steam engine from the early 1800's looked like, which led me to Jay's Garage, which is where the video at the top comes from.

SS Badger

SS Badger cruises past the Ludington Light on its way out of port.

The SS Badger is the last coal fired steamship operating on the Great Lakes. It was originally built to carry railroad cars, but that came to an end in 1990. A couple years later it was refitted to carry passengers and cars and has been doing it ever since.

The Arthur E. Atkinson, out of Frankfort, Michigan, a similar vessel loading rail cars back in the day. 

All vehicles, whether railcars or automobiles, are loaded from the back, which means the ship needs to back into port. It also means long vehicles, like semi-trucks, also have to back on. I don't know about cars. Having a hundred people trying to back cars down the length of this ship sounds like a bad idea. 

Semis seem to be a regular part of their business, but I don't think it's enough to pay for the ship all by itself.

From the manufacturers brochure.

The Badger has two 8,000 horsepower engines. The crankshaft of each engine has four throws, each one holding one connecting rod that supports two pistons (picture at left): a small diameter, high pressure piston at the top and a large, low pressure piston in the middle.

Here we are lighting the boilers in the Spring for the start of the season.

I think they must have automatic machines to feed the coal to the boilers. The Badger burns 50 tons of coal a day in its four boilers, and while a black gang of four could do it by hand (remember 16 tons?), I don't think that's how it's done.

One ton of coal contains the energy equivalent to 12,000 horsepower for one hour. Steam engines are only about 30% efficient, so each 8,000 horsepower engine would consume 2 tons of coal an hour. It is about 60 miles across the lake from Ludington, Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The Badger cruises at about 15 knots, so the trip across the lake one way takes about four hours.

2 tons x 2 engines x 4 hours x 2 trips across the lake =  32 tons per day.

The engines are overkill for the light loads the Badger is carrying these days (compared to railcars), so they probably are not running at full steam. During the summer she makes two round trips a day, so three-quarter duty times 32 tons times twice a day, that's right around 50 tons.

About an hour out of port all trace of land vanishes.

Inspired by an email from California Bob and Comrade Misfit's weekly steam locomotive posts.

New British Steam Locomotive

Absolutely Chuffed~Tornado 60163 Part 1.

Absolutely Chuffed~Tornado 60163 Part 2.
At nearly 30 minutes, this video is a bit longer than your usual YouTube fare, but it is so full of crazy you might enjoy watching the whole thing. The funny part is that all the people in this video don't sound crazy, they sound like normal, well adjusted individuals, perfectly capable of making rational decisions. But don't let that fool you. Everyone of them is as mad as a hatter. These guys decided they wanted to restore a particular kind of old steam locomotive, but there weren't any anymore. They had all been scrapped, so they decided to build a brand new one, from scratch. They chief instigator mentions that 175,000 man hours of work went into building this thing, which is like 80 man-years. It took them almost 20 years from concept to finish and I'm guess-timating twenty million dollars. Just absolutely nuts. Glorious, but nuts. Via Scott.

Update September 2016 replaced missing video.
Update December 2016 replaced missing all-in-one video with the two part replacement.

Steam Turbine Locomotive

I stopped by Jack's house after lunch today and noticed he had an old Lionel steam locomotive sitting in a display case. I didn't think much about it, I mean lots of people had Lionel trains when they were kids, and some of them held onto them. I had a diesel, long gone, and Jack had a steam engine. That's all fine and well until he tells me that it is a model of a steam turbine powered locomotive.

What!?!?! I've heard of steam turbines being used to power ships and electrical power generators. I've heard of gas turbines being used for almost anything, including Jay Leno's motorcycle. But I have never heard of a steam turbine powered railroad locomotive. I was shocked, I tell you.

The modern steam turbine has been with us for over 100 years. It seems there were numerous attempts to build a practical steam turbine powered locomotive during the first half of the 20th century. Only a few could be considered a practical success. The picture is of an American steam turbine powered locomotive. Note that it uses the same large size driving wheels as a conventional steam powered locomotive, and in fact uses the same kind of connecting rods to link the driving wheels together. However, there is no piston and cylinder. The round thing in the middle of the side, right above the drive wheels, is the turbine housing.

Update 2016 replaced missing picture.