Blairstown by mcb - 1:160 - PLASTIC - Steam Derrick Lighter NY Harbor

[Roger Pellett]

Yes, Great Lakes Vessels built in the first quarter of the 20th Century had these same D shaped pilot houses.  The houses were of steel construction but the windows were flat set into wooden frames.  In addition to being easy to build, at least some of the pilot house windows needed to be raised and lowered.

 

It’s safe to assume that the windows  on these NYC Harbor craft would also be flat for the same reasons.

 

Roger

[wefalck]

When I have been the last time in New York, around 2000, the tugs still had those D-shaped wheelhouses I seem to remember ...

[mcb]

Hello All,

Thanks to wefalck and Roger for the comments and thanks to everyone for the likes.

In response to welfack I intend to use clear sheet for the windows.  My windows will be flat, I think that Roger is correct in that the windows themselves were flat and the frames in which they slid up and down were fitted to the curve of the pilot house walls.  I will probably have a few of my windows at least partially (faked) down.

In order to put off, for a while, the tedium making these windows I have started to fabricate some 'furniture' for the pilot house and winch control room. 

At least the wheel should be visible through the windows, but I can't stop there.

Thanks for looking,

mcb

[mcb]

Hello All,

Thanks for all the likes.

I am still working on this project, about half-way through the pilot house and winch control room windows.

I made a lot of 'furniture' not all of which will fit in the winch house and pilot house, but I should be able to use some of it elsewhere.

Most of it seems to need a little more work as well.

Here are a couple of 'work in progress' pics.

Thanks for looking,

mcb

[mcb]

Hello All,  

Thanks for the likes.  I have a little progress on this model. 

I have gotten a lot of the windows done but it looks as if I may have to make a few more.

The 'winch' house and pilot house are joined up with the pilot house on top.  I had to pack out the walls somewhat to at least have the appearance that the windows can slide down into pockets. 

The top of the main deck house, engine house and pilot house roofs need to be enclosed with railings and I wanted to try to improve on my last soldered together railings by using stanchions and wire rails.  So far, my homemade stanchions have been pretty dismal.  I have ordered some etched brass in 1/ 192 scale.  We'll see how they look.

While waiting for the stanchions I made some more furniture for the pilot house roof and started on the drawing for the engine house.

When the engine house is ready, I will paint all the 'houses'.  I found some Floquil paint for it.  They are in primer now.

 

Thanks,  mcb

 

[Keith Black]

 mob, fantastic work at 1:160. I so enjoy following your builds.

Edited January 29 by Keith Black

[mcb]

Hello everyone,

Its time for another update. 

Thanks Keith, for your nice comments, and thanks everyone for the likes.

Most of the engine house work is done.  I will now have to make some doors and another batch of windows.

I have received some etched brass railing stanchions in 1/192, they look as if they might not be so bad.  I will have to use some fine (36 gauge) Ni-Cr wire to fit in the holes.  May be frustrating.  We'll see.

First pic should show how the engine house walls were wrapped around temporary formers.

Last pic shows the beginnings of the boom pedestal.

Thanks for looking,

mcb

 

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

These double or raised Pilot house were seen on many Great Lakes vessels too.  The original arrangement was an open bridge atop a closed pilot house.  The watch stander stood on the open bridge and relayed orders via speaking tube to the wheelsman below.  Later the open bridge was enclosed resulting in a second pilot house.

 

Photo original arrangement below:

 

Roger

 

 

[KeithAug]

I have just been catching up, the interior detail is impressive. I do like these quirky working boats.

[Jim Lad]

Just catching up! She's coming along very nicely.

 

John

[mcb]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the comments Roger, KeithAug and Jim Lad.  Thanks everyone for the likes.

Short update here.

I have the pilot house and winch house doors built; need to do the engine house doors.

Working on the stack, whistle and RV discharge.

I think I may have a large enough batch of parts to paint soon.

Thanks for looking.

mcb

 

[Jim Lad]

You've gotta love the funnels on some of these early steamboats!

 

John

[Canute]

Nice work, mcb. The brown you're using looks spot on for the Lackawanna marine boats.

[KeithAug]

She is quite a cute little ship with a lovely smoke stack.

[Keith Black]

 mcb, your Blairstown is looking ever so neat even in this unfinished stage. Really nice work. 

Edited March 25 by Keith Black

[mcb]

Hello All,

Thanks for your comments, Jim Lad, Canute, KeithAug and Keith Black.  And thanks everyone for the likes.

Another short update here.

Hoping to use more scratch fittings on this boat than the last one. Tried to make some cowl ventilators in brass, somewhat ratty looking.

Made a ships boat in solid styrene with .010x .040" styrene strip, 'faux clinker'? Luckily its going to be covered.  

Still have to make engine house doors.  The time is flying by on this one.

Thanks for looking,

mcb

[Keith Black]

 I don't think the ventilators look ratty at all. Speaking of ventilators, did you ever notice that at distance they kinda look like earbuds? 

 

[wefalck]

Nice progress indeed !

 

Just wondering: where the pilot-houses open to the rear?

[jerome]

Have just read through this beautiful build and I can add some insight to your smoke stack question.

You are correct in thinking they had a liner inside the smoke stack.

this liner is the actual chimney for the boiler exhaust gases.

The smoke stack we see from outside is sort of decorative.

Getting back to the liner inside the smoke stack.

At the top of this liner there would have been slots cut into the liner’s perimeter just below the top rim.

this would help with draft of exhaust smoke.

these slots would be a few inches wide by a few more inches high.

if you think about it.

heat rises.

the vacuum created by the much hotter exhaust gases would pull cooler air up through these slots creating even more of an updraft.

this would have helped keep the decks clean of coal cinder as well by pushing these cinders more into the hot air exhaust and hopefully dropping them into the water around the boat.

I had seen this on a derelict ship years ago and have never forgotten it.

Here’s my take on the liner aboard a restoration I’ve recently completed.

probably not 100 percent accurate but it gets the idea across.

[mcb]

Hello All, 

Thanks for the comments and the likes.

Keith Black, thanks, that cracks me up.  My wife would hide hers if she saw that. 

Wefalck, thanks for the comment.  All the NY harbor craft, tugs, lighters, ferries, etc. pictures that I can remember have closed pilot houses.  Mine are open until I have the painting done before I install the interior parts.

jerome, thanks for your comments.  I also think that there would be a liner.  It is difficult to tell from that cropped picture in post #7 above.  There is none obvious, but I suppose that it could terminate below, out of view, or perhaps flared over the outer shell.

Do you have a build log for that restoration?  I may have missed it.  It looks nice.

Nevertheless, I still would like to know why the liner isn't filthy. 🙂

 

Another steam derrick lighter, c., cropped from NPS / William B Barry (Steamtown collection).

 

This focus on the stack got me thinking about something that was bothering me.  In a couple of pics I thought I could discern a faint trail of steam about 1/3 of the way down the stack.  I wonder if that could be the discharge from the pressure relief valve and that the relatively large pipe attached behind the stack is the exhaust steam from the engine.  I had thought that exhaust steam went up the boiler stack (as it would in a steam locomotive to improve draft) and that the large pipe was the RV discharge, but this doesn't seem to make sense the steam would condense in the tall, relatively cool stack.  If so, I have some more work to do. 

Perhaps one of our experts can inform.  

Meanwhile I started to paint some of the sub-assemblies.  The pilot house, winch house and forward deckhouse are in the final color now.

The sub-assemblies are set in place temporarily, in most cases with pins for convenience.

 

Thanks again for looking,

mcb

 

 

[wefalck]

Well, the sleeves around the smoke stacks are not just 'decorative': in order ensure sufficient draft, the smoke-stacks have to long, but then would cool down quickly. The sleeve isolates the actual smoke-stack, so that it stays hot.

 

As even the sleeves become quite hot and old-time oil paints did not take the heat very well, ship company logos were painted onto an outer sleeve, some distance from the the sleeve that housed-in the smoke-stacks.

 

Normally, the engine-exhausts are led into a condenser to improve fuel-economy. Some ships may have had the possibility to redirect the exhausts temporarily into the smoke-stack to increase draft (as is done on railway locomotives), but more commonly fans were used.

 

The pipes placed behind or in front of the smoke-stacks are normally the exhausts for the safety-valves.

 

Talking about pilot-houses open to the back: over here in Europe, when the pilot-house began to be enclosed, crews on some ships complained, because previously they got warmth from the radiating smoke-stacks, but now they were cold in the enclosed, but unheated pilot-houses ...

 

 

[Canute]

The photographer in the Steamtown pictures was one of the 2 company photographers for the Lackawanna Railroad. There are several thousand glass plate negatives digitally scanned by the park rangers at Steamtown. Some of the plates were de-laminating, the silver was chipping away from the glass plate. Mt Barry etched his initials, WBB, into the pictures.

 

These old plates can be enlarged on a computer screen to show some interesting detail.

Edited April 15 by Canute

[Scottish Guy]

On 12/11/2023 at 4:48 AM, mcb said:

Most of it seems to need a little more work as well.

Here are a couple of 'work in progress' pics.

 

Amazing work, that is a size (scale) I doubt I would even see. I wear glasses since I was two years old and unfortunately my eyesight is delining since I´m 40, now I´m almost 56 and my eyesight is bad (need reading glasses and normal glasses).  So this work I never could do though. Great job...

 

Micha

[Roger Pellett]

Unlike steam railroad locomotives, marine engineering practice required use of condensing engines for two reasons.  First, high pressure boilers did not tolerate salt water.  Scaling from salt deposits impeded heat transfer causing failure of  the boiler tubes.  Second, the development of the triple expansion engine, increasing thermal efficiency, required steam in the low pressure to be exhausted well below atmospheric pressure.

 

New York City harbor craft, however appear to be an exception to this rule.  In his excellent book, Tug Boats of New York City, (Photo caption page 85) author George Matteson writes:

"The white vapor emanating from the tug is exhaust steam, which indicates that it is equipped with a noncondensing engine.......  Most small harbor tugs were equipped with noncondensing engines to save expense and because clean fresh water was always available from city hydrants."

 

Railroad locomotives are subject to height restrictions from tunnels, bridges, etc.   These harbor craft were not.  the easiest way to increase boiler draft was to increase the height of the smoke stack with steam vented separately.  As with railroad locomotives, as steam technology matured, marine engineers worked to utilize every last BTU from fuel bought and paid for.  For sophisticated steam ship designs this lead to all sorts of waste heat recovery devices often located in the smoke stacks.  These harbor craft traveling very short distances did not require these complicated steam plants.

[Canute]

The railroads that serviced facilities on the Harlem River, the waterway between Manhattan and the Bronx, had tugboats with lowered stacks and the carfloats were shorter. The wheelhouses had to be high enough for the captain and helmsman to see over a loaded car float secured to each side of the tug. There is a good website here http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/IndustrialLocos.html

[mcb]

Hello All,

Thanks everyone for the likes.

Wefalck, thanks for the comments again.  I hadn't thought about condensers.  Although I am not sure, I am leaning toward this vessel not having a condenser for the reason Roger Pellet states above (cost of the equipment).  Yes, in most cases, in the old images I look through, the company name on the stack is on sheet metal that stands off from the stack itself.   This is all interesting to me.

Scottish Guy, Thank you for the comments.  I was lucky, didn't need any glasses until 45.  Now I use readers and usually optivisor for this work.  And I'm still a puppy. 

Thanks Roger for the comments and especially for the book recommendation.  I will be looking for that one. 

Thanks Canute,  yes those glass plates are great.  I have viewed many of them, I probably would not be doing all this NY harbor stuff otherwise.  Thanks for the link to the trainweb website, haven't looked in for a long while. Noticed a new, (to me, pic of 'BRONX') should be useful in the future.  By the way, I built a n scale (static) model of Harlem Transfer #2 about +20 years ago.

Hope to update progress in the near future.

Regards,

mcb

[mcb]

Hello All,

It is time for another small update.

I turned a mast on the drill press.  I think it is the only wood on the model.  

Added hooks and cleat for the anchor light halyards.  The cleat is about as small as I can work.

 

Also added interior details for the pilot house and winch control house.  Probably overdid it.  Very little, if any of it, will be visible in the end.

Thank for looking,

mcb

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, mcb said:

Probably overdid it.  Very little, if any of it, will be visible in the end

 You knowing those details are there is all that matters. If the viewer sees them, great. If not, great. The realism in your builds is very well done. 

[Jim Lad]

Love that detail work, mate. If no one else sees it, we know it's there.

 

John

[Canute]

Your details look great. And you'll know it's in there. 👍