Peerless 1893 by Cathead - 1:87 - sternwheel Missouri River steamboat

[KeithAug]

Eric - she does seem to be an interesting and utilitarian design - no doubt built to a budget. I note one of the earlier photos shows her with quite a lot of passengers without any apparent guard rails on the upper deck. Presumably all very acceptable in her day when passengers were expected to take a modicum of personal responsibility for their own safety.

[Cathead]

The shots lots of passengers up on the boiler deck were almost certainly special daytime chartered excursions rather than regular packet service. By the early 1900s, boats like this had mostly been undercut by railroads in terms of general freight service, and such charters were a creative way to bring in money.

 

The lack of railings on her boiler deck probably relates to her not being built for regular (especially overnight) passenger service, such that passengers would normally not be up there. I don't think she had any (or more than maybe one or two) passenger cabins, the cabin is just too small. That photo was clearly staged with the vessel motionless; I'd bet they weren't up there while it was in motion, or if they were it was for a gentle day excursion.

 

Most steamboats had railings anywhere passengers were expected to be. Look at this image of Bertrand (foreground) and Arabia (background); both have full railings around their boiler deck, because both carried passengers and had cabins there. No railings on the hurricane deck (next one up) because passengers weren't supposed to be there. Both these vessels pre-date most safety regulations (mid-1800s), whereas Peerless was built ~50 years later when far more regulations were in place. So I don't think it relates to a safety culture (or lack thereof) but more just a different vessel in different service in a different era.

 

[FriedClams]

Excellent progress on Peerless, Eric.  Your boiler deck structure turned out nicely as did the boiler itself.

 

Gary

[Cathead]

Made some nice progress this weekend. It helped that the outdoor temperature got down to -13ºF (-25ºC) last night and never went above -3ºF (-19ºC) during the day today. Good thing we have a nice stock of on-farm firewood on hand.

 

I made a momentous decision regarding the boiler deck. Having built all the framing off-model, I'd intended to also plank it off-model before installation. But I began to realize that installing a fully-planked deck would make it very difficult to do certain other tasks, and decided to go ahead and install the framing now. I had one shot at doing this right, because I had to glue the back of the framing onto the solid engine room structure, and clamp it down tight, while making sure the rest of the deck was as squarely aligned going forward as I could. Since I'd left holes in the deck planking for the support posts, there was little margin for error; I had to get this lined up exactly right. So I did a few test runs without glue, and convinced myself I could get the alignment right before the wood glue started to grab. So I went for it!

Once this was solid, I cut the first three support posts on either side and installed them, along with gluing down the boiler assembly.

Now for some of the details I decided were better done before the decking went down. First, the access to the boiler deck. Way back in this log, we'd had a discussion about where the staircase/ladder would have been between the main and boiler deck, and settled on a location near the engine room, just behind where the boiler deck cabin would be. I'd already framed out an opening for this. My original plan was to scratchbuild some kind of enclosed staircase, but while rummaging around in a scrapbox, I ran across a nice package of HO-scale plastic staircases that I decided would do quite nicely since I hate building stairs. So I cut one segment down to size, painted it white, and weathered it with gray pastel. I figured these should be pretty grimy since they'd be primarily used by the crew.

You'll see this installed in a minute. Next, I moved on to the steam lines connecting the boiler with the engine room (one line for each engine). These would have been suspended from beneath the boiler deck beams, and I'd realized would be very hard to install after the deck was planked. As it was, this was a very fiddly job that had my nerves all jangly by the time it was done. 

 

To hang these, I intended to use very small wire loops run through the deck beams to simulate some sort of bracket. I drilled very small holes in the beams, working very slowly so as not to crack a beam, then ran a longer loop of wire through. Getting these up through the bottom of the holes involved a very small tweezers, a lot of patience, and a diverse vocabulary. I intentionally left fingertips in these photos for scale.

I did two initial sets of these loops, one near the engine room and one near the boiler. Then I took two lengths of brass rod, which I'd already painted black, threaded them through the loops, and pulled the loops taut to hold the rods in place. Here's their "connection" to the engine room, where they presumably pass through the wall and then diverse to their destinations on either side.

Where these met the splitter I'd installed above the boiler, the connection wasn't perfect, so I used blobs of glue to "seal" the joint. Once this is painted black and in the shadow of the deck, it'll look fine. A bit of paint was scraped off the rods during handling, I'll go back through and touch all this up.

Here are wider views of the installed steam lines, ladder, and rear three posts.

 

And an overhead shot:

You might also notice in the previous photos that I gently weathered the whole boiler assembly using rust-colored pastels. Further details to install including a couple more support loops along the steam lines, and some form of railing or enclosure for the stairs. 

 

Sharp and knowledgeable eyes might detect two nit-picks: one detail that's not quite right, and one I intentionally left out, both for convenience and practicality. Can anyone find them?

 

From here I think I want to do more detailing of the main deck first, adding some cargo and so on, anything that would be easier to do while I can see or reach down through the boiler deck framing. There's no reason to suspect that I'm procrastinating on milling a lot more deck planking to careful tolerances. Nope.

 

Thanks for all the interested comments, questions, and likes that provide such useful inspiration to keep plugging away at this project!

 

[Keith Black]

 

 Really neat work, Eric. I'm guessing the answer to you question is provided in the below? 

 

"Yes, there would be a safety valve atop the boiler and the venting pathway runs through a pipe that connects to the chimney. Steam for the engines draws off the top, there's usually a cylindrical drum up there, from which piping runs back to the engines at the rear of the vessel. Here's a view of the full machinery setup on my Arabia. You can see the steam drum, the piping to the engines, safety valves on both sides, and the vent pipe leading to the right side of the breeching."

[Cathead]

Keith, nice detective work! Unfortunately, one of the features in question isn't shown there (it's further back, not related to the boiler) and the other wasn't added to the Arabia either. The former is a simple question of model accuracy that I fudged for expediency and the latter requires some knowledge of steamboat mechanics to recognize its absence.

 

Ironically, that view reminded me that there are two details shown in your image that aren't on the current Peerless: the safety valve near the breeching, which I had added but was knocked off when installing the boiler (it's super delicate) and the hand-pump for priming the larger doctor pump (which I wasn't planning on including this time). 

[wefalck]

I can see the point of having the boiler forward on boats destined to operate on tropical rivers, but in areas, where temperatures may be rather low (but not that low that the river freezes over), the long steam-pipes must have caused a lot of power losses on the way to the cylinders. There doesn't seem to be any insulation?

 

On the other hand, having the boiler under one's feet might have been appreciated in the pilot house in winter.

[Cathead]

Good questions! A core reason for having the boilers forward is to balance weight. The wheels and engines already place a lot of weight at the very stern; if you put the boilers and chimneys back there, too, the vessel would be going downriver doing a wheelie like a teenager showing off on his bike (and cracking the hull in the process). Especially since these craft didn't have proper keels, their hulls were designed to flex to accommodate shallow-water river conditions.

 

I honestly don't know to what extent steam lines were insulated or energy loss was an issue, but this layout was the standard practice for the entire steamboat era (even for those operating up on the Yukon) so I'm going with the assumption that it worked ok. Energy efficiency was never a hallmark of these vessels; fuel was ubiquitous and cheap. Happy to have someone else weigh in on this one.

 

I don't think boiler heat would've made much difference in the pilot house, which usually had its own stove for comfort. Especially not in the larger vessels where the pilot house was several decks up. On Peerless, the pilot house is mostly set behind the boiler, so there wouldn't have been much direct effect from any heat rising.

 

Keep asking questions, everyone, they make me think!

Edited January 15 by Cathead

[Keith Black]

 Eric, was coal the fuel of choice? If so where is the coal bunker located?

[Cathead]

At this late stage I'm assuming coal is the fuel, especially as it was widely available along the lower Missouri River (there's a major coal field in north-central Missouri), but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about showing that. It's on my list to ask the community about, so we'll just go ahead and address it here. None of my photos show any detail in this regard, and I'm not very familiar with coal-burning boats (everything else I've researched and built has been wood-burning, and that you just stack on the deck).

 

My most immediate reference is @kurtvd19's manuscript on building the Chaperon, another late-era coal burner. Even he doesn't specifically mention coal storage, but I assume the two walled-off pockets on either side of the main staircase in front of the boiler are meant for coal? Kurt? Image from his document, which is well worth buying as a reference if you're interested in these vessels (Kurt, tell me if you'd rather I take this down):

 

Right now I don't have better ideas than to build some kind of storage locker like these, maybe one on each side of the boiler? I can tell from photography that they weren't in front. I don't think they'd be behind, as that's a long way to carry coal around to the firebox doors in front.

 

I would love thoughts on this as.

 

 

[wefalck]

Over here in Europe at least, coal was traditionally delivered either in large wicker-baskets or in jute-sacks. Perhaps it would have been the easiest to just keep the baskets standing on deck? Unlike in seagoing ships, there probably wasn't much rocking and rolling on the river, so no worries that the fuel might go overboard.

Edited January 16 by wefalck

[Roger Pellett]

The W.P. Snyder, preserved at the Ohio River Museum at Marietta, Ohio was a coal burner.  Unlike Peerless, though, she was owned by a steel company that used coal in the steelmaking process and possibly owned their own mines as other steel companies did.  Therefore, a principal cargo, pushed in barges would have been coal.  I believe that her bunkers, were arranged near the bow per. Kurt’s Chaperon arrangement above.  Arranged like this coal could be rapidly loaded by gravity at terminals along the River.

 

As a short haul trader, I wonder if Peerless’s fueling arrangements might have been more informal, burning either cord wood or coal as available?  In this case, coal could have been wheeled aboard in large burlap sacks with a ready use supply piled in front of the boiler.

 

Roger

 

 

[Cathead]

Useful answers, thanks, I hadn't considered sacks although that makes a lot of sense and would be practical to model. Any sense of the volume that should be on board? She could refuel regularly at port stops but I don't have a good feel for what volume of coal would carry her what distance.

[wefalck]

I gather there are textbook data for coal consumption per fire-grate area or amount of steam generated per hour. This machinery probably was not terribly efficient energetically, low-pressure boiler, long-stroke/low-rev engines, heat losses in the pipe-work, etc. Depends also on the calorific value, i.e. quality of the coal. I would gather that she would need several tons of coal per day.

 

I think each sack would have weighed 80 to 100 pounds - tough guys the coal-carriers those days. I remember them carrying such sacks on their back, when we still had coal delivered to our house.

Source: https://www.meisterdrucke.uk/fine-art-prints/Henri-Gervex/41701/The-Coal-Carrier,-1882-.html

 

Edited January 16 by wefalck

[Roger Pellett]

Eric,  I hope that you don’t mind a friendly suggestion.

 

Your steam lines should be insulated.  This is not because of thermal efficiency.  Instead it would be required to prevent condensing of steam in the lines.  Water is the enemy of the reciprocating steam engine since it is incompressible.  The fire tube boiler for your boat would have generated “saturated steam.”  That is steam at the temperature applicable to the pressure at which the feed water enters the boiler.  As as the steam begins to cool from this temperature as it travels through the piping, it begins to condense and water droplets are formed. This water could build up in the engine cylinder causing damage.  I believe that a coat of whitish paint should suffice.

 

As a model railroader you might be interested in this.  For several reasons; thermal efficiency as well as that described above, it was desirable to heat the steam to a temperature well above its boiling point.  This is called superheat.  In the early 1900’s American Railroad Engineers using European Technology began to convert existing steam locomotives and to produce new ones to generate and run on superheated steam.  This involved routing the steam after it was generated through very hot exhaust gasses from the boiler.  Many of the Railroads maintained their own locomotive design departments to design locomotives specifically adapted to the geography of their particular routes.  This attracted many of the best Mechanical Engineers in the USA as well from Europe.  There is an excellent book that delves deeply into this topic:  American Steam Locomotives, Design and Development 1880-1960 by William L. Withuhn.

 

It is, of course unlikely that your modest steamboat would have been equipped with this sophisticated technology.

 

Roger

[wefalck]

It is indeed vital to supply the engine with 'dry' steam, which is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of insulation in that earlier post. It would be possible to insert a water trap into the steam line, so that any condensation would be collected there, rather than entering the cylinders, and drained by the engineer from time to time.

 

The problem of condensation is particularly important when starting up the engine from cold. Condensation is inevitable in the cylinders, which is why they are supplied with drain-cocks at both ends (for double-acting cylinders). Not sure, how they would be operated on the steam-boats, on locomotives, traction engines and the likes, there was a system of connecting rods leading to the driver's stand.

 

Once up and running, condensation is probably less of a problem, unless it is really cold outside or the boat is moving only slowly.

[Cathead]

Useful feedback, thank you. I clearly haven't gotten my head around all the engineering questions even after multiple steamboat models. I've been loosely using Kurt's model as a visual resource, and as he left his steam lines black, that was my assumption as well. I just re-checked Alan Bates, because I thought I'd read him saying that post-1900 boiler insulation was a grey asbestos-plaster mix but black before then, but I mis-read and he actually says boiler tops pre-1900 should be more of a muddy color (due to homemade insulation). Too late to fix that, but again Kurt left his boiler black and I hadn't recognized the insulation question in my previous models, so I didn't really think about it. Not trying to throw shade on Kurt here! Photo below you can see Kurt's black boilers and steam line.

I'll be honest, I'm tempted to leave this alone. Leaving the lines black makes them more visible and thus of more viewer interest, and repainting them now that they're installed would be delicate and risk unwanted spotting elsewhere.

 

I'm also realizing that my two parallel steam lines may be a mistake. Arabia definitely had two, but that may be because she was a sidewheeler with a short run between boiler and engines; sternwheelers like Kurt's Chaperon and my Bertrand seem to have had one single main line. I need to think over whether I want to redo this; it would be quite a bit of delicate work, I technically can't prove it isn't correct, and it's a small visual detail hidden under the boiler deck.

 

Looks like I definitely got ahead of myself, enthusiasm-wise, when working over the weekend and made too many assumptions without double-checking them against references. 

[Ian_Grant]

Interesting. Prompted me to look up my pictures of SS Klondike.

 

You can see the black pipe in the insulation gap just above the right hand axe.

Pipe at right has another interruption in insulation; not sure why.

[kurtvd19]

4 hours ago, Cathead said:

Even he doesn't specifically mention coal storage, but I assume the two walled-off pockets on either side of the main staircase in front of the boiler are meant for coal? Kurt?

Eric:

The walled off areas alongside the stairs was for coal storage.  I have seen photographs of coal in burlap bags being carried onto boats.  Sometimes on backs or shoulders and also in wheelbarrows.  If building the Chaperon today, and not for a magazine deadline, I would absolutely insulate to top area of the boilers.  Most photos I have of steam engines and their steam pipes don't show insulation on the pipes or the engines.  Back then the fuel was cheap and conserving fuel or steam wasn't much of a concern.

Kurt

[Keith Black]

 If coal was brought aboard in sacks (seems the most likely case) there still needed to be a winged backstop from which the coal could be shoveled. A winged backstop would also help to contain the coal dust and grit to a limited degree. 

Edited January 16 by Keith Black

[Cathead]

Great photos, Ian! That machinery looks MUCH more modern than anything Peerless would have had in 1893, and it looks like that version of Klondike operated 1937-1955, so I'm not sure there's much direct comparison to be made. Side note, I think Peerless would have fit within Klondike's boiler deck cabin!

 

Thanks for the input, Kurt. Do you have thoughts on the previous suggestions that insulation would have related to condensing in the steam lines?

[kurtvd19]

Possibly Eric.  I do know that I have observed drain valves in steam piping systems to rid the lines of water where the Engineer could reach over, crack the valve and blow out any water. 

[Canute]

I believe the railroads in the steam era were conscious of insulating the boilers. Locos had lagging wrapped around the top of the firebox and it extended along the body to the smokebox, up front. The cylinders had vents to drain off the water buildup until the engine got up to speed, then they could close them off.

[John Ruy]

Wonderful build Eric. I just came across it and am caught up, excellent and very interesting research. 🧐 I’ll pull up a chair and join you on this journey. 
 

John

[Roger Pellett]

Not a suggestion that you need to paint your piping, just to add to the discussion about insulating piping.  Context, or local color?  In addition to the reasons discussed already, poorly insulated steam lines can be very dangerous. There have been a number of violent steam explosions in buried underground district steam heating lines.  

 

The mechanism is something like this:   An insulation failure allows water (or wet air) to come in contact with the surface of the pipe causing a cold spot.  Steam begins to condense at this spot.  The slug of water is propelled at high speed until it hits the next change in direction.  This Water Hammer can rupture the pipe, releasing the contained energy of the steam.

 

Roger

[Cathead]

Thanks for the further detail from Roger, Ken, Kurt, and others; I appreciate all the insights. Always more to learn. And welcome, John!

 

I've made the executive decision not to alter anything about the steam lines. I accept the real and potential errors, and that I got ahead of myself there, but I think it would be too disruptive to the model to attempt to repaint or otherwise alter them. 

 

To answer my initial trivia question about "one detail that's not quite right, and one I intentionally left out":

 

The detail that's not quite right is the angle of the stairs. I used pre-made stairs from my scrapbox, but their natural angle would have extended out too far and blocked too much of the engineroom doors, so I just installed them at a steeper angle more like a ship's ladder. You can technically see that the treads aren't flat if you look closely at the photo below, but it's pretty subtle, and I decided it was well worth not trying to scratchbuild stairs that would probably look worse!

 

The detail I left out was an expansion loop in the main steam lines. You can see this in the background of the photo from Kurt's Chaperon below:

In this case my brass rods on hand weren't long enough to include this and still run the whole length in one piece, and I thought it was too subtle a detail buried up there in the rafters. I'm a little surprised no one else caught this. Leaving this out ends up fitting the level of accuracy for the rest of the steam lines, for better and for worse. Next post will share updates and a new question for the community to help me with.

[Cathead]

On to this weekend's work so far. I decided not to tackle anything controversial for once and focused on some simpler tasks.

 

I decided to partially enclose the stairs, as was often done on these boats. This was pretty straightforward and I only took photos of the final product. I added a simple door at the back, figuring that the space under the stairs would make a pretty good storage area for something.

 

A close look in the above photos (and those to come) will also show that I did a little deck weathering with brushed-on pastels to make dirtier tracks along likely walking routes for the crew (from doors, around the boilers and pumps, etc.).

 

I also finished installing all the support posts, which really helps bring out her "steamboatness". This is where she starts looking like a proper river vessel and not some awkward barge. Here are two shots with the model held up at similar angles to prototype photos. I think it's bringing out the essence of the original.

 

The glue joints between the posts and the overlying beams are pretty small and a couple have broken free already under handling. So I decided to reinforce them by carefully drilling a very small hole through each beam, down into each post, and running a thin wire down through. I then clipped off each wire. This should add some extra stability; if nothing else a future failed glue joint now won't result in a post tipping over.

And now on to the community question. We previously discussed how coal would have been stored, and the general assumption seems to be that there should be some kind of small open bunkers near the firebox, as on Chaperon. But looking at the layout of the model (and prototype) I'm really struggling with how to do this. Here's the area these would have to fit in:

If they go inside the posts they're really close to the hot boiler and breeching. But if they go outside the posts they wouldn't be entirely protected by the overlying deck, and indeed one prototype photo implies they weren't there because there's a stack of cargo sacks there:

It can't be forward of the firebox, not only because the overlying deck doesn't carry that far, but because another photo shows there's nothing there

None of my photos show the area more clearly than these two. So where was the coal storage? I can't figure out how to do it. Thoughts?

 

 

[John Ruy]

3 hours ago, Cathead said:

None of my photos show the area more clearly than these two. So where was the coal storage? I can't figure out how to do it. Thoughts?

Eric,

 

When I was modeling the Robert E Lee, I built up the engine room and had to research the details because the plans did not show the engine room layout. With that research I acquired a copy of Alan Bates Engineroom Cyclopedium. 
 

The following diagram comes from this book…

This is a generic engine room layout that shows the fuel simply stowed just forward of the fire box. This gave the crew easy access to feed these furnaces. 
 

Additionally, the following is from my Robert E Lee blue prints. 

These blue prints show wood piles on the deck directly in front of the fire boxes. 

 
The above photo shows how I stored the fire wood on the deck. The only difference in our two river boats is the Robert E Lee had a forward cabin over this storage space. Does “Fire Hazard” come to mind? Notice the white “fire” barrel to the left by the ladder going up to the cabin. 😆
 

I further verified this practice when I read the book, The Great American Steamboat Race by Benton Rain Patterson.  In it Patterson described in detail the operation of these massive steam engines. Crews fed fuel to the boilers constantly, refueling at most stops along the way. Fuel was loaded by hand (wood or coal) the coal being in sacks and stacked on the deck for easy access to shovel into the firebox.

 

I think your photo shows an area in front of the boiler for the fuel to be stored right there on the deck in the open. 

Well, there’s my 2 cents. In my opinion stacks of wood would look better on your fore deck. Although you could get coal sacks from model railroading suppliers. 
 

I made my wood from twigs in the back yard. 😆

 

I hope this is helpful. Your work looks great, good decision to move forward and not sweat the details. 
 

Cheers🍻
 

 

 

[Cathead]

Thanks for the input, John, which reinforces my assumption that the fuel storage needs to be in front of, or very close to, the firebox. But I still need to figure out how to achieve that on Peerless, which being so small has very little room for that. R.E.L. is something like three times the size of Peerless. If you look at the photo of the wrecked boat from the bow, you can see there's no physical structure in front of the boilers;  you can see right past the capstan to the firebox doors. And there's not enough boiler deck overhang to protect any fuel storage there from rain.

 

I'm wondering if there were sacks of coal stacked along the posts parallel to the boiler, and maybe they just hauled out a sack at a time to the front of the firebox and dumped it on deck for shoveling into the firebox, or even tried to shovel out of the sack? She's a small vessel and maybe there didn't need to be anything more formal than that? Maybe I make a very small, low, three-sided structure that would loosely corral a sack's worth of coal but wouldn't be high enough to be seen in photos? I might mock that up so people can judge what I'm saying. But I'm reluctant to add completely made-up details.

 

I agree that firewood stacks are quite attractive on a steamboat model, but by ~1900 she would have been burning coal under most circumstances. Wood would seem anachronistic even if they occasionally did so if their coal stock ran out.

[mbp521]

Just catching up Eric, and you have definitely posed a good question. My initial thought was the coal could have been stored on the deck in front of the firebox as stated before. When first looking  at the photo of the wreck, I thought that maybe the reason that it is not seen was because they cleared it off before the photo was taken. Then I noticed that the fires are still stoked, due to the smoke coming from the stacks, so that shot that theory down. I do like the idea that sacks of coal were used and just dumped out on the deck as they were used.

 

Not sure if it was common practice, but is it possible that there are coal bunkers actually in the deck itself that go down into the hold slightly? I’m thinking something like a sloped trough that would allow ease of shoveling, but far enough down that wouldn’t be noticeable in any of the photos? Just thinking out loud. 
 

Good idea reinforcing the posts with wire. On several occasions I’ve had to beef up these delicate connections with wire or trenails. Definitely gives piece of mind to it’s stability. I also love the “grittiness” you add to your builds with the high traffic area wear. Adds to the realism and gives the boats life. 
 

-Brian