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

[Keith Black]

 Eric, I agree with the thoughts that coal sacks were stored alongside the boiler and dumped in front of the firebox as needed. The bumper/backstop (for lack of the correct term) used to stack the coal against for shoveling into the firebox could have been as simple as a 2x12 stood on edge running on the inside edge (facing the firebox) up against the two outside support columns. There could have been rotating clips attached to the support columns to keep the board from falling flat. When finished shoveling the board could be simply laid flat till needed again. This type of arrangement would not necessarily have been seen on any of the Peerless photos. 

Edited January 21 by Keith Black

[Roger Pellett]

Peerless might not have had expansion loops in her steam piping.  The need for expansion loops is dependent on a number of factors; the stiffness of the pipe itself, the steam temperature, the length of the piping runs, and the arrangement of the piping.  Changes in direction inherent in delivering steam to the engines add flexibility to the piping.  The pipe itself becomes exponentially stiffer as it’s diameter increases.  Your piping is small in diameter and since Peerless is a small vessel the piping run is short.  Prior to the availability of CAD linked computerized analysis programs, piping system flexibility calculations were very tedious involving trial and error solution of multiple simultaneous linear equations, challenging for most engineers let alone riverbank Steamship constructors

 

SS Meteor built in 1896 is the World’s only surviving Steamship built to a patented Whaleback Design.  While her historic significance has been reduced by changes made over her long working  life, her Scotch Boiler/ Triple Expansion Steam Engine propulsion plant is a remarkably well preserved example of late Nineteenth Century Marine Engineering.

 

Two fire tube boilers delivered saturated steam to the engine at 170psi, typical for the period.  The single short, 10in diameter main steam line was fitted with a flanged slip joint expansion fitting that eliminated the need for an expansion loop.  This would have been a patented fitting supplied by an outside vendor to the shipyard.  Fittings like this would have been available to Peerless’s builders as well.  Photo below:

 

Roger

 

 

 

[John Ruy]

7 hours ago, Cathead said:

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?

I agree… They would not want the fuel source to get wet. Although, I don’t believe coal would saturate with water the way wood could. They probably would stack the coal sacks under the decking to protect them from weather. They would also need a back stop to shovel against. 
 

I also agree with you on adding anything not verified. When in doubt, leave it out. Omission of the coal sacks and coal on the deck to be shoveled is a much cleaner presentation and authentic. That’s why I didn’t add coal sacks or live stock to the Robert E Lee, although both would have been there. 

Edited January 21 by John Ruy

[Cathead]

6 hours ago, mbp521 said:

is it possible that there are coal bunkers actually in the deck itself that go down into the hold slightly?

 

It sounds logical; all I can say is I've never run across any reference to such an arrangement. It's definitely too intrusive for me to add without some evidence.

 

5 hours ago, Keith Black said:

The bumper/backstop (for lack of the correct term) used to stack the coal against for shoveling into the firebox could have been as simple as a 2x12 stood on edge

That's what I'm envisioning logically, but like my answer to Brian above, I'm reluctant to add such a prominent detail of something I have no real evidence for.

 

3 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Peerless might not have had expansion loops in her steam piping.

More great insights, thanks for this. The details of propulsion engineering are the weakest part of my steamboat knowledge, I'm just not a natural engineer. It's cracking me up that the detail I knew about and intentionally left out (expansion loop) might not even have been there, while the detail I didn't know about (insulation) probably should be there but won't at this point. 

 

 

2 hours ago, John Ruy said:

Omission of the coal sacks and coal on the deck to be shoveled is a much cleaner presentation and authentic.

I think I can justify some stacks of coal sacks parallel to the boiler (obviously with some separation) even if I leave out details on exactly how it made it into the firebox. But I'm also going to be patient this time and see if anyone else chimes in with ideas. I learned my lesson on not running my steam line plans by the community before plunging ahead; I don't have to solve this detail right away.

[Cathead]

Somewhat off-topic but still relevant, we went out to the Missouri River today in our part of central Missouri, along a stretch Peerless would have navigated many, many times. The river is extremely low right now, not just because we're in a significant drought, but also there's likely an ice jam somewhere in the area. Gage data downstream of us show a major drop in river level that is typical of an ice jam upstream holding back water, and also some localized sudden fluctuations in river level that signify adjustments in the jam as sudden bursts of water are released as the pack adjusts itself.

 

Here's an initial view of fractured ice floes moving downriver (to the left); the current is still pretty swift here, telling us that the jam is somewhere downstream. It's a mesmerizing scene as these all rotate, collide, and scrape along with an unmistakable hissing complexity.

We hiked about 1.5 miles upriver to a place that's normally an isolated island in the river, but at these low levels creates a massive sandbar connecting to the bank. In all but the lowest river conditions (like now), the foreground here would be underwater with only the highest point in the middle back remaining above "normal" river level and certainly going entirely under in floods.

These conditions give a rare chance to reach islands like these by foot, so we took advantage and explored. The exposed bar itself is about a mile long under these conditions, so by the time we'd explored it all and hiked back to our access point, it was about a 5 mile round trip. Lots of fantastic ice formations along the river itself, with many levels of ice recording former higher water levels that have since dropped, leaving isolated and collapsed ledges. There's some great rock-picking along these bars, too, as the Missouri carries sediment all the way from Montana as well as lots of originally glacially transported material, so the diversity can be spectacular.

The temperature hovered below freezing with a biting wind funneling up the valley, but it was a great time to be out! Days like these make it easy to understand how freeze-ups along the Missouri, Ohio, and upper Mississippi could destroy fragile wooden steamboats. The wrecked photo of Peerless I've been showing above relates to ice that crushed her hull on the Missouri River near St. Louis on December 30, 1903. Ice wrecked a lot of boats on these rivers.

 

Today's conditions relate to a few weeks of bitterly cold weather here, but the ice will soon be gone. Toward the end of the day, a shelf of cloud raced northeast, presaging a major warmup that will bring freezing rain on Monday and then relatively warm (above freezing day and night) conditions the rest of the week, so we'll start to lose the ice. Hence why we made a point of getting out there when we could.

 

Here's one more shot from later in the day, after the clouds had moved in, from another point about 7 miles downriver but still above the ice jam because conditions are the same. We never did find the jam, we had to head for home eventually.

Hope that little diversion was of interest!

[John Ruy]

19 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Hope that little diversion was of interest!

 Very interesting Eric. Although I grew up in Illinois just 200 miles north of St Louis and 20 miles east of the Mississippi, I don’t recall going out to see the ice flows. Thanks for sharing…

John

[mbp521]

Very interesting topic Eric. I remember a couple of times seeing ice flows on the Mississippi in Baton Rouge. For the northern folk that’s not a strange occurrence, but for south Louisiana, it’s a rarity. People would flock to the levee to watch the ice drifting downstream. By the way, at the time of this writing we are getting that freezing rain here in North Texas. Should provide for some slick roads in the morning. Y’all be safe up there. 
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Brian, freezing rain here, too, I almost wiped out this morning dumping the overnight ash from my wood stove even though I knew perfectly well there was ice.

 

John, depending on how young you are, ice on that stretch of the Mississippi (I assume from distance you mean around the Rock Island area) probably behaved very differently. Once the Mississippi was lock-and-dammed in that area were relatively few stretches of free-flowing water, whereas the Missouri is entirely free flowing in its lower reaches (from South Dakota down). So it would be hard to get this kind of flowing ice field on that part of the Mississippi because the regularly spaced dams slow the current and intercept the ice, whereas here we're getting a straight flow of ice from however far away it manages to travel on the open current.

[John Ruy]

21 minutes ago, Cathead said:

John, depending on how young you are,

Eric, I was born in Quincy Illinois and lived in the country NE of there. I was raised there 1953 and left there when I graduated high school 1971.  I certainly remember the Lock and Dams. Your explanation on no ice flows makes sense, not that my family would venture over to see them if they were there. 😆

 

Great info on navigation of the Missouri River.  👍
 

 

[Canute]

The Delaware River, above Trenton, was like that. The Army Corps of Engineers built diversion channels to prevent flooding due to ice jams. Below Trenton, the Delaware was a tidal river; barges  could bring coal and oil up to Burlington, NJ and Fairless, PA. The coal stopped when the steel mill in Fairless shut down. Jet fuel is transshipped to McGuire AFB.

[Cathead]

So I had a sort of epiphany that might really change how I move forward on this model, and I want to get some feedback on it. From the very beginning I was assuming I'd plank the boiler deck. Why did I assume that? Because on every other steamboat I've built, the boiler deck was planked, so of course this one would be too. 

 

But.

 

On all those other boats, the boiler deck wasn't the uppermost deck; it was partially or fully covered by the hurricane deck. See these two:

 

The uppermost deck (in these cases, the hurricane deck) wasn't left openly planked but instead covered in some form of waterproofing because they functioned primarily as roofs over the lower decks. This was based on my general understanding of steamboat practice.

 

But in the case of Peerless, the boiler deck fulfils that "roof" role. As previously argued for other reasons, I don't think passengers would have routinely been up there.

 

So why not model the boiler deck covered with something like tarpaper, rather than a nicely planked deck? Not only does this make a fair amount of sense from a realism point of view, it also vastly simplifies the job of completing that deck. Instead of another painstaking planking job, I can use a single thin sheet of scrap wood and lay "tarpaper" over it.

 

The other reason to plank the boiler deck was you can technically see it from below, through the open framing. At first I assumed that laying a thin sheet of wood on that would look silly, but I tested it and I don't think you can really tell. I could also scribe the bottom of the sheet or otherwise weather it to hide the "sheetness", but in practice there's almost no viewing angle where you're seeing the underside at more than a very shallow angle.

 

So this feels really exciting because it saves a ton of work, while actually potentially making the model more realistic as it seems logical that this uppermost deck was covered rather than openly planked, or at least that that's one logical option. Thoughts?

[steamschooner]

Eric, West Coast steamschooners used painted canvas as a deck covering. Many ships did I believe. Tar paper covered decks I would think would be a mess on hot days as the tar melts and is tracked all over the place. Course it may have been a different type of tar paper than we use today.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Steve

[John Ruy]

2 hours ago, Cathead said:

So why not model the boiler deck covered with something like tarpaper, rather than a nicely planked deck?

Eric, I think you are on to something. On my R.E.Lee, I painted the planking to look water proofed and to hide the plywood grain.  If you use a covering (i.e. silk span) to mimic painted canvas you can hide the plywood grain without having to plank the boiler deck. The photos you have of the Peerless appear to show that deck coated as such. 
 

Sounds like a great idea. 

[LJP]

Hi Eric, 

 

As steamschooner mentioned, the reference that I found was that the decks were "canvas, painted and sanded".  This is what was done on the S. S. Moyie when four layers were removed during renovation. 

 

I like your idea of scribing the underside of the boiler deck, That provides a good representation while really simplifying the process.

 

Keep up the great work.,

LJP

[kurtvd19]

Eric:

Silk span painted to represent canvas is the way I would go.

Kurt

[Roger Pellett]

What does Bates’ Western Rivers Steamboat Cyclopedium say about these weather exposed decks?  

 

Tar paper or canvas, if you paint It black, it could be either.  Coal firing was a messy business.  With soot from the stacks the deck was likely to get black anyhow.

 

Roger

[KeithAug]

On 1/22/2024 at 1:55 AM, Cathead said:

Somewhat off-topic but still relevant, we went out to the Missouri River today

That looks like a wonderful day out Eric - I am jealous.

[Cathead]

I just keep getting ahead of myself! You are all correct and I shouldn't be referring to "tar paper". I got sloppy and used that as a general name for a sealed roofing material, when what I was thinking of was something like the suggestions of sealed canvas. I remembered this topic coming up in my Arabia log but hadn't gone back to check the details yet. Which I've now done and @Bob Cleek wrote a long, very useful post on the subject that's worth reviewing for anyone interested. I can't check Bates at the moment as I'm away from home but I feel like the canvas approach makes a lot of sense. 

 

And yes, Keith, it was a great day out. We're hoping to find time to do a longer (4-5 day) canoe trip on the Missouri this summer, probably from Kansas City to somewhere in central Missouri.

[gak1965]

9 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Coal firing was a messy business.  With soot from the stacks the deck was likely to get black anyhow.

 

Heck oil firing can be messy. My recollection is that the reason most US naval vessels had black masts and funnel/uptake vent tops until the '90s was that they would get that color anyway.

 

[KeithAug]

15 hours ago, Cathead said:

probably from Kansas City to somewhere in central Missouri.

Even more Jealous.

 

[GGibson]

15 hours ago, Cathead said:

We're hoping to find time to do a longer (4-5 day) canoe trip on the Missouri this summer, probably from Kansas City to somewhere in central Missouri.

 

Your Peerless looks great, Eric! 

 

I've always found it interesting that, up in Sioux City, IA where I grew up, the Missouri River is truly a recreational river.  I learned to ski on the Missouri when I was a teenager!  And, in a recent visit to Sioux City this summer, I saw that the river is still very recreational, with boats and jet skis going up and down, and marinas on both the IA and NE sides.

 

However, not sure I have ever seen any boats in the river in Kansas City or even in Omaha.  Seeing even a canoe in the water here in Kansas City would be a rare sight!  Sounds like an awesome adventure, Eric!  👍 

[Cathead]

If you want to see canoes on the river in Kansas City, check out the Missouri River 360, an annual canoe race from KC to St. Charles (outside St. Louis) that happens every summer. Hundreds of people launch from Kaw Point, just above Kansas City.

 

As for recreational use in Sioux City vs. farther downstream, keep in mind that in the former you're a lot closer to the lowermost dam near Yankton, so the water levels are more controlled and it's easier to have recreational use. Down here in Missouri, especially below KC, river levels vary a lot more and there's also more water entering from various tributaries, so floods and changes in river level are more common, making it harder to maintain recreational infrastructure.

[GGibson]

Eric, I was wondering if the dam (or just being farther upstream) had an effect on the increased recreational use.  Appreciate the input from someone who would know!  Been loving watching your work. 👍🏆

[Cathead]

Well, I did it. I cut out a boiler deck from some thin scrap I had on hand and did some basic scribing with a knife and ruler. Messed up a couple places where the knife wandered but it really won't be noticeable when it's installed. I then used a pencil to darken the scribing lines, since a test-fit showed that just the cut lines couldn't be seen at all when on the model, then used some black pastel to weather the underside.

If you notice the messier pastel streaks at the stern, that was intentional (really!) to demonstrate that you have to be careful applying pastels. That area will be hidden over the engine room so it was a good demonstration zone for why not to smear pastels directly on from the stick. I used a brush to gently apply powder, working along the scribing lines, and rubbing it in with a finger once applied. Gives the surface some subtle texture.

 

Then I brushed wood glue across all the relevant surfaces of beams and so on, which took longer than I'd anticipated trying to keep the glue from leaking down onto the sides of all the narrow beams. Then I took the plunge and clamped the deck down. It's cut to be a little wide all the way around so I can do final exact edge trimming on the model.

 

Will let it dry overnight, then see how it turned out!

[mbp521]

Looking good Eric, you can chalk (pun intended) the pastel smears up to soot and grease from the boiler and engine room. Also looks like you might need some smaller clamps, one slight slip with those and the results could be disastrous. 😁
 

-Brian

[KeithAug]

3 hours ago, mbp521 said:

Also looks like you might need some smaller clamps

Eric - I have to agree with Brian - those clamps are enormous. Did you run out of clothes pegs? 

Deck looking good.

[Cathead]

You guys made me laugh, but in fairness, the clothes pins/pegs are clamping the deck onto the open beams, where the span is very small, whereas the two big clamps are holding the deck onto the solid engine room. So I had to use large clamps there because the deck is essentially flush with the wall, running all the way down to the base of the hull. There isn't that much risk because the entire space between the two parts of the clamp is solid wood. The two clothes pins at the stern are grabbing a small corner where the deck sticks out enough for them to grab. There will be more progress to post later today!

[Cathead]

I roughly trimmed the deck back with a knife and then sanded it smooth to the beams. The edges look rough but it doesn't matter because they'll get wrapped with a piece of trim.

Next it was time to cut the access hole for the staircase. I measured out its approximate location, drilled some pilot holes, then slowly started cutting away the opening with a sharp knife. A few shots of the sequence:

 

And here's the deck with its cute little access hole:

 

And here's a teaser for work underway, fidding with the pilot house and chimneys:

 

Thanks for following along!

 

Edited February 12 by Cathead

[FriedClams]

Great discussions on steam pipe insulating and coal storage.  Nice looking deck and very nice progress overall, Eric.

 

Gary

 

[Cathead]

It's clear by now that this project is morphing far away from my original goal of building it mostly with on-farm wood. I keep realizing (a) how much more time-intensive that is, (b) that I don't quite have the setup or skill to mill all the tiny 1:87 scale lumber I'd need, and (c) that I have enough material in my scrap box to build this without any additional cost. I've yet to buy anything for this model and I think I'll make it to the end like that. I've also come to realize that the on-farm wood approach just doesn't fit my goal for this model to be something that looks right in a model railroad setting. If I want to do an all on-farm wood model, it should be a more artistic model that really shows off that wood rather than hiding it under paint and other details. Sorry to anyone who's disappointed after the initial promise.

 

Anyway, I've been moving forward on the pilot house and chimneys. The idea here is to get all the upper superstructure built so I can lay out the covering of the boiler deck to match. I have a big scrap box of model railroad scratch-building supplies (doors, windows, ladders, piping, etc.) so I just drew from those materials to make a reasonable match with the original Peerless photos. So here are some shots of the pilot house underway, using those pieces plus some scrap scribed wood sheets and other scrap wood. So far so good. 

 

An interesting question here is what to do about glass in these windows. In most model settings you could just glue a piece of clear plastic behind the window, but that would look awful here where you can clearly see into the interior from multiple angles. My leaning right now is just to leave the windows un-glassed; whether or not it's right, I think the eye will see it as more natural than a clearly wrong attempt at glass. In other words, the viewer's eye is less likely to notice the absence of an accurate detail than the presence of a distractingly wrong detail. Thoughts?

 

I've also been playing with the chimneys. I have both dowels and styrene tubes on hand, but I'd rather use dowels for the main stack as they're more solid and easier to anchor to the model. But I need to simulate the subtle bands around the chimney, and some form of empty opening at the top. So here's the approach I came up with, using thin rings cut from a slightly wider styrene tube:

 

For the top, I cut a longer section of tubing, then sanded the lower edge to blend back into the stack. It's not exactly like the real Peerless but I think it looks nice and is a practical and easy way to do cap the chimneys, and many steamers did have flared chimneys like this.

And here's a loose test-fit on the model. You can see I also carved and sanded some maple blocks to roughly represent the base of the chimneys where they come through the heat shields on the boiler deck. As above, I couldn't get these to match the original photos perfectly, but they evoke the essence of the right idea, which I'm fine with.

 

When I'm satisfied with these, I'll prime and paint them just like the boilers, and I think they'll bend nicely into a coherent whole that looks right.