Sternwheeler From the Susquehanna River's Hard Coal Navy by Keith Black - 1:120 Scale

[Keith Black]

In the past I've concentrated my builds in the 1851 to 1900 time period around the New York Harbor area with the idea that all my models could have been seen plying those waters together during the same time period.

 

 The difference with this model is the time period. Yes, I could try and shoehorn this build into the 1851-1900 time period but what I don't want to do is take away from the story of the Hard Coal Navy whose story is well worth the telling.  

 

 There are three photos of this sternwheeler though the last one posted here is pretty useless for any detailed observations. I believe this sternwheeler was fueled by coal because of the smoke coming from the stack. Because the wheel is split into two sections and because pitman arms cannot be seen on the outside edges of the wheel, I believe this vessel was powered by a twin cylinder steam donkey engine. Because of the way a twin cylinder steam donkey engine is built it makes sense that the the two cylinders were connected to the inside edges of the two halves of the wheel. Because the two cylinders could operate independently of one another it would make the two wheel halves independent meaning one wheel half could go forward and one wheel half go in reverse meaning.............it could do donuts!  I think.

 

 I'm early into my research and much more is required before I start cutting wood. After building the pile driver and hiding the steam donkey engine inside an engine shed, I wanted to build an open air twin cylinder steam donkey engine. I now have my chance.  

 

 

 

https://unchartedlancaster.com/2023/06/17/scraping-the-bottom-dredging-for-coal-on-the-susquehanna/

 

https://susquehannagreenway.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Danville_Hard_Coal_Navy_Sign-for-web.pdf

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 07:03 PM by Keith Black

[Jim Lad]

A very different looking paddle wheeler, Keith. She looks like she's had a hard life.

 

John

[GrandpaPhil]

Keith,

  Looking forward to seeing this one!

[JacquesCousteau]

Great choice for a build, I'm looking forward to following along!

[Keith Black]

3 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

A very different looking paddle wheeler, Keith. She looks like she's had a hard life.

 She is very different looking indeed, John. There's not a pretty thing about her, she is the essence of an ugly duck.  

 

2 hours ago, GrandpaPhil said:

Looking forward to seeing this one!

2 hours ago, JacquesCousteau said:

Great choice for a build, I'm looking forward to following along!

Thank you, Phil and Jacques. I hope I'm able to do the build and the Hard Coal Navy story justice.

 

 

 

[Cathead]

As we've discussed privately, I have some personal history along this part of the Susquehanna and am very excited to see this build come to life!

[Keith Black]

7 hours ago, Cathead said:

As we've discussed privately, I have some personal history along this part of the Susquehanna and am very excited to see this build come to life!

  Eric, thank you for your willingness to follow along.

 

 

  A few interesting observations made since we last spoke on the subject,

 

 1) No stern upward sweep. This vessel was built like a shoebox, a level deck with squared ends.

 

 2) The drive shafts of two wheel halves sit high above the deck by two to three feet. The wheel halve buckets seem to  also sit high in the water as the wheel halves are relatively small in diameter which would help explain the lack of a normally needed stern wall.  

 

 2) There's a smaller exhaust stack visible next to and to the rear of a steam whistle at the rear edge of the pilothouse. In the first photo only a wisp of smoke can be seen but in the last photo the amount of smoke is much more pronounced. Question is, why type of engine does it lead to? I don't think an electric generator would create the amount of exhaust seen in the last photo but electricity was used based on the forward light atop the pilothouse along with a working light on the port side plus a light bulb that can be seen at the top edge of forward engine room wall 

 

 What appears to be a high pressure water hose can be seen on the forward starboard side engine room wall.  Could the engine be a high pressure water pump? Piping can be seen through the engine room near the base of where the smaller exhaust stack would end. 

 

  This was one quirky ugly beast. 

[Glen McGuire]

I'm on board for round 3 of these unique builds!  Looking forward to another interesting trip!

[Canute]

She's definitely a soft coal burner, with that plume. Hard coal -anthracite- was a major mining industry on the east branch of the Susquehanna and was a major home heating fuel back then. When the US Navy was building dreadnoughts, they began buying hard coal to remove the giveaway smoke plumes, since there was a lot of it available.

[wefalck]

He doesn't take a breath before starting a new project ...

 

Good thing that this is a historic ship, otherwise one would wonder, whether it would stay afloat long enough to complete the model 😲

Edited Friday at 03:49 PM by wefalck
Typos

[Cathead]

It honestly looks like something a model railroad company would invent as an overly quirky layout detail. 

[Keith Black]

3 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

I'm on board for round 3 of these unique builds!  Looking forward to another interesting trip!

 Glen, thank you for being part of this journey. A heavy application of pastels is gonna be required when it comes time to weathering this model. No worries about "too much". 

 

49 minutes ago, Canute said:

She's definitely a soft coal burner, with that plume. Hard coal -anthracite- was a major mining industry on the east branch of the Susquehanna and was a major home heating fuel back then. When the US Navy was building dreadnoughts, they began buying hard coal to remove the giveaway smoke plumes, since there was a lot of it available.

 I didn't think beyond the end of my nose on this matter and assumed she burned hard coal as it would have been free but your statement of the obvious makes me wanna dope slap my forehead. Thank you for your valuable input, Ken.

 

39 minutes ago, wefalck said:

He doesn't take a breath before starting a new project ...

 

Good thing that this is a historic ship, other wise one would wonder whether it would stay afloat long enough to complete the model 😲

Eberhard, I don't think I have time to waste. A steam donkey engine weighed between 4,000 and 10,000 pounds. An average of 7,000 pounds would seem an almost impossible weight for that wretched looking vessel to carry yet it did and more!

 

 

 More research information....

 

 https://colcohist-gensoc.org/wp-content/uploads/rivercoal.pdf

[John Ruy]

Looks interesting Keith, count me in…

[Keith Black]

3 hours ago, John Ruy said:

Looks interesting Keith, count me in…

 Welcome aboard, John. 

[FriedClams]

This sternwheeler is simply begging to be modeled, Keith and just the kind of subject you can really dig your teeth into.  Just keep a toothbrush handy and don't swallow the soot.  Grabbing the popcorn and looking for an empty seat.

 

Gary

[Keith Black]

1 hour ago, FriedClams said:

This sternwheeler is simply begging to be modeled, Keith and just the kind of subject you can really dig your teeth into.  Just keep a toothbrush handy and don't swallow the soot.  Grabbing the popcorn and looking for an empty seat.

 Thank you, Gary. This is the perfect candidate to build using castoff bits and pieces from previous builds. It's going to take all my meager skills to replicate this amount of ugliness.  

[Keith Black]

 

 

https://anthraciteunite.com/2019/02/26/the-hard-coal-navy/

 

http://dauphincountyhistory.org/backups/research/photos/weeklyphoto/17

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:23 AM by Keith Black

[Keith Black]

https://unchartedlancaster.com/2020/07/22/brief-history-of-black-diamond-dredging-on-the-susquehanna/

 

The fourth image's title in the above link is "Reclaiming River coal from Lake Aldred by paddle boat."  This is the sternwheeler I will be trying to replicate.

 

I have tried making out the wording on the signage on the starboard side of the push boat. I thought I was seeing "Water & Power Co" as the last words but have been unable to make out the first word. I came across the below Wikipedia link which states the following...

 

 "the oldest of three major dams built across the lower Susquehanna River, and the middle location of the three. It was constructed as the McCalls Ferry Dam between 1905 and 1910 by the Pennsylvania Water & Power (PW&P) Company."

 

'Water and Power Co' fit for the last but "Pennsylvania" is too long for the first word. Tis a bit of a mystery.  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtwood_Dam

 

 

 I started tonight trying to determine the dimensions of everything and early indications are that this was a pretty small vessel, something like 15 x 40 feet but as I said it's early.

Edited yesterday at 08:23 AM by Keith Black

[tmj]

Keith, this is going to sound a bit silly butttttttttttt!... 

 

#1... I did some really brief looking and didn't find any 'coal dredging' names on record, other than the 'Pennsylvania Water & Power Company'. I'd like to think that there were a few private contractors involved with that coal dredging business, but maybe not. Who knows...

 

#2... Take a close look at that photo. I too can make out the words 'water and power' Co., but not the first word/name. Look at the 'length' of the written words "water and power". Each of those words are individually much shorter in length than the long unidentified 'first' word... maybe as much as half. It's possible that the first word 'is' indeed Pennsylvania but just doesn't look that way due to angles, worn paint, light, old photography, etc. Maybe you can do an in depth search into all coal dredging companies, in that area, and find a closer match to some names / letters that would better fit into that old photo...???    

Edited yesterday at 05:38 AM by tmj

[Knocklouder]

Following along Keith, good luck with your journey  😀. 

Knocklouder  

[FreekS]

It will be a real challenge to realistically model that smoke!

[Cathead]

7 hours ago, tmj said:

It's possible that the first word 'is' indeed Pennsylvania but just doesn't look that way due to angles, worn paint, light, old photography, etc

I'll suggest yet another reason for this, based on staring at it. I'm half-convinced that first word is written in a different font/style, more stylized than the straight block printing of "Water & Power Co". It's more scrambled than it should be for the perspective, if it was written the same. The letters seem closer together (less white space could be partly why it's harder to read). So in that model it could well be Pennsylvania in some italicized/hand-written/fancier non-standard script that's making it harder to read. I swear the lettering on that first word looks tilted or uneven as if it's a different "font" or style. That would honestly seem appropriate for this era, I could see "Pennsylvania" being stylized in some interesting way.

 

Because I otherwise agree that the sources you give definitively state that (a) this vessel operated on Lake Aldred (impounded by Holdwood Dam, nee McCall's Ferry Dam) and that Pennsylvania Water & Power Co was doing the dredging for the power plant at Holtwood.

 

I got obsessed with this question so ran a little visual test. Here are three version of that phrase printed differently. One with just italics on the first word, the second and third with more loosely formed scripts attempting to mimic a fancier script. Just below each is the exact same phrase at the same scale, just compressed horizontally to mimic the effects of forced perspective in the photo. Especially in the latter two, you can see how the simple block print of "Water & Power Co" stays legible but the first word gets harder to read. Now add in the actual effects of distance from the camera, weathering on the sign, etc. and it seems at least plausible that it really is Pennsylvania. This is rough, but just meant as a conceptual exercise to show how that first word could be distorted.

 

 

 

[Keith Black]

 

6 hours ago, Knocklouder said:

Following along Keith, good luck with your journey  😀. 

 Thank you, Bob. I'm glad you signed up for the journey. 

 

5 hours ago, FreekS said:

It will be a real challenge to realistically model that smoke!

 I'll not be trying to replicate the smoke but have seen it done using clean, dyed, unspun wool. 

 

11 hours ago, tmj said:

#1... I did some really brief looking and didn't find any 'coal dredging' names on record, other than the 'Pennsylvania Water & Power Company'. I'd like to think that there were a few private contractors involved with that coal dredging business, but maybe not. Who knows...

 

#2... Take a close look at that photo. I too can make out the words 'water and power' Co., but not the first word/name. Look at the 'length' of the written words "water and power". Each of those words are individually much shorter in length than the long unidentified 'first' word... maybe as much as half. It's possible that the first word 'is' indeed Pennsylvania but just doesn't look that way due to angles, worn paint, light, old photography, etc. Maybe you can do an in depth search into all coal dredging companies, in that area, and find a closer match to some names / letters that would better fit into that old photo...???   

4 hours ago, Cathead said:

I'll suggest yet another reason for this, based on staring at it. I'm half-convinced that first word is written in a different font/style, more stylized than the straight block printing of "Water & Power Co". It's more scrambled than it should be for the perspective, if it was written the same. The letters seem closer together (less white space could be partly why it's harder to read). So in that model it could well be Pennsylvania in some italicized/hand-written/fancier non-standard script that's making it harder to read. I swear the lettering on that first word looks tilted or uneven as if it's a different "font" or style. That would honestly seem appropriate for this era, I could see "Pennsylvania" being stylized in some interesting way.

 

Because I otherwise agree that the sources you give definitively state that (a) this vessel operated on Lake Aldred (impounded by Holdwood Dam, nee McCall's Ferry Dam) and that Pennsylvania Water & Power Co was doing the dredging for the power plant at Holtwood.

 

I got obsessed with this question so ran a little visual test. Here are three version of that phrase printed differently. One with just italics on the first word, the second and third with more loosely formed scripts attempting to mimic a fancier script. Just below each is the exact same phrase at the same scale, just compressed horizontally to mimic the effects of forced perspective in the photo. Especially in the latter two, you can see how the simple block print of "Water & Power Co" stays legible but the first word gets harder to read. Now add in the actual effects of distance from the camera, weathering on the sign, etc. and it seems at least plausible that it really is Pennsylvania. This is rough, but just meant as a conceptual exercise to show how that first word could be distorted.

 

 

 Tom

 I was searching for the names of Hard Coal Navy dredging companies when I came across Pennsylvania Water & Power CO. Trying to get 'Pennsylvania' to fit in that space is a stretch, IMHO. 

 

Eric

 I'm guessing the time period is 1930ish because of the deckhand's shirt, the electric lights, and the general feel of the scene. In the link immediately below is the history of Safe Harbor Water Power Corporation. Is it possible that's what the sign reads, Safe Harbor Water Power CO with the initials PWP (not an and sign) in a vertical line between Water and Power? 

 

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1430/ML14308A219.pdf

 

 More history

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/hydro-power/hydro-hall-of-fame-2/

 

 Power generator from 1930, it fits the time period. 

 

 Related items on eBay. 

 

 

 

Edited 19 hours ago by Keith Black

[Cathead]

Keith, Safe Harbor is a different dam & reservoir than Holtwood, and I doubt these vessels moved between reservoirs because there was no infrastructure to allow this; no locks at these dams. Unless the vessels were dismantled or otherwise somehow transported overland between the reservoirs, though that seems unlikely. The Susquehanna is not (and never was) navigable in the stretch these dams were built, other than once the reservoirs were in place. And each reservoir's power station was run by a different company. So if your vessel is marked for the Safe Harbor P&W Co then it never operated on Lake Aldred (Pennsylvania P&W Co). Yet you've got a photo of what we're assuming is the same vessel (from behind) that's marked as being on Lake Aldred.

 

So to summarize: 

 

You have a rear view of a vessel marked as operated on Lake Aldred (PA P&W), assuming that caption is correct.

 

You have a front view of a vessel with an unreadable name sign, and no captioning to indicate where it's operating. Unless I'm missing something? What's the source of the front-view image with the name plate? It doesn't appear in either of the links you gave in the first post.

 

So if I'm thinking this through correctly, either:

 

(a) It's the same vessel, in which case it's highly likely it was built and operated on Lake Aldred, meaning the name is likely for Pennsylvania P&W Co. as that's who operated that reservoir.

 

(b) It's not the same vessel, in which case it's possible the front view is a different vessel built and operated on Safe Harbor, meaning the name sign could read Safe Harbor P&W Co.

 

Both are plausible, as one can imagine a similar design being built multiple times once it proved to be operative on Lake Aldred (Safe Harbor was built years later). 

 

My personal leaning is that "Pennsylvania" is a better fit for the muddled lettering than "Safe Harbor", visually, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's some third word. But it really doesn't look like "Safe Harbor" to me. 

 

Or I might be missing something. But that's how my mind is working through the logic at the moment.

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, Cathead said:

Keith, Safe Harbor is a different dam & reservoir than Holtwood, and I doubt these vessels moved between reservoirs because there was no infrastructure to allow this; no locks at these dams. Unless the vessels were dismantled or otherwise somehow transported overland between the reservoirs, though that seems unlikely. The Susquehanna is not (and never was) navigable in the stretch these dams were built, other than once the reservoirs were in place. And each reservoir's power station was run by a different company. So if your vessel is marked for the Safe Harbor P&W Co then it never operated on Lake Aldred (Pennsylvania P&W Co). Yet you've got a photo of what we're assuming is the same vessel (from behind) that's marked as being on Lake Aldred.

 

So to summarize: 

 

You have a rear view of a vessel marked as operated on Lake Aldred (PA P&W), assuming that caption is correct.

 

You have a front view of a vessel with an unreadable name sign, and no captioning to indicate where it's operating. Unless I'm missing something? What's the source of the front-view image with the name plate? It doesn't appear in either of the links you gave in the first post.

 

So if I'm thinking this through correctly, either:

 

(a) It's the same vessel, in which case it's highly likely it was built and operated on Lake Aldred, meaning the name is likely for Pennsylvania P&W Co. as that's who operated that reservoir.

 

(b) It's not the same vessel, in which case it's possible the front view is a different vessel built and operated on Safe Harbor, meaning the name sign could read Safe Harbor P&W Co.

 

Both are plausible, as one can imagine a similar design being built multiple times once it proved to be operative on Lake Aldred (Safe Harbor was built years later). 

 

My personal leaning is that "Pennsylvania" is a better fit for the muddled lettering than "Safe Harbor", visually, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's some third word. But it really doesn't look like "Safe Harbor" to me. 

 

Or I might be missing something. But that's how my mind is working through the logic at the moment.

 

 Senior moment. I read the Safe Harbor history to mean Pennsylvania Water & Power CO  changed it's name to Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. Duh.  No doubt the sternwheeler in question is operating on Lake Aldred. And I dare say there was one and ONLY one push boat that looked like the Lake Aldred vessel. As I said, senior moment.  Back to the sign and first word, sounds like?  If you can get Pennsylvania squoze in there I'm all over it. 

 

 

 Interesting but Penna doesn't seem to work either.

Edited 16 hours ago by Keith Black

[gjdale]

Another interesting project Keith - I’m in for the ride.

[Keith Black]

 Grant, thank you for being willing to follow along.