oct. 2015

The Badger is noteworthy because it is the last coal fired steam ship operating on the Great Lakes. I have mentioned this before but it has Foster Wheeler water-tube boilers with mechanical stokers and 2, Skinner steeple compound engines. Each of these has 4 sets of cylinders with 2 stage compounding. The high pressure cylinders are on top and the low pressure cylinders below, operating on the uniflow (unaflow) principle.

The power plant has been designated as a mechanical engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and I did enquire about whether one could have an engine room tour. The reply was effectively that Homeland Security had put the kibosh on non-crew personnel visiting the engine room and bridge. The picture of the ship above was taken by me, the picture of the engine below is from the web.

Once again the club displayed at Hobbyfest and once again we managed to figure out how to put up the tents. We had a good selection of models on show but unfortunately (once again) no one brought a camera along, so I have no pics.

In previous years I have included something on what I have seen during the summer that might be of interest to other model engineers, so here we go again.

We did have a round-the-lakes trip. This involved going across Michigan, taking the Badger car ferry from Ludington MI to Manitowoc WI, going to Green Bay, on to Sault St. Marie, then back on the Canadian side, taking the Chi-Cheemaun from South Baymouth to Tobermory.

The following website gives quite a lot of useful information on the engines:

http://articles.maritimepropulsion.com/article

/SS-Badger-2854.aspx

We stayed overnight in Green Bay and on the way we went to see the US National Railway Museum. This had a couple of exhibits of note: One was the train used by Eisenhower while in Britain during WWII. The locomotive was the same streamlined class as Mallard and Sir Nigel Gresley and is named after the general.

Below is a picture of one of the 4 Caterpillar main propulsion engines. Perhaps some will remember the ship being in Sarnia a few years back being re-fitted with these engines.

I decided that the engine followed in the same tradition as British motor cycles of the time because there were oil drips all over the floor.

The other engine of interest is a "Big Boy." It looks intact but it was not clear whether it is in working condition. I never cease to be amazed at the complexity of these engines and just how much work must have been involved in keeping them running.

Otherwise the museum is somewhat disappointing, they have a large shed with an extensive collection of locomotives and rolling stock under cover but it is open at each end so that roosting pigeons have left their "mark" on the exhibits.

I had rather more luck getting to see things on the Chi-Cheemaun where a member of the crew I have known for some time let me have a look around.

In fact there is quite a large section devoted to internal combustion engines generally and one item that caught my attention was a partially sectioned hot bulb engine. This appeared to be an early Hornsby Akroyd type made under licence by Gebrüder Pfeiffer in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The sectioning enabled one to see the arrangement of the combustion chamber, heating lamp and valves very clearly.

This is the complete engine:

Here are a few more photographs

This is a rather nice steam portable engine:

This shows the part sectioned cylinder and combustion chamber:

This is a twin cylinder mill engine:

Seeing this sectioned engine was very useful since I have been trying to assemble information on hot bulb engines.

If anyone manages to get to Munich the museum is close to the city centre and very worthwhile to visit. There is a large section devoted to ships of various kinds including a part sectioned early WWI "U" boat. There is also a section on aviation with some WWII German aircraft. Then there are sections on electricity, iron, steel and other metals production, power production including water power and steam, machine tools and a very good section on casting: They have a good display on how lost foam techniques are used to cast complex cylinder blocks and cylinder heads for engines.

And this is a good piece of solid German steam engine engineering:

John Lovegrove