*March REFLECTORS arriving in the mail*

Arrived at Jeffersonville

The downriver mail packet nosed into the shipyard and the mud clerk came over the stage to hand me a bundle containing the March issue of the S&D REFLECTOR. As usual, Dave has done a stellar job and this issue is a doozey!

Beautiful sunshine sparkling on the Ohio this balmy morning and the museum is such a beehive of exciting activity I can hardly stay at my desk! Workmen are installing the 8' pilotwheel in the new pilothouse, and a smaller pilotwheel (4') will be placed between the upstairs windows on the collections management facility. Work is also progressing well on the renovation of the laundry house just "aft" of the mansion. The floor is now out, revealing many ancient and heavy floor joists, covered with what probably is "flood mud"!

The March issue of "Jeffersonville Explorer" magazine just hit the stands yesterday and yours truly is honored to be pictured with a brief article about my "taking the wheel" of the old boat column for The Waterways Journal since the passing of our good friend and mentor Capt. Alan L. Bates.

*RE: March REFLECTOR/Str. CINCINNATI book*

Hi, Keith:
Glad to read your rave review following the timely appearance of the March REFLECTOR. I don't know how David Tschiggfrie does it but 'do it' he does. This a return to former days when we would all eagerly stop all work at home to devour the magazine "kivver to kivver" as fred Way used to say with a wink and grin.

QUESTION: I have a feeling the book on the STR. CINCINNATI you all found may be different than mine. If you have time could you look and see counting the pages in the HM copy? If the HM copy also has advertisements from the shippers then; then it's not mine here. My booklet is the 'big blow' for the CINCINNATI on her very 1st Mardi Gras trip in 1924. I'm mailing what I have here to Jim/Ann Blum as he wants to borrow my booklet and L&C LINE folder for additional scanning. More in time.

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

The L & C Packet Company Booklet Revisited

Not counting the covers (which are done in aqua and gold) with a photo of the boat and the Louisville and Cincinnati Packet Company logo, there are 24 pages.

Yes, there are advertisements by such firms as The John Van Range Co., A.O. Kirschner Company, Carlisle & Finch, F.D. Lawrence Electric Co., Shott Manufacturing Co., Adam Wuest, Edwards Manufacturing Co., F.W. Schneider, W.W. Pettis Co., The Chas. Barnes Co., J.A. Brownfield & Son, Vulcan Copper & Supply Co., Stanley Jacobs Floor Co., The Fred J. Meyers Mfg. Co., etc. The back cover ad is for The Oliver Schlemmer Co.

Reflector on the UMR

Surprisingly my Reflector arrived yesterday and it is another sterling edition. Hopefully the word of the quality and regularity of the magazine under David's stewardship will get around and S&D can regain some of the members lost during the irregular and missing Reflector years. And lest we forget, David has been ably assisted by the younger Tsch, Jonathan - the dynamic duo of Dubuque!

The Carlisle & Finch Company is alive and well yet and still going strong. I was speaking to a C&F Rep this week. The company has expanded their plant footprint in Cincinnati at their traditional location just a stones throw from the site of the former Cincinnati Car Company (Streetcar and Interurban Car builders of the 19th & early 20th Century for you young-uns out there). Current products are a vast improvement from the Carbon Arc lights on the DQ---and the Arc lights that the MQ came out with.

Yes, another Superb issue of the Reflector hit our doorstep yesterday in pristine condition. The ghosts of RPO car service on the B&O did well (again)!

Carlisle & Finch Shine On

Thanks, Jim, for the info on Carlisle and Finch. I was wondering if they were still in existence. I never hear that name but what I don't think of Capt. C.S. "Rip" Ware always referring to the searchlights, in his delightful southern drawl, as "Carlise and Flinch"!

See my spah lite?

I would love to get my hands on one of those old carbon arc lights. I think they are neat. Turn it on every now and then, and wave it around in the sky, arrousing a great deal of curiosity, then turn it off before someone figures out where it is. Eons ago, I used to like to go to grand openings just to see the searchlights, sputtering and buzzing away. Or what the Cajuns pilots called a "spah lite".

That's just mean! Those big old searchlights for grand openings were a good bit larger than the ones on boats.

Arrived in Rome, Italy

For the record, I received my March S&D Reflector two days ago, 6 March. Interesting that it gets to Italy faster than to some places in the U.S. How does that happen? Anyway, hope everyone got their copy by now, it's another good one.

Especially knowing all the hoops you have to jump through even to mail something to Canada! How do they do it?

Bigger but pretty much the same otherwise. I also seem to recall that a big generator was used to power those search lights. You don't just plug 'em in. Here's a question: did Carlisle Finch make different size lights? I'd settle for an iddy bitty one. I first saw a Xenon while riding a towboat, and promptly started pushing to get one on the DQ, but they did not get one while I was there.

They made at least two sizes of carbon lights. I don't know if they made those big ones for advertising or not.

C&F no longer manufactures Carbon Arc lights. They do however still service the mechanisms. Apparently they still maintain a collection of the toy trains that the business was founded upon.

There were in the early 50's a number of WWII era Surplus Searchlights sold and used for various purposes. A son of our then next door neighbor bought ay least one which from time to time was parked in the parents driveway....and yes they were BIG.

W. Graham Claytor (once at least a Delta Queen passenger) was noted, among many, many accomplishments as having a wonderful collection of C&F toy trains.

Carlisle & Finch is still very much alive and makes the "standard" for search lights on the river. Back when I was doing purchsing for ACBL, we still had a fair number of carbon arch lights out on the towboat fleet and we would have to purchase repair parts. Many of the part numbers began with the letters EF. I asked C&F what the EF stood for and was told it stood for "Emergency Fleet" which meant the lights were first designed and manufactured for the govt. in WWl, 75 years later the parts were still the same.
In the early days C&F manufactured a lot of different things...from electric trains to diesel engines. At the outbreak of WWl the govt. asked them to make nothing but searchlights for the war effort, and they have been doing just that every since.
They developed and installed all the multi-bulb fixtures which are used in all the American lighthouses (the multibulb fixtures spelled the end of the traditional light house keeper, because when one light burned out the fixture rotated to a new bulb automatically and some fixtures hold 8 or 10 bulbs....no need to put in new bulbs more often than once a year or so).
Oh, one thing they invented way back when they were making electric trains was a turbine generator which would attach to the faucet on a kitchen sink. Back in the early days of toy trains they were powered by battery (most houses didn't have central electrcity then) and batteries in those days were in glass jars (battery jars). The kids would put the battery jar down near the tracks and would invariably knock the jars over spilling acid all over mothers carpet...not good if you're trying to sell electric trains to kids. So they invented this electric turbine attached to a water faucet....the more a kid would turn on the faucet, the faster the train would go.
Carlisle & Finch is a fascinating company with a long history and still family owned.

Lexie....try to buy search light carbons today...they are awfull hard to find. I don't think any boat stores stock them today, in fact, I'm not sure anyone still makes them. Does anyone on here know for sure?
Carlisle & Finch manufactures units with 5 rotating xenon searchlights all self contained exclusively for the "grand opening" market.

Another common item totally disappearing from the world. But they were in use for over 100 years. Kind of like the way the tungsten light bulb is going after being the solution for lighting over 100 years. And the steamboat...

When I worked in a print shop we used a carbon arc plate burner to make images on printing plates. We got them from a welding parts store.

I sold many a box of Union Carbide carbons to printers at the old family business, The Offset Plate Graining Co. That was 22 years ago, and I have no idea if carbons are still used to "burn plates" or not.