PA DENNY and BARBARA H at Lamb Landing

I rode down with the boat to Louisville Sunday and gave captains Frank & Frank a break by steering a couple of hours for them. The Denny handles well!

Here is one more night shot of the boats, taken from the bow of our wharfboat (the former steam sternwheel towboat LORETTA HOWARD / DOROTHY McBRIDE / D.W. WISHERD). Also 2 shots from when we departed. Barbara H 1st mate Aaron Richardson is among the 4 people standing atop the Loretta Howard wharfboat, in the 3rd photo.

Here are three more shots from the PA DENNY's trip down to Louisville Sunday. First photo shows the "GG" sternwheel houseboat and floating restaurant at Madison's cityfront (for many years this is where the former CARY-BIRD "Wharf Restaurant" was located, along with Llyod Poore's fleet, Bonnie Belle, etc). Second photo shows the LADY LOIS, which is tied-off on some mooring cells just below the restaurant. She is there to do core drilling around the Madison-Milton bridge piers to determine if a new bridge can use the existing piers. Third photo shows PA DENNY's wheel in action.

Barbara h

Nice shots of the DENNY, an the BARBARA H also looks great. That's an interesting shot of her 'crew' atop the wharfboat watching the DENNY's departure.

Three more shots. The DENNY upper decks while underway; the player calliope. They just installed a new and powerful air compressor to handle the calliope; The BELLE from the DENNY with JeffBoat in the background.

Capitalization

Can anyone explain why when I type the boat name in all caps in the title, it keeps showing up in lower case? I notice everyone else seems to have their postings correctly capitalized.... this is an example - I had typed CAPITALIZATION and look how it posted!

Thanks, Steve, for all the great photos! I was going to ask if the LADY LOIS was still working in the area, as I saw her, with a small barge, faced up to a pier of the Madison Bridge a week or so ago. I remember when she was used in the 1983-84 television series "THE MISSISSIPPI", starring Ralph Waite, of "The Walton's" fame. Much of the series, in which he played an attorney who lived on the towboat, was filmed at Natchez. One of the MISSISSIPPI nameboards used on the boat during that time adorns a wall of riverboat memorabilia at the Under-the-Hill Saloon.

Hey Steve wasnt the Lady Lois down around Vicksburg back in the late70's early 80's?

Ok I just read Keiths post and I was right. I thought I remembered her from Natchez and Vicksburg when I was a Deckhand and Mate on the MQ.

Mel,

Here's a photo of GRACO, which had been sold in 1982 and renamed JOHN W. STONE. She briefly wore the nameboards "MISSISSIPPI" in 1983 for filming of the TV series that Keith mentioned. In this photos she is at St. Louis for filming on 9-13-1983. Photo courtesy of Dan Owen's Boat Photo Museum.

ok Steve I think I have a photo of her down there. I'll dig it up and scan and post it.

What Cap'n Steve forgot to mention was the impromtu calliop concert at 8:30 P.M. Saturday night that probably had half the valley dwellers scratching their heads, as there was a nice echo off the Kentucky hills.

The Captains and crew on the Denny were most gracious hosts to my group of campers staying overnight on Steve's riverbank. Think I may have created some river rats by exposing them to three old sternwheelers in one weekend.

Thanks for posting the pics Steve, I'll add some more when I get my camera back next weekend.

Aaron

Thanks for the Great pix Steve ,.. I also happened to get some shots of the LADY LOIS and LAURA J at the Stern Wheel Festival at Marietta, Ohio 9-12-09.. And also had a front row seat on the LADY LOIS for the fire-works show that Saturday night ..
Pix are the LADY LOIS with the DETROITER and the LAURA J with the ANNA MARIE .

The GRACO was pushing sand flats in Evansville in the early '70's and was painted black and orange (honestly)- Halloween colors or Cinti Bengals stripes, however you wanted to see her. Hidden somewhere in the RHSY video archives, we have 8mm vids of the GRACO as seen from the DELTA QUEEN away-back-when. May have some 35mm slides, too. But where did Clifford file them .... ?

The P.A. DENNY has been at the Louisville wharf each evening as I cross the bridge, and earlier in the week she was the subject of a lengthy WAVE 3 television news feature when she took a school group out for an educational session. The DENNY looks so NARROW when you see her from up above!

Thats the reason we called her "The Skinny Denny"

More BH/PAD Pixs

Here's a few more pictures taken last weekend of the PA Denny and the The Barbara H at Lamb Landing.

The Denny returned to Lamb yesterday for another overnight rafted off to the Loretta Howard. We (Barbara H) happened to be out on a friends and family cruise up the Kentucky when the Denny arrived so our guest were treated to a cruise by of the Denny. The crew of the Denny fired the Frisbee calliope up much to the delight of our guests. There were goosebumps as the Barbara H saluted her guests that were not caused by the cold temps yesterday.

A few more

Here's a few more shots of the Denny, departing Lamb and heading to Louisville for a week of education cruises.

PA Denny upbound lay-over

Here a few photos from the Denny's lay-over at Lamb Landing this weekend, on their way back to Cincinnati.

First photo shows the Denny already at our landing as we had been up the Kentucky River with the Barbara H to lock 1 and back. We buzzed by our landing and headed back over to Carrollton. As Aaron mentioned, the Denny gave us a nice calliope concert as we passed. Second photo is from the top of the riverbank. Third image is another attempt at a night photo.

Here are 3 more photos. When we got back to our landing we took the Denny's crew on a short cruise. First photo shows Capt. Frank Straub at far left, with Capt. Frank Trainor (second from left) at the helm of Barbara H. The second and third photos are departure photos from this morning. It was almost 10 AM before they could leave due to heavy fog.

All wonderful pictures! I especially like the ones of the DENNY departing into the sun with the mist comin off the river. I do have a couple questions I hope you might have answers for. You said the calliope is now operable, but can it still be played from the keyboard or it strictly a tape player doing the work now? Also, where are they home-ported and what are they doing now-a-days?

Yes, Capt. Frank Trainor said he worked on the keyboard and found that some of the internal wood framing had dry-rotted, which shifted the key mechanism to where they would not work. So the keyboard was fixed a while back. He asked if any of us could play. We all said 'no', so he chose a tune and put it on the "player". The player looked just like a player piano mechanism that would read player piano rolls (perforated paper).

Their home port has been Cincinnati for the past 4 years. The non-profit ORSANCO (Ohio Valley water quality agency) has chartered the boat these past few years. What had been dining rooms in the PA DENNY have been converted to science labs where area students come on field trips to learn about water quality, biology, etc. They were hosting school field trips at Louisville last week.

The DENNY is headed back up to the Kanawha river this winter for its 5 year dry-docking, new paint, etc, and will return to Cincinnati.

Here are 2 more of the DENNY departing into the morning mist.

Thank you very much for the information and more of those morning mist pictures. I would like to try and get ahold of them to see if I could check the boat (and calliope of course) out next summer. They have a website I assume?

The web site for ORSANCO is www.orsanco.org. I only found 1 page with the DENNY on it: Education Foundation

If you can email me at [email protected], I'll send you Capt. Frank Trainor's email address.