JULIA BELLE SWAIN's Calliope

Could it be that the offset in the whistle's inlet is to accomodate a tuning piston, similar to the one in the Lunkenheimer Fire Alarm whistle patent? This would certainly explain it.

Travis Vasconcelos;6581 wrote: Bob,

The Thomas J Nichol whistles I am told came from a private collector. The builder of the fill-ins was a guy out of Evansville, IN (his name escapes me...however every steam whistle he ever made has the inlet off to one side instead of the traditional in the center). I have never had one of these whistles apart to see why this is done. I assume this is for some form of increased flow...but, don't quote me on it since I really don't know.

~Travis~

When I get some time I will make a few calls and see what I can find out about this situation. Seems to me someone told me the location was something based on ease of construction for this particular manufacturer. However, I don't understand how it would be easier to off set it rather than to centre it.

Richard,

Generally you will notice the Thomas J. Nichol instruments were mounted on wooden rails (skis, if you will) to facilitate drainage to the middle of the (shallow "U" shaped) manifold. This was a natural way to compensate for the condensation in the days before the steam trap. aboard the DELTA QUEEN the manifold was designed by Mike Neidorff who made the middle higher than either side and put traps on either end of the manifold. It is not only insulated and featires 2 traps...but, works quite well. Considering the line to the calliope is over 250' feet long across a roof witn one loop, it does quite well! He put alot of thought and work into that manifold. As a result, it is a great improvement over the original.

Mr. Peter Dykema from Sheppard Labratories (who assisted Cmdr. E.J. Quinby with the design and installation of the DELTA QUEEN calliope in 1959-60) was aboard the DELTA QUEEN in summer of 2005 and he, Capt. Mike Williams, and Mike Neidroff went out on the roof and he was amazed at the progress since his involvement in the calliope. He gave his personal seal of approval to what Mike has accomplished with it.

Yes, the baffle plate is exactly the same thing as the piston in a Lunkenheimer Mockingbird whistle. However, it is locked into a position rather than movable.

~Travis~

The young Travis

Not surprising that the little 10-year-old kid from Louisville hanging around on the DQ Sun Deck aft with a tape recorder cleverly concealed in a paper bag would one day become the calliope champ we all know as Travis. Sure enough one day many years later he sent me a cassette of several of my performances. And now he plays circles around all of us. As a mostly non-technical person, I've enjoyed reading this thread about calliope intricacies. Just please don't tell me the Aurora Effect (ooooh!) isn't caused by jello.

Thanks Travis,
Your explaination is what I kinda theorized. Bear with me...in HVAC Engineereze: The steam traps on the manifold feeding the whistles do their best to keep the manifold hot, free of liquid and full of steam. However, there is still an small amount of piping up to each motorized valve that is off to the side of the manifold yet upstream of each whistle that collects condensate when the calliope playing ends and the pipe and valve to each whistle cools. When the calliope is played again, when each note is played again for the first time, the whistle will spew water, though cool, this is "old" condensed steam, that has been sitting downstream of the hot manifold, in the nipple to the valves, the valve itself, and the short nipple to the whistle, since the last time the whistle was played. This is why it "rains" when the calliope is first started but as the condensate is pushed clear of the piping and valve by fresh steam (and everything warms, too) the raining very quickly stops. After the whistles are warmed and the perfessor is doing his or her thing, some of the whistle's steam still condenses on the inside of each whistle's bell, especially bells that have cooled a bit because they haven't been played much, which drips into the bucket of the whistle. When the note is played the steam blowing downward into the whistles bucket helps to re-evaporate any condensate that may be present in the bucket. If condensate is still present, the hole in the bucket allows gravity to take care of it. The hole is a poor man's steam trap so to speak. Do I get it?

It seems to me that during Calliope Capers the whistles will sometimes start raining again if people are cautious while playing. Steam, especially 20 psig stuff, cools pretty quickly on bare piping and valves.

Just curious, is there a reason the motorized valves are horizontal? Would they raise the whistle visually too high if vertical? If vertical a little more of the "raining" would be taken care of by the traps, I would think. Or is it a better way to try to keep the valve actuators cooler (electric valves don't typically like the temperature of steam)? I am amazed at how friggin" fast they open and close, expensive valves those? And all the piping upstream of the valve is insulated, right? But downstream up to the whistle is bare?

True story...I got called in to help an old, very large high school on steam heat, with traps that hadn't been serviced since before dirt and I swear every one of the 500 plus traps was leaking. Long story short, steam was being returned to a huge condensate pump with a tank that had a vent through the roof. The steam POURING out of that vent sounded a little like one of the bigger calliope whistles...

I believe it was so the stem would not be centered over the pipe opening, making it much easier to machine the whistle base.
S'
David D.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT1449211&id=GnlWAAAAEBAJ&dq=1449211&jtp=1#PPP1,M1
I have seen fully adjustable and tunable whistle designs such as this applied to air calliopes. Has anyone seen whistles like these on a steam calliope? It would sure facilitate in their tuning, although by using steam as the medium for blowing, there will always be some variation in frequency as the ratio of air/steam in the bell is always in transition. The speed of sound in steam is 1330 feet/second as opposed to only 1130 feet/second in air.

In most calliope whistles only the cutup (the height of the bell over the bowl) is adjustable for changes in operating pressure. You simply adjust the height to keep the whistle fom overblowing. Doubling the cutup allows the whistle to operate at four times the pressure without overblowing. The whistle in this patent also has an adjustable top, similar to the plunger in a closed organ pipe, to fine tune its frequency.

Bruno,

You have a better fix on the situation than I explained! The reasoning for the horizontal valves (Magnatrol) is the type of operation. They are nothing more than a magnet with a core of wire wrapped around them. When the current flows they pull a pin vertically out of the valve body allowing steam to flow by. When the electricity is stopped, the pin (with the aid of a spring) returns to its position blocking the flow of steam.

There are many manufacturers who make verticle valves (ASCO, Gould..etc)....but so far none of them impress me the way the Magnatrols do. In the 4 years I have been on the DQ I have never seen them have to totally replace ONE of them. On the MQ we replaced about 5 a year (ASCO Verticle valves). On the BELLE we replaced ONE in my 14 years of being there...we rebuilt about 4 of them...but replaced ONE!

On a calliope the selonoid pin-style valve works best. Diaphragm valves (on the lower end of the MQ and AQ) are slower and less reliable. The diaphragm -style of valve has many parts whice are rather delicate.

Needless to say, despite the condensation problems inherent to them, I perfer reliability. On a hot July day there is nothing worse than having to change out a valve on the calliope up there on the unforgiving tarpaper roof of a steamboat. I should imagine the same can be said of the metal roof of modern boats.

~Travis~

Richard,

This patent is Norman Bakers (The developer of the Tangley Calliaphone). He developed the most popular version of the calliope known to man. His was a light weight instrument which operated on 3/4psig of air. Usually supplied by a roots-type blower and weighing in at about 400bs with a pneumatic player unit in it.

This wouldn't work on steam with the connections all soldered together. About 5 seconds of steam and this thing would become multiple pieces of schrappnel flying about all over the place.

However, it is the closest thing to a church pipe organ out there!

~Travis~

I've seen small scale (skinny) whistles similar to this design on Tangley Calliaphones. These are of limited output and can be fully blown by mouth. The much stouter whistle in the Baker patent is of a large scale of much higher output. I have seen them used as exhaust whistles on antique fire trucks. Possibly Baker was a little like Robert Hope-Jones, who not only invented the Diaphone as a pedal stop for theatre pipe organs, but also for use as a foghorn. Both inventions of the same name are attributed to him.

Were you also aware that high output can be achieved in suitably designed whistles at pressures as low as 15 PSI? A member of my group designed a 3 bell chime of conventional design which uses less than 30 PSI and is audible above nearby freeway noise from a neighbor from a distance of 2 miles.

I have two US Patents (4429656 & 4686928) on two new classes of whistles that exceed the output of current disaster warning sirens and use a mere 15 PSI at a high flow rate. I blew my 20" diameter prototype directly from a 150 HP Roots blower delivering 15 PSI at 1800 CFM. I achieved a 70 dB radius of 13,200 feet in 1982 tests at the Cincinnati/Northern KY International Airport. The prototype is not even my loudest whistle. The loudest warning sirens today produce a 70 dB radius of under 10,000 feet.

Travis Vasconcelos;6670 wrote: Richard,

This patent is Norman Bakers (The developer of the Tangley Calliaphone). He developed the most popular version of the calliope known to man. His was a light weight instrument which operated on 3/4psig of air. Usually supplied by a roots-type blower and weighing in at about 400bs with a pneumatic player unit in it.

This wouldn't work on steam with the connections all soldered together. About 5 seconds of steam and this thing would become multiple pieces of schrappnel flying about all over the place.

However, it is the closest thing to a church pipe organ out there!

~Travis~

http://www.youtube.com/acoustics101
Should anyone be curious as to how high output can be achieved at such a low pressure (~15 PSI) in a whistle, click on the video of my toroidal whistle prototype test. The pressure provided by the Roots blower was only 15 PSI, yet I achieved an output of 125 dB at 100 feet (155 dB at 1 meter). You could get no closer to it than about 30 feet on axis even with ear protection! You will not find this kind of output from any conventional high pressure whistle design.

Those living in the Greater Cincinnati area in 1982 may recognize the sound of my July tests, as the tests were audible over a wide area. A friend in Delhi heard it from his house. So did my aunt in Ft. Mitchell.

There are lots of other whistles, calliopes and pipe organs to be found along with it. I also moderate a video group dedicated to steam and air whistles. Clicking "Groups" will take you there.

The Belle of Louisville's calliope during the 1970's had whistles with tuning discs inside the bell. They were threaded to fit the stem. To tune a whistle one had to remove the bell, loosen a lock nut, try to guestimate how many turns to try, tighten the locknut and reassemble the bell on the stem, then test for pitch. It did not work, for as the whistles warmed up the pitch changed

Capt. Bates,

Now you know why I worked so hard to get the Morecraft Manufacturing whistles we have on there now. The Ernest J. Wilde whistles at least gave her a steam calliope...and I can't complain one minute about it for it was the first I ever played.

The tuning baffles were problematic at best! On time I took all of them out in the key of "C" and it played in "G#" below! I really toyed with removing all of them and didn't. Since so many of them were damaged by 1985 I started on the replacement with the Thomas J. Nichol style of whistle David Morecraft was buliding up there in Peru, IN. Little did I know what I was getting myself into...that association has lead to some of the most exciting calliope escapades of my life!

And now this thread. One I never thought would have had this much interest.

By the way, there is only one of thise Wilde calliopes still out there and it is on the ALASKA QUEEN up in Ketchican, AK. At least they say they installed the calliope they got from Mrs. Wilmunder when they bought the boat. And it was the last Wilde in captivity to my knowledge. The other two (The CHAPERONE and the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE) are gone. I almost forgot, there is one (27 note) on the LORENA (where ever she ended up).

~Travis~

Jazzou,

Wow, was I ever blessed to have been raised in Louisville, KY where steamboats still call on a regular basis! Here is a picture of the early days of the MQ with a very young yours truly at the console.

Proof a kid can live his dream!

Thank you for the wonderful compliments...from someone renown as yourself they are high praise indeed!

~Travis~

Travis, doesn't Capt. Chengery still have a Wilde calliope, or am I mistaken about its manufacture?

A Picture Almost 50 Yrs.Old

Here's a picture of Doc Hawley playing the AVALON's calliope taken about 1960. As you can see there is no exhaust steam coming from the bottom of these whistles.

Bob,

Capt. Gabe's calliope is the original Thomas J. Nichol from the IDLEWILD/AVALON. I don't know of him having a Wilde-built instrument. If memory serves me correctly, he bought it from Ernest Wilde. But, don't quote me on that one.

~Travis~

Jim,

The picture is not there.

However, there is a reason for this. The IDLEWILD/AVALON calliope had manual verticle mounted valves, therefore not nearly as much propensity for condensation problems. In so many ways, the old way IS better.

Modern day Calliopists could never get by with manual valved (tracker, for the Pipe Organ enthusiasts out there) calliopes. They'd never be played, for all the work involved!

The horizontal valve is the reason for the drilled ports to allow the condensation to fall out of the elbow and not emit from the whistle. condensation builds up in the nipple imediately before the valve in this application. Being lower on the manifold, they also have a propensity to suck the condensate from the bottom of the manifold. The verticle valve does not have either of these problems to the degree of the horizontal valve.

Hope this clears that up.

~Travis~

Doc on AVALON calliope

I don't know what Jim's picture showed, but here are 3 of Doc playing the AVALON's calliope. Looks like some steam coming down in just one of the shots.

Judy,

Actually, there is down draft steam in two ot them. The GoldCrest Record sleve picture has it in the far left/bottom of the picture and the late 50's pic with "Doc" wearing the jacket has a little in the center of the manifold. That calliope does ahve very small ports drilled into the bases of the whistles (as did all Thomas J. Nichol instruments). These did not emit as much as the modern calliopes of today do, as they were smaller and generally with the verticle valve mounting had less condensate to bother with.

By the way....WONDERFUL pictures there! Keep the cally pics coming!

Perhaps I need to start calliopes.org to keep this thread going????? He, he, he!

~Travis~

Bob,

Did you ever think this thread would elicit this many responses?

~Travis~

I remember an old building on Race Street near Garfield Place in Cincinnati during the 1970s-1980s known as A.E. Wilde & Co. that had some steam whistles on display. I used to stop by there occasionally to look at them. Would this have been Ernest Wilde's business?

Travis Vasconcelos;6682 wrote: Bob,

Capt. Gabe's calliope is the original Thomas J. Nichol from the IDLEWILD/AVALON. I don't know of him having a Wilde-built instrument. If memory serves me correctly, he bought it from Ernest Wilde. But, don't quote me on that one.

~Travis~

If there was a way to apply a large flow of compressed air through a 1.5" or larger line at the same regulated pressure as the steam to the manifold during tuning, it would be easier for tuning purposes, as the pitches would remain relatively stable during the entire tuning process. You would just tune the whistles about 3 semitones lower than normal to compensate for the difference in the speed of sound in air (1130 feet/second) vs the speed of sound in steam (1330 feet/second). When putting it back on steam, everything would fall into place.

Alan Bates;6675 wrote: The Belle of Louisville's calliope during the 1970's had whistles with tuning discs inside the bell. They were threaded to fit the stem. To tune a whistle one had to remove the bell, loosen a lock nut, try to guestimate how many turns to try, tighten the locknut and reassemble the bell on the stem, then test for pitch. It did not work, for as the whistles warmed up the pitch changed

Judy...your pictures are much, much better than mine, so I won't bother to resend the picture I had......uhm, these computers can be uppity at times.

Nah, I'd like to see it anyway - do you use Picasa to send pix? Franz walked me through it, so if I can do it, anyone can.