MQ engine room

Actually, I have some decent ones from my venture over there back in January 2008. It's wasn't like most steamboat engine rooms. It was very clustered with low ceilings. Another thing was the cylinders were box-shaped and not cylinders like on the BELLE or NATCHEZ. Here are the best ones I could find from my collection, but I'm sure some people on here have better ones.

Jon of the 4 steamboat engine rooms I have been in the MQs was the least attractive, most cluttered, and most uncomfortable. I spent alot of time in that wheel too in my 2 years on deck and that part I enjoyed. I will dig around and see if I actually have any pics but I kinda doubt it.

MQ engine room

Thanks for posting those Matt. I don't think you and Jonathan realize how rare those are. As you mentioned, the ceilings are very low so passengers were never allowed to visit as on the other two Queens. So any pix out there will be from crew members, and as Mel pointed out, it was not a very nice working place - yet another Why? about aspects of the MQ's design and construction. One of the things I always noticed from outside: she is the only sternwheeler I've seen which has a paddlewheel so far from the stern of the boat. It looks as if the brown metal was an addition to the boat and then the wheel was attached to that...
Here's a picture taken on that cold Christmas trip in 1983 which I think emphasizes the distance between the boat and the paddlewheel:

Jon,

One of the problems with the MQ engine room was she wasn't designed to have steam machinery. It was a later decision to make her steam, hence the low ceiling heights. She was supposed to have some kind of turbine propulsion system that never materialized. When this proved too costly, believe it or not, steam was a pretty good alternative. She was to have the engines from the steam towboat JASON, which at the time was a floating entertainment hall called THUNDERBIRD up on the Allegheny River. Somehow, the company either did not pay for the engines or contract them properly and they ended up being scrapped before DQSCo. got around to getting them. They had to contract with Pine Tree Engineering up in Maine to have them created off the original blueprints for the JASON's engines. Those blueprints were left on-board the MQ when we laid her up in 2006...I am sure they are in someones collection now and will never find their way to a museum like they should.

My point here being...the lack of pictures is because of the inaccessability to the engine room itself. In the last 10 years there was a "Engine Room Viewing Area" on the stbd side aft on the Main Deck. It featured a glass window with a view of the stern of the stb'd cylinders only. It was a very small view...so you really didn't get an idea of what was really going on . One of the Chiefs did a great job with a wall panel that explained what was going on behind the scenes. He has a panel with a picteograph of the very basic layout of the engine room with numbers displayed on the important parts. The numbers were repeated on the visible parts of the engines so passengers could get an idea of what they were seeing.

The cylinders are much like those of the NATCHEZ, tandem compound condensing. They have a different valve gear called Marietta Cut off. They look very similar to the NATCHEZ, too...except they are cased in boxes to retain heat for efficiency. This was common in the late days of steam as Engineers learned more and more about the efficiencies of trapping BTU's and the reuse of the heat energy.

Somewhere I have a small casche of pictures of the "Engine Room Viewing Area" I took for reference. They aren't great...but, I will try and locate them and pass them on.

I have to admit, I never really was in her engine room much as an employee. I regret this alot...'cause I used to hang out alot more on the DQ, AQ, and BoL in the engine room. The MQ's was so cramped, I just walked by it. Her engine room was never a welcoming place to be...hot, humid, clausterphobic is a good word!

In 1978 Bill and Mary Bill Bauer took me onboard the MQ and Bill knew everyone on the boat....we toured her from bow to stern. I was everywhere, the boiler room, engine room, bow thruster room, fantails....I mean everywhere. Of course, being a 13 year old I never thought I wouldn't have another chance to photograph it...so I didn't. Lesson learned...always have a camera ready...you never know if this is your last chance to catch something wonderful...like the last true steamboat's engine room.

Little known fact about the MQ...she was the last true steamboat in the US. She was the last steamboat to use her steam to produce all on-board hotel electricity. She was a true steamboat in that steam was used for everything. The DQ, AQ, BoL, NATCHEZ, and JBS all use diesel generators for the hotel load. The BELLE OF LOUISVILLE was the last to use steam for turbines on a regular basis, stopping this tradition in 1992 with the addition of a main diesel generator. The DQ was converted to diesel generators in 1978 I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong as I suspect I am here) . The JBS and NATCHEZ came out as new with diesel generators.

So there you have it, my treatise on the MQ engine room...yet still no pictures as you requested!

Travis

Travis,
That's interesting about the box-like structures around the cylinders. Would have looked a lot nicer without them, but if efficiency is what they were going for, then looks would have been last on the list. And that's also interesting about her using steam to make her electricity. Until the MINNE was lengthened in 1999, she also used steam to make her electricity and run her pumps. The boiler could make more than enough for the engines, and since there wasn't a lot of space, we also used it for those purposes. There's video of all that stuff in operation that I saw over break. Maybe I can dig it up again and put it on Youtube. Also, we were going through our warehouse recently and found all the old equipment from the 'old' MINNE. I wanted to get pictures of it, but I ran out of time. Oh well, something for me to do over spring break!

MQ power

Travis, when in the design/building process did the power get switched from turbine to steam? Too bad Kenny Howe doesn't post - wasn't he part of the Jeffboat crew that built the MQ?

Travis.....in June '67 the DQ was in Pittsburgh and the people who owned the ex-JASON offered her engines to the Greene Line for scrap prices. There was a big conflab between Betty Blake, Bill Muster and Fred Way about taking the engines. Fred Way was the one who talked them out of it saying there never had been a sucessful stern wheel boat over 300 ft. long. It had already been decided that the replacement boat for the DQ (at that time the DQ was doomed by SOLAS and would to have to be replaced) was going to be much larger. Betty and Muster declined the engine offer and the engines were scrapped a couple of months later.

IF one were to send lots (squared) of $$ on the MQ, would it be possible to improve the height of the engine room? Is the engine room entirely under that "awning" in the rear? (never did like the looks of that, even when she was new-figured it was done to give the bar a view of the wheel, yet keep the windows far enough away to protect them from flying stuff off the wheel.). The engine room improvement might even give her a more traditional-looking superstructure.
S'
David D.

Flying bucketboards

The wheel wasn't far enough from the Paddlewheel Bar windows at least once, when broken pieces of bucketboard came a-flying...

Judy I remember more than once logs that came through the paddlewheel bar windows. I also remember losing a quarter or third of the wheel to drift and spending entire days in Natchez and Vicksburg replacing wheelarms and bucketboards. When I started as a deckhand the deck crew was responsible for the wheel and later in the early 80's Engineering took over.

MISS-Q

Fred Way coined that term for the MQ and Betty Blake just hated it, but if you think of that boat's history, she certainly had more miscues than most boats. I always started with the 3 maiden voyages, but I guess now you could go back to the design stages regarding the change in power as the first problem. Mel, by the time you started working on her, had they gotten the paddlewheel bucketboard alignment finally figured out?

The Natchez had diesel generators from the start. There is a lurid tale about a used destroyer's generators, but they were never installed.

Everything on the Mississippi Queen was too tight, too low, too confining. I am not a tall man. Standing, flat-footed on the main deck, I could place my hand, again flat, on the ceiling. All of the hallways were too narrow and some were so convoluted a person could lose his sense of direction. The spiral stairways in the bar were actually illegal. The only way to correct any of these would be to scrap the entire cabin and start over.

The Mississippi Queen was far and away the least safe of the Queen boats. If they had had a fire people would have died by the hundreds in those cramped, narrow passages.

MQ Yo-Yo's

The MQ and the PA DENNY both came out at about the same time; it so happened that the DQSC was offering a set of Yo-Yo’s, one with the DELTA QUEEN and the other with the MISSISSIPPI QUEEN names imprinted on both faces of the toy. And with all the trouble the larger boat was experiencing, to poke fun at the "MISS-Q", we purchased, and sold exclusively, the MQ Yo-Yo in the DENNY's gift shop.

Before each cruise, the following was included in the pre-departure announcement:
“Folks, visit our gift shop and get your very own souvenir Mississippi Queen Yo-Yo named for the biggest Yo-Yo of all times, the Steamer MISSISSIPPI QUEEN!”

Sales soared and the DENNY became the biggest purveyor of MQ Yo-Yo’s much to the delight of the Cincinnati steamboat office, for the extra sales caused them to double their orders for the delightful MQ spinning novelty. Purchases remained brisk until the namesake steamboat straightened out its troubles and the uniqueness subsided.

However, Sam, the joke was that the MISSISSIPPI QUEEN yo-yo went down but didn't come back up!

MQ Intro

I'll tag on to Capt. Bates' message as I can see no better entry to this thread.
My introduction to the M.Q. was at the Jeffboat Yards. Pat Wingerter took Eng. "Rattlesnake" Jim Brants (sp) and myself over when the D.Q. was at L-ville.
By the time we got to the E/R I already had my doubts and upon entering the E/R I was convinced this was a very different "animal" than the D.Q. Having managed to bump my head twice on the Throttle Station, I was also quickly convinced that I should remain on the D.Q., allowing others the "honor" of bringing out the company's crown jewel. Just the amount of clean up needed was enough to scare me off.
On the way out we passed the Stbd. entrance to the Fire Room. I remember looking down into the gloom and seeing a wild looking man in waders using a suction hose to suck floating black oil off of about 4 feet of water. Weeks later I learned that this man was Ray Leach, Jr. Eng. for the first several years the boat ran. While I had heard that the M.Q. was to have both a Sauna and swimming pool, I did not realize they were to be combined and available to the fire room crew.
Upon our return to the sanctuary of the D.Q., Jim started to grumble, more than usual, about the things wrong with the boat. I wrote out a list of appox. 20 item he said would need attention before the boat would operate correctly. Jim, being only a licensed 2nd Eng. and long time C.o E. engineer, was passed off as just wanting "to rain " on the parade. I wish I had kept his list. Several millon $$$$$ later, the boat began to operate in a usable manner. Most of the changes came from items Jim had noted.
Some months later, in to be rehired, I was offered a fireman's position on the M.Q.
There is not time, nor do I write well enough, to cover all of those adventures in one sitting.
More, when my nerves settle and I find out whose names I need to change to protect the guilty.

Judy it was a few more years and variations before they did settle on the best set up back there. And ya'll say what you want about the MQ but as much trouble and as awkward and ugly as she was she was still a steamboat and I'd be much happier if she were still running out there.

Actually Alan we did have a fire once that was a bit scarey because it was in a storeoom on the fwrd main deck. It was 1977 and I was a watchman and John Hayes and Dick Weber were the mates I smelled smoke and felt a door it was hot so I called the pilot house for the mate it was about 530 in the morning and we had a bunch of drunk shriners on that cruise that refused to evacuate their rooms. I remember John Hayes donning the SCBA and going in and charging a hose and putting it out. I thought the same thing you did at that time. It could have been disasterous.

A lot of the MQ's problems were rooted in Overseas Airlines, who had greater respect for Cunard theorists than for working engineers. Kenny Howe told me this story and I believe it:

Somehow Kenny found an engineer's log that gave the valve settings. When the time came, he was told to not use them. Instead some college professor in West Virginia was to calculate them. The valves were set up as the professor dictated. By golly, and wouldn't you believe it, they didn't work!

They did this sort of thing again and again - taking the advice of high-powered theorists over that of practicing rivermen.

I joined a group (I think it was MOR) that viewed the boat while under construction, but almost finished. Our guide was Bob Greene. When we reached the paddlewheel I asked, "Why is all that junk in the wheel?" Greene got miffed. They had "X" bracing all around inside, the buckets were twice too wide and there was practically no clearance between that steel sidewalk aft of them. Sure enough, they had to get rid of a lot of bucket planks and the "X" bracing was eventually removed.

Architects and engineers eventually learn humility. They listen when some guy in muddy boots and a scarred hard-hat asks, "Mr. Architect, is this REALLY what you want us to do?" That pick-and-shovel man has seen something and prudent professionals listen to him. It is like an alarm siren to smart people.

Travis Vasconcelos;20095 wrote: Jon,

Little known fact about the MQ...she was the last true steamboat in the US. She was the last steamboat to use her steam to produce all on-board hotel electricity.

Travis

Everyone always forgets about the Chautauqua Belle! haha our first season we ran we were running off our Troy-Skinner steam generator. We still use it occasionally but being non-condensing it just became too costly; before we purchase the Belle, from 1976 up until 2003 that is ALL they ran for power.

Funny you mention ONA Alan I ran across the official ONA DQSC flag not long ago. I remember one time seeing it laying in the pile of flags we put up every morning and knowing we no longer had a connection with ONA it found a way home with me rather than the dumpster. I'm glad about a few things I saved from the boats and that was one of them.

Mat,
It's ok. People forget about us lake steamers all the time 🙂 I remember you telling us (or maybe me) about using steam for the generators a while back

Jon,

sorry for the delay; I'm a bit slow in reading and writing on the message board right now ...

Here are a few pictures from summer 2006; the pictures mainly are from the starboard side engine.

Franz

and some more pictures from the Mississippi Queen engine room.