Request permission to post pics of Steam Boat Engines?

Took some pics of a real passenger steam boat engine over the weekend and I would like to share.

Old steam engines are often beautiful, so I'm in favor, but you'd better wait for the moderator to answer: this is RAILROAD.net, and there are limits to how off-topic you can go! ... If it was a diesel boat engine, it might be easier: many tugboats have diesel engines of the same types used in locomotives (as discussed in several ongoing strings on other Railroad.net forums), but marine and railroad steam engines were often quite different in technology: compound steam engines (several cylinders of different sizes) were more common in marine service, I think, than on locomotives other than Mallets.

I don't think this will be too much of a problem, so I say go ahead.

This kind of thing WOULD be a problem if it got posted in a string about locomotives... but since the title of the string includes "Steam Boat Engines" no one can say they got bothered by an off-topic post because I'll tell them to learn how to read the string title. It might even help trigger some good basic steam engine 101 type questions and discussion among our younger readers!

-Will Davis

The Captain said that one part was a "Steam Generator" what is that and what is the equilvent on a Railroad Steamengine?

"Steam generator" in railroad parlance ususally refers to a small boiler on a diesel or electric locomotive for providing steam heat to passenger cars. Maybe, just maybe, the Captain meant the boiler?

must see pictures

What specifically the term "steam generator" refers to is very variable and a function of the specific industry.

I work in a facility that uses "steam generators" as an integral part of our process. Our two steam generators, operating in parallel, produce 12 million pounds per hour of 99.99% quality saturated steam. That is sufficient to run a 1.2 million horsepower turbine. These steam generators run continuously (assuming no unplanned issues arise) for 18 months. Each of these steam generators is so big an entire diesel locomotive could probably fit inside the steel shell. The source of energy is high pressure high temperature subcooled water, driven by four six thousand horsepower pumps, that just passed through the core of a nuclear reactor.

This is not directly related to railroads but I thought somebody might find this interesting.

Allen Hazen wrote:...but marine and railroad steam engines were often quite different in technology: compound steam engines (several cylinders of different sizes) were more common in marine service, I think, than on locomotives other than Mallets.

Ah, Allen, from the view of US locos indeed, but watch the swiss, Austria, baviarian and some french locomotives.
Compound is very effective, because less steam is wasted and the efficiency of the engine increases.

So... let's look some pictures:

This is a badenia IVh, typical for the bavarian locomotive works of J.A. Maffai was the huge casted cylinder block in the front below the smoke box.
It hold inside the frame the two high pressure cylinders with the piston valves, and outside visible the low pressure cylinder with their own gear.. good visible is the compond tube set, which is in front decorated with the two aerodynamik cones at the valve cylinder front end.
The hp cylinders drive the first axle, which is a axle with a build in crankshaft, the second axle is driven by the lp cylinders. This is called 'drive arrangment by "de Glehn" ' - de Glehn was a british engineer who invented the compound steam on railrod locomotives and use the two axle drive - Borries on the other hand used only one axle for all drive moment, which often was critical, because the middle crankshaft axle and the outset of cranks on the same axle generate a very high load to all bearings and resulted in some critical problems...
Even the famous bavarian S3/6 - google for pictures please, I have none uploaded - is a four cylinder compound, which means: 2x2compound
This has nothing to do with Mallet.

Malett was a swiss engineer and invented the front low pressure driven leading boogie for steam engines and a special arrangment for steam pipes. So a Challenger or BigBoy is not Mallet, because it is four cylinder live steam, Mallet is four cylinder, but compound.
Anatole Mallet invented his locomotive by improving the designs of Fairly and Meyer. These designs had two boogies, often in compound, but had critical problems on higher speeds and didn't represent a smooth uniform run, which made them like little ponies. The run well, but shake and rattle like a young, curious horse. Also the sealing of the flexible steam pipes and tubes made those engines very difficult in maintainance and repairs.
Mallet used another way: He placed the boiler onto the last drive set, and only build a leading boogie. Thus the locomotive got now a well lead frame by the in frame mounted drive set, but could also handle narrow turns by the leading boogie. It also had a very well tracktive effort, because boogie and in frame mounted axles were driven by steam. Anatole mounted the low weight hp steam cylinder to the frame and the high weight lp cylinders to the boogie, giving the boogie more addhession due more weight in the boogie frame. He couldn't prevent the engines from slipping, and the main problem on those engines is: If the leading boogie started slipping, it draw that much steam from the connections that the in frame drive was disloaded and started slipping two... if this happenend on a gradient, and the engineer did not know how to handle those engines, it stalled and got to stop, difficult to pull on again.
But Anatole Mallet reduced seals and flexible steam pipes to half of the amount. Only something curious was the mount of the boiler on the frame, because boilers were fixed below the smokebox on the frame, in Mallet engines the boiler is fixed at the firebox on the frame and in front it has a sliding plate for the leading boggie, thus it's somewhat strange for people, to see the boiler of the engine somewhat bouncing around in the front, giving those engines a funny appearance on the run.

Back to marine engines and to topic:
watch: http://youtu.be/Z28BOAv3dy0

This is the paddle steamer "Hohentwiel" on lake Constance. It is the last large paddle steamer in Service in Germany. On river Rhine the Goethe was ripped off it's steam heart in 2009, not running on diesel.
All other steamers are smaller, like those on Elbe in Dresden City.
The engine was build by the swiss company Escher & Wyss in 1909 and it's still working. Wen the engine runs, one only can hear the engine exhaust into the condensor, but on a large trip, this noise fades, as the condensor get's better operating and the engine moves nearly noiseless.
The main difference is the valve gear. The engine has not full expansion on the longest set of the gear spindle, no, at middle, were the railroad engines have zero, the next position is full expansion. In Railroad the engineers has to go full spindle ahead or backwards to gain full expansion, in the ships engine it need only a quick turn over zero... and as more you move the spindle, as lower the expansion gets.
This is done, to have a quick response time during port manouevers were the engine has quickly respond from full ahead to full astern.
During such manouevers the engine is not shut by the throttle, usually the engine is only switched by the gear.. so full ahead and full astern is made simply by switching the gear, and the engine responds within an eyes blink.
The run of "Hohentwiel", I was there on a windly, slightly stormy day, is smooth and very silent. The noise of the paddle wheels isn't that loud or disturbing, simply like a sailboat cutting the waves a constant sound of whooshing water.
Completely missing is the typical hard beating of the engine we know from steam locomotives. The Engine exhaust it's steam into a small condensor in the back of the ships hull. The condensator or condensor is filled with feedwater to approximately half. Thru many flues lake water is pumped to cool this water by convection. Now the steam enters above the water and is cooled down. The condensator drain pump starts to drain the condensator on the engine motion thus a vacuum, nearly a full absolute vacuum is generated. This means an absolute pressure of nearly 0,2 mbar inside the condensator is maintained - which is so close to a pysical absolut vacuum that the entering steam is nearly over expanded and very quickly condensated into mist... the mist drains to the bottom to the remaining water level and is taken by the condensator drain pumps back into the feed water system.
In the past a worthington Pump was the fresh water pump, which take up water from a scoop pipe on the ships hull bottom, and delievered this water to a sand filter and oil remover. From there is was pumped by the main feedwater pump into the ecomiser and from there into the boiler. This fresh water was only used to maintain a constand water level in the hotwell after the condensator, from were the main feedpump - visible in the video as the small pump on the left side of the engine controls with the two copper buffers - puts this water into the ecomiser.
The "Hohentwiel" has two oil fuel fired boilers. These were modern "steam generators", which fit into the hull of the old boilers, giving the "Hohentwiel" a non-smoking boiler exhaust and a high boiler efficiency -thus the black smoke from the old coal fired boilers or improper fired oil boilers is a memory of the past. "Hohentwiel" does not smoke anymore
But still "Hohentwiel" has a two cylinder compound machine with 900 hp.... if you be there, visit the ship and join a ride, it's worth every second.

What more to talk about marine steam engines?

Does anybody have info on the Eire Lackawanna ferries most of which were steam. Then there were hugh fleets of railroad steam tugs in New York harbor up until at least 1960.