So we went down to the Greenup Locks and Dam to look around. The locks themselves are behind a security fence, but there is a place where you can go down by the river and get close to boats entering and leaving the locks. We had seen a Dravo 3200 or "Steel" boat while we were in Greenup, so we waited for it come come by. Five minutes later, we did. It was the James E. Anderson.
It looks like someone is doing some painting on the Anderson.
One thing about this time at Greenup that is a bit ironic, perhaps. In my post yesterday, I linked to an article about lane closures on the Ohio River bridge at Cairo. The article mentioned that the bridge is used by farm machinery. I commented that I hadn't seen anything like that on this part of the river.
Wouldn't you know that as we watched the James E. Anderson approach the locks, I saw a combine or something like it crossing the bridge over the Greenup dam. How 'bout that.
5 comments:
Correct me if I'm wrong,I think the "Steel" series boats ranged from 6000 hp down to 4320 hp. There were 12 of them.None of them were the 3200 series
I can't answer that for sure because I know of no authoritative document that explains the difference between a Steel boat and a 3200, if they are indeed different. If someone can refer me to such a book, I would love to acquire a copy somehow. Or if they can refer me to an old Waterways Journal that explains the difference, I will go to a library and look it up. I've seen them used almost interchangably, but when I call them pre-Vikings for lack of a better name, I get it from readers.
Assuming there is a difference, when we saw the Anderson from a distance, there was no way we could have told the difference. Maybe I'll just refer to these things as pre-Vikings anyway, as I can't find a definitive answer.
So if the Anderson is the former Steel Express, I suppose it's a Steel boat instead of a 3200, whatever a 3200 is.
An example of a 3200 series would be the former Franklin Pierce,they were 3200 hp,I believe Island Creek Coal also had a couple of them also,built in the early 60's by Dravo.
I guess I could do it the hard way. Check shipbuildinghistory.com for boats built by Dravo in a certain time period. Get out my 1986 Inland Rive Record (before name changes and repowering), Build a database of names, dates, length, width, horsepower, etc. Get modern data on the same boats. Do that in Excel, then import it into Access and run some queries It would make for an interesting week.
Thats all muddy water to me,I was just useing my 41 years of working on the rivers to explain something.They are all just names some folks use,nothing official.Just like the St.Louis ship ORC boats were "turtle backs".I never did hear Capt.Chick Lucas use that term,and when I went up to clean the pilot house windows each morning if I had called the new ORCO a turtle-back,I would have been corrected!!!! towboat style.
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