Old Tugboats Never Die

But they do sink! Sadly these two boats sank in a slip along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

They sat on the bottom for a while. Then a salvage crew hoisted them onto the pier using a massive floating crane. The Carol Wales is what’s known as a “railroad tug.” She was built by one of the railroads, probably in the 1930’s or 1940’s. The railroads used to have large marine departments. Railcars were loaded onto barges known as “car floats.” These car floats typically had three sets of tracks onto which the railcars where rolled and secured. Then the barges were towed across rivers and to a special type of bridge onto which the railcars could be unloaded and sent on their way. The Big Boy was a “navy hull,” meaning that it was built during World War II under a Defense Plant Contract. These tugs are sometimes referred to as DPC hulls.

That gash in the wheelhouse above was probably caused by one the cables strung under the tug by the salvage crew. It’s a shame for these old boats. They’re big and clumsy compared to their modern counterparts. However, they have proud lines and a long history. Trouble is, they’re obsolete.

They’re both single screw, having only one main engine and one propeller. Many ship owners want twin screw boats helping their vessels to the dock simply for the sake of reliability. This is especially true in the case of oil tankers.

That propeller on the left is about seven feet in diameter, which means the Carol Wales probably had an engine in the 1700 horsepower class. I worked with plenty of single screw boats and never had a problem. A good engineer and crew keeps things in reliable condition. And if you have an anchor, you drop the hook, fix what broke, and get on with the job. If not, well, chances are you’ll be in for plenty of misery that happens slowly enough that you can see it coming.

I’m glad to have taken these photographs. Both of these boats will be cut up for scrap iron in the next couple of weeks. Two more for the boneyard and a piece of history gone from the planet.

Published in: on September 6, 2008 at 11:24 am  Comments (4)  
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All That Junk

Did you ever wonder what happens to all that junk? Your old car, broken appliances, maybe an ancient lawn mower? Well here’s what happens to the vast majority of it. Actually this is Phase 2. Phase 1 is the local scrap metal hauler, be it the trash collector or another individual, picks it up from you or your recycling center or some such place. Then it travels to a place where it ends up looking like this:

You can see flattened cars in the pile as well as a jumble of other things. From this pile, the material is fed into what is known as a “shredder.” This machine is technically a hammer mill. Just imagine a long shaft with huge hammers hanging from it. Now spin that shaft with a 2,000 horsepower electric motor. Whatever those hammers strike is shattered into little pieces. Below is a photo of your junk being fed into the machine.

Here’s another one. This time the claw of the machine is beside the throat of the shredder.

Notice the steam coming off the shredder. Plenty of heat is generated by those hammers pulverizing all that material. Water is sprayed in to keep things cool. The pieces fall onto a conveyor belt system. These belts pass through various sorting devices including magnets to separate the ferrous (iron) from the non-ferrous (copper, aluminum, etc.). That system looks like this:

Ultimately some of the material is separated by hand. At the end of the line, there are individual piles of ferrous scrap, non-ferrous, and “fluff.” Fluff is all the plastic, foam rubber, paper, and miscellaneous garbage that is not metallic. Believe it or not, fluff has many uses including landfill cover and fuel stock. This pile is of the ferrous scrap or “frag” as it is called.

In Phase 3, this will be sent to a steel mill and converted into new steel. Scrap iron is the most recycled commodity in the United States. Every year, millions of tons of junk are converted into new products. There is also a massive export market for this and the non-ferrous scrap.

So what’s this got to do with a guy who writes books and travels? Well, a friend of mine owns the plant shown above. He’s quite the entrepreneur. It’s people like him and the guys who work in scrap yards that sometimes form the basis of the characters in my books. Besides, there’s never a dull moment around this kind of action. It sure beats the office.

Published in: on June 18, 2008 at 7:42 pm  Leave a Comment  
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