Delta Queen!

The picture above is the beautiful city of Chattanooga.  We have seen many fascinating sites in Chattanooga and we will try and show you all of them.  First one to talk about is the Delta Queen!  You can see the Queen in the bottom center of the picture.  For those that boat on the Mississippi, you are familiar with the Queens - the American (still on the river), the Mississippi (being scrapped in China) and the Delta.  The Delta also has a sister ship called the Delta King (shown below which is currently in Sacramento, CA being used as a hotel) both built at the same time.  The Delta Queen is being used as a hotel in Chattanooga.  All are hoping to get approval from the federal government to get her back on the river.

She is a beauty and we were so fortunate that when we went on her to look around, a nice young man by the name of Ed, who has made himself an authority on the Queen, gave us a full tour.  He told us it cost $750K to build the Titanic and $1M to build the Queen!

This is the grand staircase of the Queen and the plaque showing her engine builder.

The ship is being well maintained as you can tell from this interior shot.

Here is the Captain in the pilot house.  The pilot house has all the original controls in working order.

Here is the calliope that still works.  And the paddle wheel still turns.

The Delta Queen has recently been purchased by an individual who has placed other large steam powered equipment (trains and large machinery) back into operation. The estimated time frame to get her back cruising is three years.

Ed showed us some of the original carpenter tools that were used to build her, and a ring binder of original photos of the construction. It was fascinating to look at these. We never thought we’d really get to see all of her, but Ed made sure we got to go where we wanted.

Of course - Ken has to see the engine room. Or I guess you would say “rooms”.  Above is one of the two engines. They are actually quite small.

Note the “drive shaft” going out the rear. The shaft does not turn, it pushes and pulls.

This shows the “eccentric” that the engine pushes and pulls to turn the paddle wheel.

There are two boilers. One high pressure (175 lbs. / sq. in.) and one low pressure (75 lbs. / sq. in.)

Each boiler serves one engine. Depending on fuel, speed, and distance run, they will alternate boilers and engines. The boilers occupy two decks. They are approx. 20’ high.

The boilers are fired with low grade crude diesel. When tuning a diesel boiler like this, the engineer looks at the smoke. The two square boxes are “periscopes” which look up each smoke stack so the engineer can see the smoke.

Ed told us the Chief Engineer has taken a few weeks off to be with his family. He is 79 years old.

There is no one else in line to take his place. This is not a ship where just anyone can walk in and “turn the key”.  Hopefully, a new engineer will be trained in soon. 

We plan to have dinner on the Queen prior to leaving Chattanooga.

We could go on for days with pics we took of the Queen, but we haven’t even begun on our other adventures here at Ruby Falls, The Incline, Rock City, the Aquariums, the I-Max, and the Chattanooga Choo-Choo!

Stay Tuned

Pat & Ken