(Words and photos by Greg Rourke) – The ability to transport goods is what opened up the middle portion of the United States. Before railroads, we had the Illinois and Michigan Canal, where horses pulled single barges from Chicago down to the Illinois River. This established Chicago as a transportation hub, which opened up the Midwest to the rest of the world. Today, the most efficient method of transporting a ton of bulk freight is by barge.
Even though barges are now pushed, the vessel doing the pushing is called a towboat. The number of barges are limited by the sizes of the locks and dams used on our waterways that control the depth of water, which allowed them to be navigable. On a recent day I headed down to the Illinois river to watch the action, which brings us to the M/V Sam M. Fleming.
The Fleming is a style of vessel that stays on the river. As low as the deck is it wouldn’t last 5 minutes on the high seas. It has a pilothouse that is raised and lowered hydraulically to allow it to pass under low bridges in Chicago. Power comes from EMD 16V-645 engines, which mean 16 cylinders, each at 645 cubic inches, which works out to 10,320 cubes. Oh, did we mention there are two of ’em? Each at about 3000 horsepower? At full throttle, they run at 900 RPM. With a bore of 9 1/16 and stroke of 10 inches you wouldn’t want to get it spinning very fast. When doing an overhaul, do they use a yardstick instead of a micrometer to measure the bore?
How I love America!
In England our canals were glorified ditches in which tiny narrow boats lumbered along pulled by horses that left steaming piles of manure in their wake that were hastily scooped up by keen gardeners.
No danger of that in the USA though – with monsters like this and canals wider than most rivers in the UK….
We outgrew those shortly after we kicked your country’s ass 🙂 The ones that remain are registered historical landmarks/nature trails.
What, no pictures of the engines? Perhaps some audio of the incredible noise below decks?
You can tell its in Hellinois…home of the gray skies.