My Very Own Irish Paddle Coal Fired Boiler Steamer!

In my last ‘blog’ I talked about the Belfast & County Down Railway who also operated a series of coal fired paddle steamers along Belfast Lough between Belfast and the seaside town of Bangor, County Down.

The most famous of these paddle steamers was the Palmerston, later re-named the PS Bangor Castle. She was built in 1864 in Glasgow by T Wingate & Co in 1864 and was eventually scrapped in 1899. This paddle steamer was generally a simple twin cylinder diagonal paddle design, with a gross weight of 256 tonnes, a length of around 58 metres and a width of around 7 metres. This Belfast to Bangor paddle steamer service finally ended in 1915 – so how come I, as a small boy aged five, had my first ‘sailing’ adventure on board such a vessel? No, the answer is not that I am now 98 years of age!

The answer is that the last of these coal fired paddle steamers was restored and brought back into service for a couple of years during special summer sailing occasions around 1950. I went on board with my mum, dad and older brother, dressed in my Sunday best clothes and there were three things I remember most vividly about that steamer trip. Firstly they had a PA system which played that famous Irish tenor, Joseph Lock’s music and I especially remember one of his favourite songs ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ – listen to it on this U-Tube link

The second thing I remember, which amazed me at the time, was that I could have an ice cream on board – within my five year old ‘world’ I found this quite exciting. Perhaps for that reason, the ice cream was the best I ever tasted! Ice cream has never again tasted so good until I recently started to make different ice creams at home from the variety of recipes I found on a fabulous ice cream recipes web site.

My third recollection whilst on board was watching the huge paddles churning through the water protected on top by a fancy carved white wooden frame. As I watched these paddles I saw that on occasions they picked up seaweed and other debris from the water and a member of crew was stationed at each of the twin paddles to warn the captain should any of the debris look like blocking the paddle.

I think about these paddle wheels when at Primasonics we are requested to find a solution to vibration problems on ID Fans caused by a build up of particulate on the impeller blades. This can be a very expensive problem as the build causes the unbalance sensor to engage thus triggering the immediate shutdown of a significant section of the plant. By installing the correct model of Primasonics Acoustic Cleaner on the fan casing, the particulate build up is either eliminated or certainly greatly reduced thus removing the necessity for any unscheduled shutdowns.

This next link provides details of one of our many case studies, this particular one involving a FLS Type HAF 290 fan on a cement company’s clinker plant fan.

The innocence of youth and the treat of great tasting ice cream – what a combination!