Tow #3 at Newburgh Lock, Aug 2014

After I took my last pictures of tow #1, I headed back to the overview park and then to the visitor 's center. I already had a picture of this tow. It was in the background when I took a picture of tow #2 waiting its turn while the towboat of tow #1 was at marker 1100. I repeat the tow #2 picture:

20140811 11:21:12

And zoom in to camera resolution:

When I got to the visitor center, this tow was still approaching the lock.

12:28:40

It must be headed up the Mississippi where they have just 600-foot locks because it is doesn't have the full 15 barges that a 1200-foot lock can handle. I've noticed at Lock #15 (Rock Island) on the Mississippi, that some tows have 15 and others have 9 barges. Evidently, it is easier to unlash and lash the towboat than 3 barges so they chose quicker lock transient times over greater capacity.

An overview of the tow while it still fits in the camera's frame. Obviously, the first 3 barges are empty and the remaining 6 are full. This tow is what a railfan would consider a merchandise or mixed freight. It probably has barges for several different clients.

12:29:28

Below is a close up of the deckhands and guide wall marker from the above photo. I decided that the deckhand on the right is not a woman. How big of a no-no is it to not have a hard hat on? Since lash-ups are full of steel wires under heavy tension, there is some danger on them. If a steel cable under tension breaks, it can whip around with significant force.

And a sequence of pictures taken to help measure speed. I walked along with the tow to minimize the parallax between the bow and the marker. The time stamps in minutes and seconds were 30:50, 31:38, 34:04, and 34:48, respectively.

A close up of the water gauge indicates the maximum draft of a barge is 13 feet and that it is normally loaded to 10 feet because the river has been running high this summer. The channel is designed to maintain a 9-foot depth during dry weather. I ended up including more of the original picture than I had intended so that you can see the water-level mark of a loaded barge more clearly.

A close up of the loaded barges and of the towboat.

The last time stamp above was my last picture. It was from:

I did not follow the tow through the lock because it was lunch time and because the Newburgh lock has some long waits that I have never seen at the Mississippi locks. I can't figure out the reason for those waits. I didn't hear any scrapping sounds during the approach.

We ate lunch at the Edgewater Grille so that I could keep an eye out for this tow. While waiting for the food, I took a picture of the decks of the restaurant so that you can get a feel for the context from which I took the pictures.

We ate inside where the upper deck is. But it was easy to step out on that deck to take pictures. We finished our lunch, and I still hadn't seen it. Fortunately, I went back and took one last look as we were leaving and saw:

13:30:38

This is a nice view of the Old Dam location, but I was interested in the tow so I ran back to the car to switch to the telephoto.

13:31:02

Not only is there a hefty propwash, I noticed that the waves would splash on the front of the empty barges. I've never seen bow splash before today. Probably because I normally watch tows from a visitor center where they are creeping in or out of a lock or on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, where they also go rather slow. So I took some more pictures where I tried to time the shots to catch a big splash. You could hear the splashing sounds from the shore. That is what brought the bow splash to my attention.




I finally remembered how to use the video I took:



Standard material barges are not worthy of closeups. I'll include both towboat closeups that had propwash to illustrate the turbulence of the propwash. The first hydraulic jump is consistent. But what happens after that is rather random.

Finally, we bid a fond farewell to this tow.

13:43:54

Actually, we spent some time looking at the old buildings in Newburgh, and when I came back to the river, you could still see the tow, barely, going around the bend in the above picture.

14:03:04