The Steamtug Blog

Gidday team… It’s me your long lost bro from the rebel Southern states. Well Louisiana can’t get much further South now, can we? In a work update, they finally moved me and the other supervisor from a cupboard behind the door at the existing facility to the new construction project. They have me stuck in a classroom with 26 of my operations team, all reporting to me, ringing me up every 5 minutes that they have to get off work early today for a doctors appoointment, can’t come in today coz I’m sick, I want to take September off to go alligator shooting with my buddies, or deer shooting in August. Oh, I’m sick of it already, keeping track of so many isn’t easy! (continue reading…)

Another year over already? I invited a few friends around to my place as a house warming and NYE party combined. Pete had just arrived from Australia, and we had a great evening planned. Then after our hang over recovered, we were going to leave on a road trip to Tennessee! (continue reading…)

Pete finally arrived from Australia after being lost in Texas and having me worried sick! It was Boxing day and I had volunteered to work the Christmas holiday period so my local colleagues could have the time with their families. I was only going home to a cold empty house, so it didn’t matter to me. As Pete flew into Dallas airport, a mini hurricane appeared from nowhere and smashed through the area leaving a wake of destruction and 11 people dead. Pete was hovering over the Dallas Fort worth airport spinning in mid air with the pilot trying to figure out where they would land, eventually diverting to Austin. (continue reading…)

I remember working at Shell Geelong and a crew got sent to the world famous Texas A&M fire training school. I said I needed to go too, but was told… “Mark, you will never, ever, ever go there! Forget it!” (continue reading…)

I have finally moved into some almost permanent accommodation. Its a lovely little 3 bedroom cottage which recently underwent total restoration. The best part is the big garage for Ethyl, and a whole third of an acre to stretch out in! (continue reading…)

Even the singer Glenn Campbell thought this place was nice! After a week of plant process design reviews in Houston, the big concrete jungle, I detoured past the famous Johnson Space Centre and down to the coast to Galveston Island. Beautiful architectural buildings, coffee shops, a vintage sailing ship and a great railway museum. It’s got the lot! (continue reading…)

It takes a crazy man to put a jet engine into a truck…. so how crazy would you be to put 3 jet engines into a truck? “Shockwave” was just one of the amazing attractions I saw at the Chenault air base here in Louisiana at their annual airshow. With Hurricane Patricia breaking up over the gulf, it was bound to start raining soon, but there was too much to see and do before she arrived. (continue reading…)

I was in awe of the sheer size of South Steyne’s engines when I got to be her engineer while she was in Victoria, many years ago. The largest of Sydney’s Manly ferries and the only one to remain steam powered, had a 4 cylinder, triple expansion engine (LP divided into 2 cylinders) balanced on the “Yarrow, Schlick and Tweedy” system and producing a massive 2,000 horsepower. But a recent trip to Texas USA put things into perspective as I crawled all over the main engines of the USS TEXAS, a world war 1 veteran and now museum ship. (continue reading…)

I have had to spend some time in the 4th biggest city in the USA, Houston. I have been part of the plant design review team who are still working out how everything is going to work in our new plant we are going to construct. So while in Houston, I got to catch a ball game… Baseball, it’s just not cricket! The Houston Astro’s were playing the Los Angeles Angels. Although we lost (me being such a big Astro’s fan…) it was a great experience to see a real live ball game. (continue reading…)

Is that a corvette I see? Did you know the Corvette stingray was actually named after a small navy ship. But this one is a full sized destroyer, USS Orleck. She was built in 1945 and just missed out on service in the second world war, but made up for it in the Korean and Vietnam wars. I was desperate to be in the engineroom of a steamship, and luckily these chaps didn’t mind me snooping around down below. (continue reading…)