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SS Chief Wawatam
''Chief Wawatam'' (nicknamed ''the Chief'') was a coal-fired steel ship that was based, for most of its 1911–1984 working life, in St. Ignace, Michigan. The vessel was named after a distinguished Ojibwa chief of the 1760s. In initial revenue service, the ''Chief Wawatam'' served as a train ferry, passenger ferry and icebreaker that operated year-round at the Straits of Mackinac between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, Michigan. During the winter months, it sometimes took many hours to cross the five-mile-wide Straits, and ''Chief Wawatam'' was fitted with complete passenger hospitality spaces. ''Chief Wawatam's'' work began to change in the 1940s. Its role as an icebreaker stationed in the upper Great Lakes was supplanted in 1944 by USCGC ''Mackinaw'', a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. The ship's passenger traffic dropped off in the years following World War II. The remaining passenger service ended with the completion of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 that connected the Upper and Lo ...
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Wawatam Lighthouse
Wawatam Lighthouse is an automated, modern lighthouse that guards the harbor of St. Ignace, Michigan, in the Straits of Mackinac. Originally completely nonfunctional, it was erected in 1998 by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) near Monroe, Michigan as an secular icon, iconic roadside attraction at a Welcome centers in the United States, welcome center that greeted northbound drivers on Interstate 75 in Michigan, Interstate 75 (I-75). After serving in this capacity for six years, the structure was threatened in 2004 when MDOT decided to rebuild the welcome center and demolish the tower. Demolition was averted when the St. Ignace civic leaders for the Straits of Mackinac municipality, which had never had a light tower, heard of the opportunity and asked that the welded steel tower be given to them, this time for use in real life. Over a two-year period, the redundant structure was cut apart, trucked to St. Ignace, and re-erected, this time as a functional aid to navig ...
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SS Badger
SS ''Badger'' is a passenger and vehicle ferry in the United States that has been in service on Lake Michigan since 1953. Currently, the ship shuttles between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a distance of , connecting U.S. Highway 10 (US 10) between those two cities. It is the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes, and was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 20, 2016. The ship is named after the University of Wisconsin's athletic teams, the Wisconsin Badgers. ''Badger'' runs on Michigan time (Eastern Time Zone, whereas Wisconsin is in the Central Time Zone) and riders pay Michigan taxes on their fares. It runs on a seasonal basis from May to October. History ''Badger'' was constructed as a rail car ferry in 1952 by the Christy Corporation of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, along with its twin (named after the mascot of Michigan State University) with a reinforced hull for ice-breaking. It was originally used to carry rail ...
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Steam Engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term ''steam engine'' can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.), such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Although steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeo ...
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Triple-expansion
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term ''steam engine'' can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.), such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Although steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeolipile in the first ...
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Propeller
A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working fluid such as water or air. Propellers are used to pump fluid through a pipe or duct, or to create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. The blades are specially shaped so that their rotational motion through the fluid causes a pressure difference between the two surfaces of the blade by Bernoulli's principle which exerts force on the fluid. Most marine propellers are screw propellers with helical blades rotating on a propeller shaft with an approximately horizontal axis. History Early developments The principle employed in using a screw propeller is derived from sculling. In sculling, a single blade is moved through an arc, from side to side taking care to keep presenting the blade to the water at t ...
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Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish NavySmith, Charles Edgar: ''A short history of naval and marine engineering.'' Babcock & Wilcox, ltd. at the University Press, 1937, page 263 as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unat ...
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Titanic
RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship up to that time. It remains the deadliest peacetime sinking of a superliner or cruise ship. The disaster drew public attention, provided foundational material for the disaster film genre, and has inspired many artistic works. RMS ''Titanic'' was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and the second of three s operated by the White Star Line. She was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect of the shipyard, died in the disaster. ''Titanic'' was under the command of Captain Edward Smith, who went down with the ship. The ocean liner car ...
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Ice Forms In The Straits Of Mackinac, Underneath The Mackinac Bridge, Near St 120124-G-JL323-038
Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaque bluish-white color. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far away as the Oort cloud objects. Beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It is abundant on Earth's surfaceparticularly in the polar regions and above the snow lineand, as a common form of precipitation and deposition, plays a key role in Earth's water cycle and climate. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes and aggregates from snow as glaciers and ice sheets. Ice exhibits at least eighteen phases ( packing geometries), depending on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly (quenching), up to three types of amorphous ice can form depending on its hist ...
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Michigan Central Railroad
The Michigan Central Railroad (reporting mark MC) was originally incorporated in 1846 to establish rail service between Detroit, Michigan, and St. Joseph, Michigan. The railroad later operated in the states of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois in the United States and the province of Ontario in Canada. After about 1867 the railroad was controlled by the New York Central Railroad, which later became part of Penn Central and then Conrail. After the 1998 Conrail breakup, Norfolk Southern Railway now owns much of the former Michigan Central trackage. At the end of 1925, MC operated of road and of track; that year it reported 4,304,000 net ton-miles of revenue freight and 600 million passenger-miles. Genealogy *Michigan Central Railroad **Battle Creek and Bay City Railroad 1889 **Buchanan and St. Joseph River Railroad 1897 **Central Railroad of Michigan 1837–1846 ***Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad 1831–1837 **Detroit and Bay City Railroad 1881 **Detroit and Charlevoix Railro ...
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Grand Rapids And Indiana Railroad
The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad at its height provided passenger and freight railroad services between Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan, USA. The company was formed on January 18, 1854. Beginnings After grappling with financial difficulties for many years, the company opened service between Bridge Street in Grand Rapids to Cedar Springs, Michigan, on December 25, 1867, a distance of about . The gross earnings of the railroad in 1867 were about $22,700. In July 1868 it had 2 engines in service: the ''Pioneer'' and the ''Muskegon''. At that time the company also utilized a single passenger coach and single baggage car, six box cars, 24 flat cars and five hand cars. By 1869 the railroad was again in trouble with its creditors, and the courts appointed a receiver, Jesse L. Williams of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to control the company. Under Williams' direction the Continental Improvement Company was hired on May 1, 1869, to complete the line between ...
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Duluth, South Shore And Atlantic Railway
The Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway (DSS&A) was an American railroad serving the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Lake Superior shoreline of Wisconsin. It provided service from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and St. Ignace, Michigan, westward through Marquette, Michigan to Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota. A branchline stretched northward from Nestoria, Michigan up to the Keweenaw Peninsula and terminating at Houghton, Michigan, with two branches extending further to Calumet, Michigan and Lake Linden, Michigan. The first predecessor of the DSS&A began operations in 1855. The railroad fell under the control of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1888 and was operated from 1888 until 1960 as an independently nameplated subsidiary of the CPR. In 1949, a reorganization of the DSS&A took place, creating new heralds and designating the company a railroad instead of a railway. In 1961, the DSS&A was folded into the CPR-controlled Soo Line Railroad. Since 2001, the r ...
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