“A deceased friend got me started,” he said, “Bob Maynard, a man who loved steam propulsion, known the world over for his steam expertise.”
Maynard was a founder of the Cinder Sniffers, a model train club with more than 2,500 feet of track in Dover, Ind., that Schwab joined.
“I met Bob in 1984 and became friends,” Schwab said. “He designed the boiler and I built it.
“I’m sure it was his last design. This is a vertical boiler because of space limitations. It has 64 one-half inch flues and has a wet fire box. It steams very well as long as you have the right coal.”
Other than the boiler, “I had no plans,” Schwab said. “A lot of times it was hit-or-miss. It took a lot of forethought to make things come out the way I wanted them to.”
Schwab started the project in 2004 and finished the engine before moving to Deerfield Village, a housing development on Hamilton’s West Side, later that year.
“I worked on it in spurts,” he said. “I’d get something done, then let it alone for a while.”
Except for a Chris-Craft kit he did when he was a teenager, Schwab had never built a boat before, so was willing to accept some help along the way. His friend Neil Sohngen, with whom he helped restore the doughnut machine for Heritage Hall as a tribute to Robert McCloskey and his book “Homer Price,” did all of the wood work in his shop. The canopy was custom-made by Steven’s Auto Tops on Erie Highway.
“My job was to give him the free time and stay out of his way,” said his wife Jeanette.
The hull is 16 feet long by five feet wide. Although Schwab claims no particular love for the movie “African Queen,” “I saw the movie once and what struck me was the fire in the boiler,” he said. “Worst fire in the world. I don’t think he’d have gotten anywhere with that fire.”
In October, more than 100 people from the neighborhood turned out for the launch in the retention pond behind his house.
“Everyone had been asking about it ever since we moved in,” he said.
Although the launch didn’t exactly go off without a hitch in regard to getting it in and out of the pond, the boat, named Steamer Jeanette after Schwab’s wife, was duly christened and proved herself pondworthy.
“It has a top speed of five or six miles per hour, if you’re flying, but we really won’t know until we can get it up to Hueston Woods,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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