Montreux (ship)
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The Montreux is a paddle wheel steamer built in 1903/04 on Lake Geneva . After the ship 1962-1998 as a diesel-electric powered motor ship went, it operates since 2001 with a newly-built steam engine as a passenger boat on Lake Geneva. Thus is Montreux , the world's only steam ship, which from a built in the 21st century as well as the bridge is driven remote-controlled ship steam engine. The paddle steamer is one of five paddle steamers from the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le Lac Léman (CGN), which operates passenger shipping across Lake Geneva.
history
In 1902 it was decided to have two new paddle steamers built for Lake Geneva. The first of these two ships, the Montreux , was launched in December 1903 and was put into operation the following spring. The second new building, the General Dufour , followed in 1905, but was decommissioned in the shipyard from 1967 and was scrapped in 1977.
Both paddle steamers were built by Sulzer in Winterthur , have a length of 63.00 meters across the main deck, a total width of 14.30 meters and an average draft (unloaded) of 1.41 meters. Its paddle wheels are driven by an inclined two-cylinder superheated steam compound machine with a maximum output of 1,000 hp.
In 1957, the Montreux steam boilers had reached the end of their life. Instead of the planned new boiler, the ship was motorized, that is, the boiler and steam engine were replaced by a diesel-electric drive unit. The associated 8-cylinder four-stroke diesel engine also came from Sulzer. It had an output of 1,100 hp. During this ship conversion, the appearance and interior of the ship were also partially changed.
When the diesel-electric drive had become obsolete in 1998, the entire ship was given a general overhaul and returned to its original appearance from 1904. Instead of the drive to be replaced, the steam locomotive and machine factory DLM AG constructed a new two-cylinder superheated steam engine. As a novelty, this is remotely controlled from the navigation bridge. Since 2001 the Montreux has been sailing the lake again as the oldest and most modern Lake Geneva steamer.
photos
around 1910, coal-fired, with a plume of smoke
in 2003
Moored in Ouchy 2007
on the road in 2007 - without a visible trail of smoke
literature
- J. Meister, J. Gwerder, E. Liechti: Shipping on Lake Geneva. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1977.
- Charlotte Kunz: The paddle steamers of Lac Léman. (Swiss art guide. No. 316). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 1982, ISBN 3-85782-316-X .
