Marge Mcfarlin and USACE Lock Database

I discovered that the US Army Core of Engineers has a web site that displays their lock activity. So purpose of this posting is to record interesting links as well as try to track were Marge goes during her stay in the Chicago area.

I can select which range of locks I on the Illinois Waterway for which I want data. I narrowed it down to Dresden Isand and Brandon Road. Most of the vessels were running light or with a small tow. (Although, the Lemont Trader went downbound through Brandon with 8 barges.) However, Marge Mcfarlin went upbound with 15 barges through Dresden between 03:59 and 06:43 on 2018/11/08. I recognized the name as one of Ingram's pushboats. Like Sam Fleming, it is a line-haul pushboat that has a retractable pilot house.

Marge Mcfarlin, USACE Vessel #0575287

So I started tracking its location in the Chicago area. Around 2pm, it was downstream of Mugz's Hideout. Theoretically, if I headed there, I might be able to get photos of it. But my main movtivation for getting a photo of a tow is to determine its size. But the USACE report includes the number of barges that locked through. It will be interesting if it goes through Brandon or if it stays in the Ingram's Channahon fleeting area. Since the weather has turned cold, I'll spend my time getting location updates rather than grinding out miles on the interstates to Mugz's Hideout. Some of the locks on the Illinois River were closed this summer for repairs. I checked the lock status page to confirm that the closures are done. The other tow through Dresden larger than 8 barges was the upbound Killian L. Huger with 13 barges.

Looking a Starved Rock and Marseilles, I was surprised to see that only two of the tows were larger than 8 --- 13 and 15. And our friend Sam M Fleming had the 15-barge tow. There were two light tows and tows as small as 2 and 3 barges. I expected the tows to be larger as we got into the mainstream of the river. For the two wicker dam locks (Lagrange and Peoria), of the 10 tows listed, only 8, 13, and 15 was larger than 3.

I did a query for all of the locks on the river. It appears to be sorted by vessel number. More accurately, the output is not sorted; it is displayed as it is stored in the database. Of the 35 entries, one was a pleasure craft (#9999999) through the O'Brien lock.
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The large delays for Brandon in this output caught my eye.

Looking at the arrival times vs. the Start of Lock, it appears they made Derek, Aggie and Lemont wait until after Lousiana and Cody locked through together. And Aggie locked through before Derek because they had to lower the water anyhow before Derek could enter. Even Lousiana and Cody had to wait until 1am even though Capt cleared the lock at midnight.

1410:  273.2
1426:  271.2   It went backwards! It must be in some sort of holding pattern waiting for a (big) spot in the fleeting area. Now I'm glad I didn't take off to try to see it. The holding area is around a bend and not visible from Mugz's Hideout.
1445:  271.2   In fact, its 0500 location was 271.2. So it has been waiting a rather long time.
1512:  271.2
1612:  271.6
1715:  271.4
1816:  270.5   Ingram still shows upbound.

USACE shows downbound with arrival at 1415 and departure at 1745. So it is a good thing I never went to Mugz's Hideout because it was downstream of the bend all afternoon.

Query of Dresden Lock delays at 6:26

2019:  262,8   Ingram is still showing upbound. But, obviously, we can wave goodbye to Marge.

I was going through the photos posted for Mugz's Hideout and noticed this one. Unfortunately, I can't find the name on it. You can tell this is around a fleeting area because it is a line-haul pushboat that is running light. The photo also has a nice view of the I-55 bridges.

Michael Pesek

One last check on Marge before I click Publish:
11-10-2018  1440:  170.5   It was at 208.4 at 0500