Gary Sielaff wrote:

>The QE2 burns 10560 gals of diesel per mile !!!!!!!!!!!
>ME THINKS NOT
>Gary

This figure is not far out of line for the _Queen Elizabeth_ and _Queen
Mary_, however. It's difficult to understand how truly enormous these
vessels were: 80,000 gross tons, top speed of 35 knots, single-expansion
steam turbines with 160,000 shaft horsepower: 118 megawatts, equivalent
to about a tenth of a typical large municipal electric generating
station. The QE2 is considerably more fuel efficient (but burns
higher-grade fuel). The reason that Cunard withdrew the QM and QE from
service is that they cost far too much to run, and always operated at a
loss.

The _Queen Mary_, of course, is now a floating hotel/museum in Long
Beach, California. It takes some doing, while walking up to and around
it, to remember that this enormous building, a fifth of a mile in length
and ten stories high, can tootle around the ocean at 40mph.

One of my "yeah, sure" goals is to travel to England taking the QE2 one
way and the Concorde the other -- before both of these 20th-century
anachronisms pass into history.

-- Bruce


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