Vintage shots from days gone by!

Ok.....so............. What the hell is going on here? Early LRDG (Stand Fast!) desert nav??

Doc.

 

The pictures of the old steam shovel reminded me of these locomotive shots I have <O</O
<O</O

The founder of Blount Seafood Corporation, F. Nelson Blount, was a collector of steam locomotive
equipment. He bought a railroad so he could be an engineer.
In 1963 Blount moved his Steamtown U.S.A. steam locomotive collection to a new site
(Steamtown was moved several times before). This latest location was a the former site of a
proposed Rutland yard in Riverside, near Bellows Falls, VT. Tracks fanning out from a turntable
provided an excellent place to display his collection of steam. Regular excursions were run
between Riverside and Chester.
Tragedy struck in 1967 when Nelson Blount was killed when his private plane crashed into a
tree in Marlborough, NH. Nelson was only 49. This event took a lot of steam out of Steamtown.
Most of the operational steam locomotives were either sold or fell into disrepair. Then, in 1970,
Vermont passed air quality regulations which prohibited steam operations. Diesel locomotives
were then used on Steamtown excursions, however, ridership fell dramatically. Despite the air
quality regulations, the Steamtown Foundation again began operating with a steam locomotive.
By 1983, Steamtown again had many (six) operating steam locomotives.
Despite the resurrection of steam locomotives, Steamtown was in financial trouble.
It was determined that the main problem was its location -- isolated from any major population
center. In 1984, Steamtown was moved to Scranton, PA. Still losing money, the Steamtown
Foundation went bankrupt in 1986.
Congress created the Steamtown National Historic Site and the National Park Service acquired
the collection.
Congress created Steamtown National Historic Site in 1986 to interpret the story of main line
steam railroading between 1850 and 1950. The park now occupies about forty acres in Scranton, Pa

These shots were taken in the summer of '75 in Bellows Falls, VT.
You can see the poor condition the site was in. I believe the former site is currently listed in
the Vermont hazardous sites list.

Talk about massive amounts of horsepower!!
The first shot is my Dad taken in front of one of the locomotives - he is over 6 feet tall!
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Dog, I believe steam traction engines like that last one could
pull the heavier road graders in the early 20th Century. Here's
a Galion Iron Works #14 tow grader. It had a big 14-foot blade
or could be fitted with a scarifier. Galion started making grad-
ers in 1911. This one weighed over seven tons. Photo THANKS
to the WikiMedia Commons project.

 

And---a couple years earlier...

 

Horsepwoer is horsepower, even if in the form of steam or electric. It's all interesting. For a neat video, do a google on Utube of the locomotive snowblower. It throws snow what looks to be 100 feet as high and wide as the loco, just creeping along at an idle.

 

Tim Twichell shot this series back in the late '80s when the GEM was still
operating. 20 stories high and 7,000 tons -- as much as a WWII Liberty Ship!
The crawlers are eight feet high; NOTE the rubber-tired loader at right.
Photos THANKS to a site, www.stripmine.org/gem_01.htm






As land-based vehicles, these huge earth-movers have to be
the heaviest, perhaps most awesome creations of human tech-
nology and a once-mighty industrial base. The specs of the
unique "GEM of Egypt" are just FUN to review.

​

Speed - 1/4 mph to 1/2 mph
Bucket capacity - 130 cubic yards
Operating weight - 14,000,000 lb (7,000 short tons)
Height - 220 feet
Height of crawlers - 8 feet (34 feet long, each)
14 AC motors, 13,500 hp

 

Daddy, won't ya take me back to Muhlenberg County
down by the Green River where Paradise lay?
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but yer too late in askin'.
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

(Sung by John Denver, 1971; written by John Prine)


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John Denver, THANKS to AcePhotos!
(music.aol.com/pictures/artist/john-denver/4070/latest)




Most years, Muhlenberg Co., Kentucky, has been the top coal-
producing spot in the world, acre for acre. John Prine's song
wasn't rhetorical nor metaphorical. A coal-fired power plant
has long sat on the site of the former village of Paradise.


Though the county was home to Kentucky's first viable
(drift) coal mine as early as 1820, coal production only
increased over the decades. In 1962, the 115-cubic-yard
bucket of Bucyrus Erie's appropriately nicknamed "Big Hog"
Model 3850-B power shovel went to work at the Peabody
Coal Company's Sinclair Surface Mine, next to Paradise.
The largest such machine worldwide at the time, it was
surpassed in capacity five years later by Bucyrus' "GEM
of Egypt." According to Wikipedia, after the Hog finished
its work of about 25 years, it was buried in a pit on Sinclair
Mine property (a pit which it had probably dug previously).




THANKS to flickr, a photo of Bucyrus-Erie's "Big Hog" 1650-B model.



Looks like Big Hog during on-site assembly. Looks like
the Imperial Walker from "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes
Back," doesn't it? Photo THANKS to Flickriver and appar-
ently THANKS, too, to Duncan Center Museum & Art
Gallery! What a fantastic, other-worldly era it was in
the heyday of surface coal mining.

 

Does any one know if Bucyrus Erie was anything to do Ruston Bucyrus in the U.K.? They used to build cranes

 

Remember those darned push lawnmowers? Kids don't know how good they have it.

​

 

Houlton Army Air Base was established in 1941 because of its proximity to Canada. Prior to the United States entry into the war, the United States "lent" military equipment to Great Britain to enable it to continue the war against Nazi Germany. Planes were flown to Houlton Army Air Base but U.S. military pilots could not fly the planes directly into Canada, a British ally, because that would violate the official U.S. position of neutrality in the war between Great Britain and Germany. In this picture, Arnold Peabody, a Houlton area farmer is towing an SBC-3 Helldiver across the border to Canada.

 

Deepening the Livingstone Channel in the Detroit River (Library of Congress Photos)

 

One more, I believe this is getting the shovel into the channel near Stoney Island.

 

One for the boaters, Detroit Gold Cup 1970, I think it "HAD" a Hemi

 

I have one in the basement,was thinking about using it but I am too lazy.

 

I have one hanging in the garage, I have NEVER thought about using it!

 

This isn Twin Towers Cafe in Tama Iowa

 

Thinking was as far as I got and its still sitting in the same spot where I put it in 89 when I took it out of grandmas basement.