Tag: Bucyrus steam shovel

Barge Canal Construction Equipment, The Steam Shovel

Steam shovel on Contract 1. This might be a Marion model improved A.

The steam shovel was perhaps the most ubiquitous machine on construction and mining sites between 1880 and 1930. The earliest steam shovel dates back to 1835 when William Otis designed what was called a railroad shovel. The machine, which included a steam boiler, various steam engines, dipper arm assembly, fuel and water, weighed several tons.(1) At the time the only large construction projects that could use such a machine were in railroad construction so the shovel was mounted to a flatcar and set on standard gauge railroad wheels. The shovel could also be mounted to a barge and used as a dredge but that came later.

This shovel loads a train on Contract 12.

The Otis patent ran out in the 1870s, and this allowed many companies to begin the manufacture of their own machines. Well known brands were the Osgood, Marion, Bucyrus, Barnhart, and American steam shovels. Osgood shovels were produced in Troy, NY, while Marion, Bucyrus and Barnhart were all Ohio companies. Improvements were made to the shovels as they got sturdier, heavier and more powerful.

A Vulcan is working at Lock 8 in Rotterdam on Contract 8. This contractor would late abandon this project due to the quicksand.

Shovels were soon at work on railroad projects, canal construction, mining and quarrying, basically anywhere large quantities of materials had to be excavated. But as this is about canal construction, lets take a look at how they were used.

The crew of the Model 60 and the steam trail pose for the photographer at Cranesville.

Because the shovels were mounted to railroad trucks and moved on rails, the shovel could only cut level swaths. The shovel would be moved around the site by men laying out temporary rails. Once at the cut, the shovel would extend it’s outriggers for stability then begin excavate to its front and sides. The machine could cut about three times it’s width. All spoils had to be loaded into hopper cars that were set on a narrow gauge railroad. Once the area was cleared to its front, the track team would lay out a new section of tracks and the shovel would slowly crawl forward. If the job was large enough to warrant more than one machine, a second machine would begin to remove earth on a lower terrace, following behind the first. The tracks also helped to distribute the weight of the machine allowing them to work in wetter areas, however as they were not easy or quick to move, there are many photographs of shovels sitting in flooded work sites.

We get a good look at the bottom of the shovel after this one turned over. Note the chain drive.

Shovels could also be mounted to barges and used as dipper dredges. Many of these were site built with the machinery being shipped to the job site and the barge being constructed from locally sourced lumber. Once the job was done the machinery was removed and the barge discarded. (2)

This Bucyrus shovel is being used to move blasted rock. Not the men loading the skips in the foreground.

Although good at handling gravel, sand and other aggregate materials, they were not good at moving larger rock. Many times you will find the shovel being used to load skips that were moved by cranes or cable ways.

On Contract 6. The shovel is loading an inclined tipple.

As they were developed, steam shovels were fitted out with crawler tracks. The only existing shovel of this configuration can be seen in Leroy, NY where a Marion Model 91 sits in a field. Once the internal combustion engine and hydraulic drives began to be used in construction machinery, the days of the steam shovel numbered. One man could do the work of 4 or 5, and once mounted to crawler tracks instead of railroad tracks, the mobility of the machine made it more useful. Today the hydraulic excavator, a distant cousin of the steam shovel, can be found on almost every job site.

From Contract 6. Not certain of model.

If you are interested in seeing these machines at work, check out the videos of construction of the Panama Canal. Bucyrus and Marion both supplied shovels to this work and were certain to make movies about it. With the clouds and steam and smoke, they make for interesting viewing. Of course the most famous steam shovel might be the Bucyrus in which President Roosevelt posed along the Cublra Cut in the Panama Canal.

There is a very good history of steam shovels at Heritage Machines.

Steam shovels were slow to move and were often caught in flooded situations.
This was a year after the flooded shovel. Note the dredge and steam pumps. The Marion Model 60 appears to be cold.

(1) A handy hint is that the model number refers to the weight of the shovel, thus a Marion 60 weighed about 60 tons.

Note the young girl sitting on the chair used by the man who operates the dipper.

(2) The images used in this post are from the New York State Archives, Barge Canal Construction Photos, 11833.

Construction Equipment on the NYS Barge Canal, 1905-1920

The New York State Archives has a wonderful collection of Barge Canal Construction photographs that show the progress of construction of the new waterway throughout the years of 1903 to 1920. In these you might find images of what the area looked like prior to construction, the first shovelful of work, progress through the years, work that was disqualified due to poor construction, damage from floods and ice, and then the finished projects (and more). You can find these in collection 11833 (Barge Canal Construction Photos).

These images also provide a remarkable record of the early days of heavy earth moving construction machinery. In the early 1900s, the steam shovel was only about 25 years old, and once they “perfected” that versatile machine, the possibilities were endless. Do you need to shape a bank? The cantilevered conveyor is the machine you need. Need to move rocks from a deep channel cut? How about the double boom crane? Do you have soft soils? How about a cable-way? If there was a job to do, some inventor had a machine to do it. And many of these machines were used to dig the new Barge Canal.

The Barge Canal was not the first use of these machines. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was built in the 1890s, used many of the same machines. And it appears that some also were used on the Hennepin Canal construction.

Beginning with the Winter 2022 issue of the American Canals newsletter we have begun to look at these early machines. We will post the the same images from the articles, plus a few more, so you have the ability to enlarge and get a better look at their use and workings.

We start with Contract 40 which was the area of the big cut. This was the 5-mile section west of Lockport where the canal had to be cut through bedrock in order to reach the level of Lake Erie. This area was famous for its work during the construction of the original Erie Canal, and it posed the same challenges in 1900 with how to remove the massive quantities of rock from the channel.

The Brown Hoisting and Conveying Machine Company built this cantilevered conveyor. The machine was designed to remove spoils from the bank and deposit them directly behind the machine.
A close up of the Brown cantilevered excavator. A drag-line bucket runs along the arms and can be used to shape the banks. This machine was able to work in the navigation season. The machine sits of railroad style trucks.
You get a sense of the work with the shaped bank in the foreground and the vegetated bank behind it. A boat can be seen in the distance. The machine could also be used to lift skips of material that had been loaded by hand or team-shovel.
The Browning double-boom crane was designed to allow one boom to be working while the opposite one was dumping. This machine was used mostly to lift skips of rock out of the cut. Multiple skips would be in the work area either being loaded by men or using a steam-shovel.
You get a good sense of the scale of the work. The steam-shovel alone could never remove the rock so the double-boom crane is used to lift the rock out of the cut. The shovel would load a large skip and the crane would lift it clear. The machine would rotate 180-degrees and dump it’s load onto the spoils pile. At the same time, the boom over the canal would be lowering a empty skip into the cut.
Here you can see the skips, basically large baskets. This was July 1910 and the canal is in use. The canal cut is being widened down to the water level and the rest will be removed in the winter.
The Browning double-boom could also function as a drag-line by using only one of the booms and fitting it with a drag bucket. The machine sat on skids and would use it’s engines and capstans to drag itself around.
This view gives us a nice look at many of the machines used on the Barge Canal. The Brown Hoisting cantilever can be seen in the distance, which a Bucyrus steam-shovel loads skips on the Browning incline conveyor. The skips will run along the top of the track and then tip it’s load at the high end onto the spoils pile. A Lidgerwood cable-way flies over along the top of the photo.

Details on all these machines are featured in the Winter 2022 issue of American Canals. In upcoming issues we will take a look at more equipment used of the Barge Canal.