Of the many machines we see in the construction of the “modern era” canals, the cable way (it is also seen as one word, cableway) is likely the least noticed. However it is one of the few machines that has survived the through the years and is still in use today. The cable way was the true multi-tasker of the construction site.
A cable way is a very basic machine with two towers, a hoisting engine with a steam plant to power it, wire rope (cable), and a traveling carriage that ran along the cables.
The cableway in use at the construction of Lock 32, Oct 1910. All the construction images are from the NYS Archives, Barge Canal Construction collection 11833.
Depending on what work needed to be completed, the contractor would build tall wooden towers so that the cable spanned the construction site. If the bases were mounted on flanged wheels on rails, the cableway could have movement in all three dimensions; side to side, back and forth, and up and down.
The Lidgerwood cable way carriage. As the carriage traveled away from the tower, the long pieces on the right would deploy and support the smaller cables. You can see these on the first image. As the carriage returned, the horn (with the point) would pick them up and store them.
Cable ways were very good at spanning deep cuts such as along the Chicago Sanitary Canal or in Lockport on the NYS Barge Canal.
All we see of the cable way is the carriage and large rock skip that is being returned to the work site to be loaded by the steam shovel. Many times multiple skips would be in use and they would simply unhook the empty and hook onto the full one.
They were useful on sites with soft soils such as along the Hennepin Canal for dredging out muck and quicksand. They were useful on lock and dam sites that spanned deep or wide rivers and would “fly” in building materials and buckets of concrete. They were also very useful on sites where there might be blasting as the cable wouldn’t be damaged and could be left in place unlike a steam shovel or other large equipment. Depending on the diameter of the main cable, the cable way could lift and move tons of materials at one time.
The Cable way is used to move materials across the Mohawk River at Lock 9, Dam 5 in Rotterdam Junction. Work has just begun in 1909.Much of the lock is complete and work has moved to the piers of the dam, June 1910.Work is basically complete and the work site has been cleaned up, Dec 1911.
Many manufacturers made cable way equipment as most of it consisted of the basic steam engine and hoisting machine that were used in many applications. In the Barge Canal photos you often see it described as the Lidgerwood cable way, but other manufacturers were Flory and Mundy.
An ad from Manufacturers Record, 1919.Here the cable way is being used to shape the canal banks. It has been fitted with a clam-shell type dredging bucket. Note the caption says “Lidgerwood Cable Way.” Also note the piles of field stone on the base of the tower that was used as ballast. A typical construction site with the cable way, a steam shovel in the cut, and a jib pole is seen west of Lockport at the site of a guard gate, Nov 1910.
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.
