The first I saw of them was from the river around the time I was in kindergarten in 1976 or 77. If anyone remembers what the Cuyahoga looked (and smelled) like back then you can get some idea of the impression I got. Many of the buildings along the river were abandoned, dark and dirty. There was a passenger steamer half submerged in the oxbow behind the Terminal Tower and the aroma of the blast furnaces turned those enormous dark bucket arms into man eaters!
Same me, different spelling!
Overmodit actually looks easy to control them with only a few minutes' familiarization, even at frightening top machine speeds!
That's the thing--the speed at which they went up, down & around; and I couldn't be sure the operator saw me.
Here's a 1918 description of the efficiency of these unloaders:
"Not so many years ago it required a hundred men for a period of twelve hours to unload a 5,000 ton cargo of ore. Four of the improved Hulett machines have again and again demonstrated their capacity to lift a 10,000 ton cargo of ore from a lake vessel and deposit it on the docks in less than five hours, with the services of only twenty-five men of operation."
NKP guyGrowing up in Cleveland, I was fascinated by them. But I agree with pennytrains: up close they were scary. They were SO BIG and so...impersonal.
They were designed and built in an era of electrical controls that used small physical levers without force feedback, so the whole thing was operated with very short hand motions and very little muscle strain. There are interesting YouTube videos of the machines in action seen from 'over the shoulder' of the operator -- it actually looks easy to control them with only a few minutes' familiarization, even at frightening top machine speeds!
Growing up in Cleveland, I was fascinated by them. But I agree with pennytrains: up close they were scary. They were SO BIG and so...impersonal.
Then, to be at the bottom of a cargo hold and have the thing plunge down inside and be only a few feet away...one felt one could be eaten alive by this double-jawed monster! Very impressive.
Actually, they kinda scared the crap out of me when I was a kid
I worked at B&O's Clark Ave. Yard in Cleveland off and on in 1970-71. Spent time with crews that worked the Whiskey Island Interchange tracks with the NYC/PC - watching the Huletts work was meszerizing.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
pennytrains Great video! I concur! Thanks Balt!
Great video!
I concur! Thanks Balt!
It is a shame but that is a lot of steel to maintain to keep it presentable. Rust never sleeps. Much like the recent case in North Dakota of a group attempting to forestall the removal of a large BNSF bridge using every trick in the book. When the question arises about care for the structure there are intimations of some sort of State aid but nothing tangible. Hard as we try preservation cannot run on "maybes."
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2B-V2n4b34
It's too bad but that's the problem with BIG antiques of any kind, ships, buildings, large airplanes, you name it. They still have to earn their keep in one way or another and if they can't, sooner or later it's "curtains."
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-metro/after-decades-long-effort-to-save-them-hulett-ore-unloaders-on-whiskey-island-to-be-sold-for-scrap
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