Huletts! Anybody?

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Anybody up to the challenge to model one of the prehistoric machines?
Prehistoric because none of them remain and all that is left are fossils and imprints.
Here is a fascinating video of the magnificent steel beast eating out of a ships hold.
http://www.youtube.com/v/1RJfnk2S330
(Embedding unfortunatly not allowed)

Once common all along the southern coast of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie in particular, now all gone.

General information here at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulett

Fearless men actually rode the necks of these beasts at they clawed and tore at the ship's innards:

Jaws wide open:

Some excellent "archeology" resources are available here, drawings and all: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oh0121/
Make sure to check out these magnificent photos and the sheer amount of railroad operations involved: http://www.clevelandmemory.org/glihc/hulett/index.html or http://site.ebrary.com/lib/clevelandstatedr/docDetail.action?docID=10402179 and many more.

Talking Huletts, one shouldn't forget rotary car dumpers, hopper/gondola dumpers with lifts and "marble tracks" and all kinds of other interesting animated machinery involved in coal/ore transportation.


Money and space are no limits on our virtual railroads, it only takes time, skill, lots of determination and a little imagination to model our desires.
Lack of interest also wouldn't be a problem either I'd guess, even if it were a payware pack of say "PRR Cleveland Ore Docks". "PRR Sandusky Line" with the mighty J1's, crossing the C&O with their mighty T1's and H8's at Columbus, Ohio also is like a dream come true.
P&LE and Ohio Steel and Massillon already offer endless operational opportunities for receiving coal and ore trains.
Only RSC should allow merry-go-round trains that don't need to stop to load/unload their cargo.

Hudson River car floats, Lake Michigan train ferries are also nice to model once we have a waterfront and docks. I imagine an operational car float is nothing more than a overlarge flatcar running on tracks laid underwater. A tug with small bowwave and wake is even able to be animated with a few well crafted emitters to suggest motion over the water's surface.

Edit: found that Santa Fe colour photograph here:
The original TIFF is over 140 MB and incredibly sharp! You can see the emblem shining on the boy's beret as he strolls past the engine. It's Albuquerque rather than San Bernardino, the mission style depot had me fooled. B-SB and the Cajon Pass are featured extensively in this collection. If you are into industrial archeology you can spend your every leisure hour looking at all the material. Toledo, Huron, Cleveland, Ashtabula, Conneaut, Wheeling, Gary, Pittburgh, the Monongahela Valley, the Mesta Machine Company where huge machine was built and many, many more subjects of USA's industrial past now all but gone.
I collected all of these and the Hulett photographs a couple of year back and now only need to find them. That Libary of Congress is a pure treasure trove especially the HAER archives which contain excellent drawings and photographs for asset making.

I'd better stop before my enthusiasm and imagination gets the better of me.

[Chacal]

Fascinating. These were truly dinosaurs, impressive beasts.
Thanks!

[Hawk]

I have this jpg version of that screenshot, cropped down to fit to desktop.

sante-fe-another-train.jpg

[arizonachris]

Too late, It already got the better of you (and me). That is just amazing stuff, really. Massive steam shovels offloading ore. And then, lower in a skip loader to clean up the rest and get it ready to unload. Wow. For the day, this was about as high tech as you could get! It's amazing, and yes, you can see the depth of the railroads operations. You know every ton of that ore was shipped by rail.

I just have to wonder, tho. How many of those guys ended up with cancer or lung problems. Before we really knew the dangers of working in that kind of environment.

Fantastic stuff. Thanks for sharing!

Oh, your Wiki/ Hulet link works, but Wiki says it has no info. Found it here, tho: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulett (you missed a "t". now go sit in the corner)

[jpetersjr]

Anyone know what kind of locomotive that Santa Fe locomotive is?

Looks simular to a F-unit, but not exactly right.

With SMM Digital's new tutorial I want to build one of these.

[dejoh]

For your information. Most ore boats (lakers) converted to self-unloading vessels in the 60's-70's.
Many of the lakers that did'nt upgrade were scrapped.
The Huletts were out of service most of the time in the their later years and turned very undependable
for off loading.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Check out those links for photos of men shoveling ore into the Hulett's bucket, before the advent of those wheeled shovels.

When you look over all those photos, you'll be amazed at the working conditions of your grandfathers. A lot has changed since, mostly because all these industries are gone. Moved to India, China, Kazakhstan etc, where the working conditions are probably just like in these photos.
I don't think iron ore or coal dust are particularly carcinogenous, silicose was mainly caused by inhaling quartz/rock dust, asbestos and such.

Make a good study of industrial Whiskey Island and Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, it had an extremely interesting track layout and would make for a superb route.

Those Santa Fe engines were the orginal E1's, ordered for the first Super Chief. Note the anti aircraft visor over the headlight, so enemy planes couldn't easily target trains.

During the 2nd world war, Santa Fe also got the first and most of the orignal FT's because of bad water supply conditions in the arid Southwest which would make it difficult for the Santa Fe to fulfill its war transportation needs and duties using steam locomotives.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Some more photos:
Women engine wipers on the C&NW, the men were off fighting a war:

Greasing a main rod bearing, is that an Alemite gun?:

Blacksmith working in roundhouse:

Roundhouse still life:

Armstrong lever:

Freight train ready to depart, cab curtains closed, the window will most likely stay open all the way:

Blue flagged freight cars being unloaded, feeding the city:



Here is the whole of Jack Delano's incredible set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Some of Mesta Machine Company output:
A 1916 twin tandem compound direct drive high speed reversing steam engine. The cylinders are up front, the crankshaft is in the middle:

All of its 35.000 horses could go from full forwards to full reverse in just 4 seconds. It was used to drive a 44" blooming mill where white hot ingots of cast steel were rolled into thick slabs in several passes to and fro.
On the other side of the wall is the blooming mill:, notice the driveshaft coming though the wall:

Three highly trained men were needed to operate the mill round the clock. Imagine the noise and heat!

Here a white hot ingot is laid on the mill, ready to be rolled into a slab:

The red hot slabs were carried on rollers to a neighboring hall were they were rolled into strips in one continuous operation:

Due to the slab getting thinner and wider when going through the subsequent rolling stands, at the end of the half mile line it came out at high speed, was caught and rolled into coils with great noise:


If you ever get the chance to visit a steelworks with continuous hot and cold rolling mills on an excursion, by all means take it. It is a most impressive visual, sound and smell sensation.

Some other Mesta output:

"Small" 4.000 ton hot forging press, there is a man standing on the anvil next to the ingot:

"Small" 75 ton manipulating tongs, used to handle the hot ingot while it was being forged:

There also were 200 ton tongs, and probably larger forging presses as well to fulfill secret defense orders. Imagine nuclear reactor vessels, battleship guns and the like.

50.000 ton closed die cold forging hydraulic press, one of the largest ever built:

On this press titanium forgings were made for use in aircraft and space industry, amongst others things for the DoD.

The end of the Cold War brought the traditional arms race to an end. Today's high tech cyber weapons don't need this heavy machinery and civil use is limited to non existent.
All of the above machinery is gone for good along with a large part of the US' industrial might.
The former areal of Mesta in Homestead, PA. is now bare land in Google Earth. Thomas Bontempo's P&LE route still keeps its "virtually" alive.

[ArcticCatZRT]

This is a great thread, with a lot of good information, it is nice to see this type of things since I was born in the early 90s and never saw this type of stuff in action! Thanks!

[glenn68]

Huletts, the next step is the Bessemer and Lake Erie route!

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

B&LE or any other road in Ohio with access to Lake Erie.

Here is a list of both loading and unloading docks of about 1970 from http://www.clevelandmemory.org:
Toledo - N&W, B&O, C&O, PC (don't know which predecessor)
C&O's huge Presque Isle docks:

Huron - N&W (both NKP and W&LE predecessors)
Nickel Plate Hulett during family day:

Lorain - B&O, N&W, a very peculiar layout with a curved dock and terraces, that is limestone near the bottom:

Cleveland - PC (formerly PRR, but since there are so many perhaps NYC as well), B&O, EL (probably Erie)
PRR ore docks from the air:

Ashtabula - PC (both former NYC and PRR are present on the map)
High altitude aireal image of Pinney docks, notice the meandering railway lines:

Conneaut - B&LE exclusively
Relative modern and clean looking facilities:


Take your pick, all ports had unloading docks with Huletts.

[glenn68]

Notice all the hot forge equipment, its all made by MESTA Machine in Pittsburgh area.

[dejoh]

This is a great lakes self-unloader ore boat. The owners of various steel mills
got completly fed up with slow loading and unloading of their vessels at certain docks.
The boats that converted made much faster times on their schedules from the ore docks to the mills.
To this day, 90% of steel mill ore,limestone,stone, and slag travel by ore boat.
Many years ago, I traveled on one from Inland Steel East Chicago, In. to Escanba, Mi.
I'll never forget that trip. By the way, great pictures all.

[MontanaRails]

Amazing photos! The Huletts are amazing machines. I'm trying to figure out if my route's port used them - I'd for sure be interested in a model. Fairport Harbor on Lake Erie might have been Hulettless (though It seems in some photos something is visible - its more likely a dumper than a scoop. In general, coal left Fairport, not entered it).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nix66/3892267057/

There just arent many pictures of Fairport Harbor...