I was riding my mountain bike on a canyon above the mighty Snake River yesterday, and couldn't help but notice the work they (Idaho Power, my area's utility) were doing down below. On the way back home I happened to come across a sign pointing down a steep road that told me one of the many hydroelectric generating plants was down thataway. As I had a little time to kill, I rode down and it turned out my timing could not have been better. They were taking one of the 60,000 lb. turbine rotors (not a pelton wheel, not sure what the technical word for it was, but the thing the water hits and makes turn etc.) out for refurbishment. I rode up at exactly the right moment, at one point when one of the utility workers came over, wondering who I was, I told him I was a crane guy AND I also have a hydroelectric plant of my own, that is grid tied to their system, what were the odds? So, no one ran me off, and I watched until much of the curve in that flatbed went out of it, sure looked like 60 K to me. For comparison, my pelton wheel is 6" in diameter and weigh a couple lbs, but it does produce 850 watts into the grid for about 9 months out of the year, about 60 KW a month. This is stored in their system as a credit, and I use it up in the winter when my production falls behind my consumption.
That's a neat looking old crane. Did you happen to notice who the manufacturer was? You don't see too many 125T riveted girder cranes still in operation.
That's neat. I was recently at one of our dams (Matahina) where the gantries and turbines are in a building. One gantry crane had a 106ton capacity and they need two of them to tandem the rotor assembly, around 180ton.
I didn't notice the make. But got the impression it was for sure some classic iron. The riveting dates it now that you mention it. The trucker had the gold dog on the hood, he was impressed I knew that denotes the rig has ALL Mack components, most have silver dogs. Then I asked him if he ever got tired of looking at a dog's bunghole all day as he drives around, then I told him my National rides on a Mack chassis so he didn't get insulted! We have a big industrial complex in town that was built during WW 2 to re line the big ship gun barrels, and I've worked inside it on some of the gantry cranes there. We took one, 300 ton I believe it was, down that a guy said had probably been up there (about 75' high) since the war. He found a half full pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes that someone had left up there, the place has a lot of history to it, and helped win the war. Over the years since lots of heavy industries have been in there, but in my area old timers still refer to it as "the gun plant."
Natman .. you got me interested in the NOP. Here's a write up on a gun that went through the NOP. http://azirkle.com/C_DAHL/DAHL01.html
Cool link. 390,000 lb gun. WOW.
Operation of the Gun. 16/50
I'm told that to this day, this facility has a unique combo of many very large overhead cranes and lots of interior cubic feet, all at a major transport hub. Visually, it is still a major landmark in town. I don't get many calls for working INSIDE a building, there was plenty of room in there! Plus, setting up on that concrete floor, with all it had seen over the years, I figured I didn't need to use any outrigger pads. I had heard that they test fired the big guns at a nearby butte (that I flew hang gliders from decades later) but thought that may have been a myth, not so....... http://sfcompanion.blogspot.com/2016/07/first-structures-completed-at-naval.html It's a neat mix of history and industrial made in the USA might, and still relevant today.
Another gantry crane, this one spotted working in a logging yard in Montana right along the highway. This thing could really move, it was pretty darn nimble.