Draglines

[BAD DOG]

My Dad and I went to a funeral wake for a friend of mines father last week. His dad worked for our county roads department for 35 years and had been retired fo 25 years now. They were showing old video footage of some of him and some of the other guys working at the pit and on a few jobs with some of the old stuff back in the late 50's early 60's. The county had 2 cable cranes that he ran. A Lorrain Cable hoe which he ran most of the time ditching on road jobs, and a Dominion Dargline that spent most of its career in the county gravel pit with a clam on it feeding a hopper. Both cranes were like new when the county finished with them. A friend of my dads ended up with the Dominion and Dad ran it for him for a couple years with a drag bucket on it at a pit next door to the county pit, so I spent a little time around that crane when I was a teenager. We thought it was neat to still have some of that old video around to share with everyone.

[Milaca]

You are fortunate to have video of it, especially from that time period. Makes me kind of sad that of the many decades my dad has been excavating and the decade or more that I worked with him, we dont have any video, we barely have any photos either. I guess when you are busy, one doesnt think about documenting it until it is too late, though I have learned from it and have been photographing the work I do on my pond with his excavator and my old Mack.

[BAD DOG]

Took this pic north of London, Ont. Canada on my Saturday road trip. I guess they had 6 inches of rain Friday night into Saturday morning. The tracks on this big Northwest in this pit are almost totally submerged. They'd need a boat to get to it Monday morning if they planned on digging.

[Freightrain]

I always enjoy dirt moving shows. They kinda go hand in hand with antique truck people. To watch a skilled cable operator is awesome. Been few years back, down at Pataskala, Ohio show, the Buckeye Vintage Diggers were making noise and there was an elderly gentleman running a dragline. This fellow had a gimp arm and could hardly walk but he worked that crane like it was brain surgeon. Smooth, steady and pin point accuracy. I took some video tape, but need to get it over to digital format.