Cleaning up a little mishap. The Nevada Northern Railway's 100-ton Steam Wrecking Crane A makes short work of a empty derailed ore hopper that ended up on the ground during switching moves earlier in the day. It takes just a couple of minutes for the rigging crew to put a bridle on the drawbar of the hopper, and another couple for the crane crew and the Yard Master to lift it, position it over the rails and lower it gently into place. Setting up the crane, well that is another matter entirely. If this scene looks a little bit like a typical State Highway Department job.....meaning a couple of guys working and the rest just standing around watching, that's because the folks observing this operation have just spent the better part of a couple of hours steaming up the crane, clamping it to the rails and deploying the outriggers at all 4 corners, to prepare the machine for the quick lift. Breaking everything down and preparing the crane for transport back to its quarters will also take considerable time.
While this particular operation was done for the benefit of photographers at one of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum's annual Winter Photo Shoots, this crane is indeed used for real work operations by the museum and is a very handy piece of machinery to have around. The day before this image was captured, the crane was used indoors, to position a large, newly acquired milling machine in the museum's machine shop. The milling unit was so heavy that the shop's overhead crane was incapable of lifting it. For the steam crane, it was a quick and easy job.
