ATSF 543 gets unloaded

After a very wet October, the weather finally cooperated enough to allow the 543 to be unloaded from the flat car it was shipped on.  An attempt was made on Friday, November 6th, however, the entrance to the job site was still a bit wet to get the large cranes in.  Today, we had help from IRM volunteers Gerry Dettloff, Jamie Kolanowski, Pete Pedersen, Charlie Strong, Stan Wdowikowski, Ray Weart, and Jim West; along with the 6 workers from Whitey's Crane Rental and Kinser Crane Service.

The Winton V12 gets unloaded

The day started around 7:00am with Jim, Ray and Pete getting the CE 15 started and ready, and Stan, Charlie and Gerry getting some tools and torches loaded into the shop truck.  We all made it out to the job site a little after 7:30am.  The 165ton crane from Whitey's was there already getting the crane setup, which consisted of several items, including getting the outrigger pads off the support semi and into place, then getting the counter balance weights off the semi and onto the crane, and changing blocks and reconfiguring to use a 10 line lift.  Setting up and tearing down the cranes was probably the longest part of the day.

Meanwhile, Stan and Jamie started removing the wire rope tie downs from the Winton V12 and once the 165ton crane was ready, we moved the Winton out of the way to the ground.  After that, Gerry, Charlie, Jim, and Stan started removing the wire rope tie downs from the 543.  The 165ton crane did a 20 point turn and turned itself around and positioned himself for the lift.  It is very impressive to see the turning radius of a large crane like that (weighing in at 137,000lbs), all wheel steering makes a huge difference, even when you have 10 large wheels.

The 200ton crane arrived about 8:45am, after setting off their boom dolly, they drove into the site and positioned themselves for the lift.  Their support semi started backing into the site and ended up getting stuck near the entrance where the bowl was.  The other semi could not pull it free, so brought the CE 15 over and pulled them backwards all the way in.  They began getting the outrigger pads, counter balance weights and a number of other things setup on the crane.  While the 200ton crane was being setup, a few of us started to torch the support pedestals that were placed under the jack pads of the 543.  This needed to be done so we could get the lifting cables around the lift points which double as jacking pads and cable loops for hoisting the locomotive.

rigging for lifting

543 in the air

The most difficult part of the entire day was getting the lift cables rigged around the lifting pads. The new 1-1/2" cables just didn't want to bend and stay in place.  Charlie, Stan, Ray and Jamie ended up using some 1" nylon pickup tie down straps to squeeze the cables around the radius of the pads, and then used another to hold the cables in the guides of the pads. It took a couple of trys on the first one to get the technique right. We repeated the process 3 more times on each of the other corners.

Once everything was sitting right, we took about 30,000lbs of tension to make sure all the cables would sit right in the guides of the lift points and make sure everything else was settling right.  We all met once more to make sure everyone was clear on the process, lift an inch or two, check some things, lift to clear everything on the flat car, pull the flat car out from under the loco, lower the loco within an inch or two of the rails, line up the flanges one end at a time and lower, checking the brasses and boxes as we set it down.  Then we actually did it all, just how it was talked about, the lift and lowering took less than 10 minutes, with a little extra time taken on the number 2 axle on the firemans side to line up a support plate that had shifted a 1/4" in that journal box. The lift cables were then freed from the 543 and lifted out of the way. There was a small crowd of people from some of the nearby businesses watching too.

Once everything on the journal boxes and trucks were inspected, the 543 and heavy flat car were moved over to the main line out of the way. IRM's DODX flat car was brought back to put the lift cables and spreader bars back onto it and also to temporarily store the Winton V12 on it. Both cranes started the reverse process for setup, with the 200ton getting out of there first since they had the longer drive to Addison.

543 on home rails

Meanwhile the CE 15 with Jim, Ray and Stan switched the flat cars and 543 over to station track 2 and brought the 15 back to the west end in case it was needed as a tow truck again, luckily it wasn't. The 165ton crane finished tearing down and tied down everything on the support semi at about 2:45pm.  The CE 15 was put away and we all headed to a late lunch right after.

It was a very busy day and a big job that went as perfect as one could have wanted. A big Thank You goes out to all the volunteers and to guys at Whitey's Crane and Kinser Crane for a job well done. A gallery album was setup with many photos from the days work, it can be viewed at this link. Please consider a donation to cover track space charges and offset the costs of the cranes to unload the 543.