Second of 3 heavy hauls went by today

Adirondack case guy · Mar 9, 2017

Yesterday I had to travel east on US 20, only about 15 miles, but ran into this entourage of state troopers, power line trucks, various service type trucks, more power line trucks behind the big load and more state trooper cars. this heavy haul rig is about 20ft wide. In NY they can only travel during daylight hrs. The procession was parked over in a scenic parking area just to the east of me, This parking area is the highest altitude on US 20 east of the Mississippi.
The power line guys arrived here about a half hour before the haul rig got here.
Spent some time talking to one of the power line guys. He had a fiberglass pole to prop up a low line in front of my dads house. He was from Texas. He said it was really cold here in NY. I laughed and said this has been a mild winter. On the first move about 2 weeks ago, it was snowing hard and NYDOT was spreading salt ahead of the procession so they didn't spin out. Last time they also had a pull truck on the front to make the hill. NY DOT was also in the procession today because it was snowing again, but weren't spreading any salt.
The logistics of a move like this must be astounding along with the hourly cost $$$$$$$$. Just feeding and lodging about a 100 guys in this neck of the woods has to be a logistical nightmare. The fellow said that in this area they were only traveling about 30 miles per day. About an hour and half later another procession of 4 double drop quad axle trailers pulled by tri axle trucks came by with support from line trucks and state police. Not sure if they were part of the equipment for the turbine or something else. They were moving much faster, but I suspect they would catch with the first entourage in a short time. I don't think 16ft. wide trailers can pass 20ft. wide trailers on a two lane hiway, so when they linked up that was one mighty long road train.
If you want to see more about EDWARDS Moving & Rigging just google it.
Loren

Bob Harvey · Mar 9, 2017

WOW ! that is one big mutha of a trailer setup !

4520BW · Mar 9, 2017

My neighbor had a house moved my Edwards. Wonder if it's the same outfit? Think they were out of Kentucky. Had a big 6x6 IH truck pulling the house. And it got stuck in the field. They had a small crawler loader and it would not budge it. I took the 8430 over and pulled them out.

Adirondack case guy · Mar 9, 2017

I find it rather bazaar That these loads have to travel on older antiquated roads through rural villages, but when the interstates were built the overpasses were built too low for loads like this, and I suppose there would be issues with the volumes of traffic on the interstate that would need to flow around this massive load.
Loren

tom stalker · Mar 9, 2017

Loren

175 ton steam turbines coming from Schenectady GE and headed to PA. power plant

They are built in the massive Bldg. 273 on their campus...impressive

JayinNY · Mar 9, 2017

I love that parking area there on rt20 , when you look over the Mohawk Valley, it is a AWSOME site.

JayinNY · Mar 9, 2017

My dad worked in 273, he said the bulding was a
1/4 mile long or longer, I don't remember which. I
liked the days when GE had open house, you could
go there and take tours of the place, have food, and
they would put on fireworks at night. It was really
neat.

Bonnan · Mar 9, 2017

That certainly is impressive; anybody know where in Pa it is headed. Just might look it up.

tom stalker · Mar 9, 2017

The company announced in late 2015 it would be supplying high-efficiency new-technology turbines to the new Moxie Freedom power plant just outside Scranton, which is scheduled for completion in 2018.

tom stalker · Mar 9, 2017

(quoted from post at 02:48:32 03/10/17) My dad worked in 273, he said the bulding was a
1/4 mile long or longer, I don't remember which. I
liked the days when GE had open house, you could
go there and take tours of the place, have food, and
they would put on fireworks at night. It was really
neat.

On the east end they loaded turbines on to railroad cars INSIDE the building

A 400 ton crane on one end of the turbine and a 200 ton crane on the other....impressive to see

A catwalk around the second floor of the machining area for viewing
Then walk thru the first floor to realize the true size of the just the rotor with blades attached....tape controlled machines in the mid 70's then CNC controls in the 80's

tom stalker · Mar 9, 2017

JayinNY · Mar 9, 2017

It is/was quite a place, my dad used to inspect
buckets, then he got into ndt, or as his shirt said
test, they would hook up electricity to something,
put dye on it and look for cracks in the metal. He
spent 35 years there and seemed to like it. Me, I
like there dividends ! Lol

K Effective · Mar 9, 2017

We uprated the original GE low pressure turbines (3) in our Unit 1 with a slightly different Siemans product. Threw a blade about 18 months later, nearly destroyed the whole turbine. Since the wait time for brand new turbines was over three years, we shipped the shafts from the Siemans versions down to North Carolina. This place was able to straighten the bent and bowed shafts to allow us to reuse them, until the new ones could get here. They are about the same size as the one in the left side picture from tom's post.

Billy NY · Mar 9, 2017

It's amazing how it's engineered to spread out the load. I have seen some trailers with similar axle arrangements, but not like this mobile bridge span! Just the goose-neck type going by on occasion.

You took some nice shots of this road train with a bridge going by.

I used to live near this company in Wayne, NJ. (click below) I have driven a '68 &'72 model year heavy spec autocar tractor over the road, low bed say 100K, but what these guys had in their fleet was so much bigger. Unreal what they can move. This autocar was my favorite, I remember walking about in their yard once thinking it would be cool to drive one as the wheels were just so much taller. Hanks' truck photos has a bunch of their stuff posted.
MalBros

Geo-TH,In · Mar 10, 2017

Loren,
Don't you think with a rig like that, you could haul a life time of fire wood?

So when are you going to build one?

That was a neat hauler. Thanks for posting it.
geo

mtny · Mar 10, 2017

Follow the route they took , they actually brought That thing down the crookedest 2 lane
road in Chemung county , right across the river from me . Impressive to say the least.

Loantaka · Mar 10, 2017

Loren,

Great pictures and commentary. Wish we had been there to see that load go by. Thanks for sharing!

Lyla

Loantaka · Mar 10, 2017

Tom,

Thanks for the details. I thought your photos looked like the interior of Bldg. 273. Was in it once but have driven by it many hundreds of
times. 273 ...part of what made "Schenectady the city that lights and hauls the world.". Still lighting the world with the amazing turbines.

tom stalker · Mar 10, 2017

A single bay is shown in the second photo

Building was divided into long bays (A-S ??) and divided into numbered work areas (1 - ??)

When we needed larger tooling for a job, we would go to one of their tool cribs to borrow a tool...usually in k-22 bay

I worked in Bldg. 37 under the big GE sign....a research lab for their R&D Center

Back then, GE made gas turbines (now in NC), steam turbines and generators at Schenectady

tom stalker · Mar 10, 2017

Bill in IL · Mar 10, 2017

Impressive load and interesting pictures.

I would think that they could shutdown the interstate and travel at least on parts of it in the wee hours of the morning. They could get a lot more miles in 2 hours time in the interstate at 3 am than all day of what they are doing there. These days with portable lights they sure could make up for the loss of daylight.

Adirondack case guy · Mar 10, 2017

George, I think it would kill me to fill it, and then I wouldn't need the wood. HeHe
Loren

Bret4207 · Mar 10, 2017

I've been involved in quite a few of the "Super Load" moves. Takes months of planning and whatnot between State and County/Town DOT, engineers, power and phone co, etc. It's expensive. Level 1 DOT inspections before they even enter the State/Country if coming from out of state or from Canada.

The reason there's such a parade of vehicles is liability. It's hard to believe, but there are people out that that somehow manage to hit these things or turn into the procession so they can get to the bar faster. Idiots.

Some of these do get moved at night. We had to take a turbine propeller from Quebec to Massena one night. IIRC the whole idea was to avoid daytime traffic. Nothing like doing a Level 1 in slush at 2AM!

johndeere720GA · Mar 10, 2017

JayinNY
I am guessing that what your father was doing was Magnaflux testing. I have attached a link to the magnaflux site if you are interested.
http://magnaflux.com/Magnaflux

the tractor vet · Mar 10, 2017

I have hauled some pretty big loads in my time but nothing like that . Just after i started driving the company i worked for we made a big move of a shovel that took every lowboy and flat bed trailer we had . we had a Huge Autocar for the time and a big lowboy that had tires all the way across the back end and if you had a tire problem with the ones on the inside you had a HUGE problem . The engine in the Autocar was a Cummins with a turbo and a supercharger and was rated at 380 Hp. and for transmissions it had a 6 and a 5 and a 4 speed . Now i never drove that truck on the road as my boss was the only one who drove that one . When we made this move we had lots of hills to contend with and at the time we never even thought of teaming up extra tractors to push -pull . what we did was we had 4 D 8's with winches that we would unload and place on each side of the road and winch the load as far as we could then block and move up and winch somemore . At one point we had to go around a under pass and to do so we had to fill a cut across rail road tracks and shut the rail road down for 24 hours will we filled compacted and planked then once across dig everything out and make it like we had never been there , once across we then had to use a o road to use a township road get back on the state highway and here again we had to go in and widen that section of road and put down base and cover and make it a super highway just to bypass and under pass just to make one move , lots of equipment lots of people working way before the haul even started . For the prep work it took six weeks and only a week for the move . Durning the move it was the same thing of power lines and phone lines traffic lights having to be held up or taken down ahead of the main loads .

Adirondack case guy · Mar 10, 2017

Tom, while talking to the lineman, he said the third turbine was headed to Buffalo. It still has to come by here though.
Loren

tom stalker · Mar 10, 2017

I went by what the newspaper said....long way from your house to Buffalo

How's the sap running Loren ?

Adirondack case guy · Mar 10, 2017

Sap sure ain't running today, and probably won't next week. Nasty NW wind and temp been in mid 20s all day. Had to push the boiler hard all day to keep the shop and house warm.
Loren

SparepartsTN · Mar 11, 2017

When I used to travel the country in the 1990's I always enjoyed seeing the big loads, the bigger the better. I used to like hauling oversize loads on my step deck or on a company detachable but nothing as impressive as that. One time in Wyoming (I think), on I-40 I met a house coming east that covered both travel lanes and shoulders, no passing that one. Another time I was passed by a building going 75+ mph heading north on I-95 in Virginia, it was late in the day and I figure they were trying to get to a preferred overnight stop, the chase car was having trouble keeping up.

SparepartsTN · Mar 11, 2017

Correction: The building in Virginia was on I-81, been awhile, memory slips.

SparepartsTN · Mar 11, 2017

A couple of pictures of a garage that my father moved in 1958, a distance of 40 +/- miles. No permits, escorts or cops, times change.

Destroked 450 · Mar 11, 2017

It slipped twice, I40 doesn't run through Wyoming but I80 does.
Took some water screens for a power plant across Wyoming going to Salt Lake City
Not real big, 12 ft dia on a double drop, little over 100k lbs.
We had one bridge trailer rated for 80 tons but nothing like in the photo's.

W_B · Mar 12, 2017

The tractor vet's post reminds me of the time they moved Big Musky (largest drag line in the world) across I-70 in eastern Ohio. Filled between high spots on each side and walked it across then dug out the fill.

Second of 3 heavy hauls went by today

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