Re:Re: (erielack) Steam Vs Diesel in Work Equipement

["Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>]

It is late spring, 1955, in Seward, Alaska.  I've been in the army for a year and a half and in Seward for a little over a year with my wife and infant (born in Seward) son.  One fine day, I'm wandering around the Army Dock doing army stuff when I hear a steam locomotive coming like crazy and blowing for the grade crossing.  I run into the office upstairs so I can see over the shoreside freight cars and I spy a boom and a roof moving sedately down the track, still sounding like a K-1 (list content) at speed.  It was an (the?) Alaska Railroad steam pile driver moving itself down to work on the trestle leading out to the City Dock.  The rest of the summer was that sound and the kachunk - kachunk - kachunk of the driver replacing piles.

But it WAS steam!

Randy Brown, NH
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. . .  But the Bridge Department kept an Erie steam locomotive crane (I forget the number, but it started with a zero) as a pile driver.  We used it at Croxton in 1968-69 for driving the timber pile foundations for the light towers at the new piggyback yard (the light towers are still standing, thank Heaven).  The crane still had the red window sash, the same as the K-1's !!  The operator was Bob Frisbee, from Hawley, PA.  He drove back and forth to work at Croxton, including weekends when he had to come down to kee!
 p the boiler hot and happy. . . 

Gordon Davids



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