Steam excavator created in Oswego was used extensively in construction of New York & Oswego Midland Railroad.(Author’s collection)
“Rainbow Trestle” at Otselic Center was 40 feet high and 700 feet long.
(John Taibi collection)
The Midland Railroad’s ’Steam Excavator’
by Richard Palmer
There are numerous references to "steam excavators” being used on the Midland during construction days. The machines supplemented the "pick and shovel" method of railroad excavation, particularly on the Auburn branch where vast amounts of soil had to be moved quickly.The “patented steam excavator” was used by Sage and Williams, building contractors, throughout the Midland.Patented in 1870, the shovel was designed by Clinton H. Sage and Samuel B. Alger and built by John King & Co.of Oswego.Their plant was later the site of Kingsford Foundry & Machine Works on the east side of Oswego.To some extent primitive versions of excavators were used in the 1840s.
The first Oswego shovel was of the “luffing-type,” with a dipper arm attached and hinged to the boom,close to its center.This was similar to many small, rope-operated excavators where raising or lowering the boom provided the "crowding action."The Oswego shovel was advertised as built "in first class manner with framework in white Canadian oak, all gearing of cast steel, double hoist engines with 8” x 12” cylinders." It had two 25-horsepower engines and was dubbed locally as the “steam Irishman.”It was considered a very labor-saving device. In 10 hours it could excavate 900 yards of earth, doing the work of at least 90 men.
The boiler, of upright design, was large enough to "furnish an abundance of steam."The clutches were known as ‘Alger’s Expansive Friction’-types, which were said to take hold of the load gradually, and ‘thus obviate the danger of breakage incident to the use of a positive clutch.’Another Oswego shovel was known as the ‘Improved Land Excavator,’and was similar to the first, but with numerous improvements, including a mechanism that was worked by rack and pinions.The vertical boiler on this machine was 54 inches in diameter and eight feet, six inches high.The machines weighed 48 tons.The works in Oswego were destroyed by fire in 1886. How these machines were moved about minus railroad tracks remains a mystery.Presumably they were assembled and disassembled.
The shovel consisted of an iron scraper and box, about a yard square, attached to a derrick.By means of cables and pulleys the machine could be easily managed by one man.The Midland had at least two or three other shovels on order by 1870.One was also required at Sidney Plains where there was extensive deposits of clay and gravel.
At the site of Crumb Hill, the summit of the Auburn branch, or about 1,700 feet above sea level, the steam shovel was used extensively.Between 300 and 400 men were employed in the summer and fall of 1870 excavating, building trestles, laying rails and ballasting.Timbers for ties and trestles came from local forests. There was a temporary saw mill set up there capable of producing 25,000 feet of lumber in 24 hours. The excavated ground that in clouded rock, quicksand and hard pan, was hauled away to be used as road bed elsewhere. Drilling and blasting was also required in some areas.
“Excavating the Crumb Hill cut, as it was called, took a long time,”recalled Levi Reed,who lived there as a boy. He said after all the dirt that could be profitably be removed by scrapers and wheelbarrows, a steam shovel was brought in to load small cars that ran by gravity to be dumped to make a big fill.They were taken singly by men or boys with a handspike for a brake.When empty, several cars were coupled together and drawn back by a horse. This steam shovel was a wonder to us boys who had never seen anything with greater power than a three-horse tread for a threshing machine.”
The excavator on Crumb Hill could move up to two cubic yards of earth per minute. Three construction trains moved the earth, brought in ballast, rails and ties.To expedite the work, trestles were built. The plan was to eventually replace them with fill. But the line was abandoned between Norwich and DeRuyter in 1879 before this occurred.During excavation railroad officials never knew what the excavators would dig up. Usually it was native American artifacts.On December 21, 1870 the Chenango Union reported that two days before, “the steam shovel brought to light a silver pipe about the size of a common clay pipe. It was very thin and was found in a chink of cemented gravel - probably the property of some Indian chief who inhabited the vicinity years ago.Further excavations may discover other property and remains of the owner.”
This machine, created by William S. Otis, is documented as the first steam shovel ever designed to work on land. It was built in 1835, and patented in 1839. Besides the Midland it was used extensively on construction of the neighboring New Jersey Midland, Rome,Watertown & Ogdensburg, Southern Central and Utica, Ithaca & Elmira in the 1870s.There were many patents taken out on these machines at that period of time, both in America, Canada and Europe - both for railroad, street and highway use.
