Help ID some machines in a photograph

[stuart olson]

Hi all. These days I work as a railroad mechanic and havent been keeping up around here. My father is a railroad modeler by hobby and a equipment operator by trade. Used to be a operator myself. Anyhoo we are trying to figure out what the machines in this picture are. https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/51729/rec/6 . Follow the link to the library website and you can enlarge the scan quite a bit to look at the machines. I can determine that they are a pair of identical shovel fronts. With a pair of dozers. Photograph is dated 1941. Thanks.

 

[mitch504]

I see two disassembled shovels, but I don't see any dozers.

 

[Ronsii]

That does look like a fairly big dozer.. Looks to be hanging off the railcars about a foot too..

 

[RZucker]

I see two disassembled shovels, but I don't see any dozers.

Same here, cant see any dozers, but love the pic. Gotta love a K-37 under steam.

 

[mitch504]

Where do you see a dozer, Ronsii?

I see the carbodies from the 2 shovels, but I don't see anything else with tracks.

 

[Ronsii]

Same here, cant see any dozers, but love the pic. Gotta love a K-37 under steam.

Hmmmm, you don't think that is a crawler with growsers on the fourth car down from the shovels???

 

[RZucker]

Hmmmm, you don't think that is a crawler with growsers on the fourth car down form the shovels???

I saw that, but it looks like it's vertical. Too much track (if it is track) to be wrapped around an idler or sprocket. On the other hand it does look like some 40ish dozer canopies back there but they are out of proportion to the railcars.

 

[Ronsii]

Old tank... you know with the high front tracks to get over stuff??? weren't there a few old really big dozers with high drive...

 

[mitch504]

The tracks would be very tall for their width, and there were no hi-tracks in '41. I don't think it's a dozer

 

[Ronsii]

Maybe just stacked up crates....

 

[RZucker]

All I know is this is an awesome pic from the good ol' days when that railroad was more than a tourist hauler.

 

[mitch504]

Yep.

 

[John C.]

The shovels look like that have a Northwest paint scheme but I'm remembering the cab was on the left side of the house. The only left side house machines I remember were Link-Belts but I don't remember the two tone paint. The dozers of that frame in time might have been something like a 2U D8 Cat, maybe a Cleatrack but I think they were smaller and maybe an some model of International, maybe a TD20 or something. I can't remember or place all those models anymore.

 

[Truck Shop]

One of these possibly John, An I don't know maybe, it's somewhere in that era.

 

[John C.]

That photo reminds me that Lima started out building railroad engines. The units on the train have the roof of the house as a different color which was a Northwest paint scheme.

 

[InsleyGuy]

Northwest and Bay City had right side cabs.

 

[John C.]

I think I put in left when I should have written right. The shovel houses on the train appear to be left side cabs.

 

[Mother Deuce]

That locomotive 481 runs on the narrow gauge today on the Durango & Silverton alongside both 480 and 482. The flat cars are more diminutive then usual because they are narrow gauge iron 27 feet long and 7' 4" wide, 20 feet long from truck center to center. The box car behind them would be about 9 feet high from the rail. I think that John C and Ronsii are probably correct. they are most likely D8 1H's or 8R's and would be 6'6" wide over the tracks. They appeared in 37 and 41 respectively. The 2U's are a little later in 45 and that image was taken in 1941.

 

[Mother Deuce]

Sooooooo... because I had nothing better to do today besides look up interesting things. In common with Otto Perry the guy who took the picture in 41 is my love for capturing images and I never only take one image.
I usually take 2 or 3. I was sitting here thinking that Otto probably did too. I went in search of another image of that consist and found it with #483 (destroyed in a roundhouse pit accident and scraped for parts) now on the head end and 480 as a helper and a few more tank cars. See it here. The dozers are clearly visible in this angle hit the zoom button in the upper right. Then just click the image it will keep zooming in. Those old large format cameras were great. https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/51769/rec/40 and this one as well,
https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/51869/rec/14

 

[Ronsii]

Right on MD!!!! I looked last night with the same thought you had but I couldn't find anything... I didn't spend a whole lot of time either...