The Hulett cranes
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The AI-made thumbnail cracks me up. âYes, letâs unload ore from this ocean liner with inconsistently tall smokestacks.â
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One with a little more touch of reality
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âŚand hydraulic cylinders on the top boom of the Hulett? Apparently the one in the middle is for unloading logs?
I grew up around Clevelandâs Huletts (there were still10 remaining) and I so remember being up close to them at night. The moaning and whirring sounds of the motors and winches was something to behold!
The buckets are all wrong on the AI image as well:
Hulett_Bucket-chain-repair by Edmund, on Flickr
Hulett_Iron-and-Steel_1915 by Edmund, on Flickr
Only a few of the experimental Huletts were steam powered. The âproductionâ models were electrically driven and power was supplied by a nearby power plant and fed to the Huletts through sliding contact shoes.
Cheers, Ed
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Huletts are, if you ask me, interesting machines.
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Can someone find the clip of someone operating a Hulett, taken from inside the operatorâs cab? It is instructive to see just how little control motion was necessary to achieve all that coordinated force and speedâŚ
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As a lowly deckhand, I was at the bottom of the hold sweeping up what the Huletts left behind, then all of a sudden the darned thing would be coming down fast right next to me. They were hard to hear as the arm went down into the holdâand it was as scary as it was awesome. If I had known what I was getting into when I took the job, I wonder if I would have done it anyway. To say the least, working on the âboatsâ was dangerous, especially to a college kid. As an introduction to the world of hard-working men, it was unmatched.
You had to be next to one to really appreciate how HUGE they were.
Two remain, in pieces. I forget whether theyâre in Cleveland or Toledo.
Photographs do not do justice to the size of SHIPS - not fishing boats but Lakers or Ocean going vessels. You look a photo and it gives you dimensions - but that is all just number. See a vessel up close and personal and you get a crook in your neck from looking up, up and away.
As a kid my father took me along Key Highway in Baltimore - where Bethelhem Steel had one of the ship repair yards with dry docks to get the vessels out of the water. When you see a ship on the water, your mind doesnât doesnât âseeâ that there is 20 feet, 30 feet or more of the vessel that is below the water line. Put the ship in a dry dock facing the street and the vessel just towers over all the one and two level buildings that line the street.
Would occasionally cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge outside of Annapolis which is the holding area for ship that have port calls in the Port of Baltimore - looking down from the 160 ft high bridge - the vessels are huge (even the âsmallâ ones) HUGE.
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Amen.
I know thereâs not one in Toledo. I know that someone in Cleveland was trying to save one, but I donât think theyâre successful. At the most, parts of one are laying on the ground. Unless one is displayed at a viable museum showing other aspects of the industry, nobody is going to visit it.
Not any more⌠I know the guy that chopped them up. The only thing remaining is a bucket and leg, I belive in Huron, Ohio.
Hereâs what they looked like back in 2020:
Huletts-Today by Edmund, on Flickr
Theyâve since been cut up.
Cheers, Ed
In the Summer of 1971 I got stationed as Asst. Trainmaster to Cleveland, primarily to ramrod the interchange with the PC at Whiskey Island. Cleveland Electric Illuminating was getting coal trains out of the mines around Holloway, OH in Southern Ohio. The trains were 105 cars which just fit on the interchange tracks on the island - three 35 car tracks. Putting the first two tracks on the island was no big deal. The third track however, required the B&O crews to get permission to occupy the PC Eastbound Main and operate from the West Switch at Whiskey Island and operate on the EB Main to the Interchange switches on the West End of the drawbridge over the Cuyahoga River. Permission could not be given if there was a train lined or past the controlled signal at Elyria - about 15 miles West of Whiskey Island - This main line was the primary one from Chicago to New York, the old NYC Main Line. Traffic was heavy and B&O crews could get trapped on the Island for hours.
Being on the Island I got many observations of the Huelltâs in operation.
Look at a cruise ship or container ship up close or cruising by to see something really gigantic.
Yep - Big enough to physically block the Suez Canal (EverGiven)
I think those enormous cruise ships are an affront to naval architecture; they donât look like cruise ships as much as they do container ships. The QE2 was the last of the beautiful liners, just like thereâll never be another 20th Century Limited or Santa Fe Chief.
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I have to agreeâwhen I went to Duluth it was an impressive experience, seeing the ships and the lake and everything. Big contrast for a fellow whoâd never seen a lake bigger than Sakakawea!
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NKP, I agree about most cruise ships. They look like floating hi-rise hotels.
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Which is what they are. They are hotels where you only have to unpack once and get to visit six to ten destinations. At least thatâs how my wife and I treat them.
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