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CRANES AT WORK ON THE
PANAMA CANAL DURING ITS CONSTRUCTION
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Much of the work of preparation during
the first two years of American occupation,1904-1905,would have been
seriously delayed without the French supplies and equipment. In the
shops and storehouses a plentiful supply of repair parts, shop tools,
stationary engines, material and supplies of all kinds of good quality
were found. The American Isthmian Canal Commission (I.C.C.) gradually
replaced the old French equipment with machinery designed for a larger
scale of work (such as the giant hydraulic crushers supplied by the
Joshua Hendy Iron Works), to quicken the pace of construction.
The Joshua Hendy
Iron Works was an American engineering company that existed from
the 1850s to the late 1940s. It was at one time a world leader
in mining technology and its equipment was used to build the
Panama Canal, amongst other major projects. The company went on
to service many different markets during the course of its
existence, but is perhaps best remembered today for its
contribution to the American shipbuilding industry during World
War II. By the 1890s, the Joshua Hendy Iron Works had
become a technology leader in the mining industry, supplying
equipment to mining companies all over the world including ore
carts, ore crushers, stamp and ball mills and other equipment to
countries as far away as Russia, the Dutch East Indies, the
Philippines, China and Japan.
Many of the engineering innovations developed by Hendy became
mining industry standards, still employed as late as at least
the 1970s, such as the hydraulic giant monitor, the hurdy gurdy,
the tangential water wheel, the Hendy ore concentrator, the
Challenge ore feeder, and the Hendy hydraulic gravel elevator.
Hendy giant hydraulic crushers were used to dig the Panama
Canal. |
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Excavating at Tabemilla 1888 |
Abandoned French Machinery |
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The railway greatly assisted in the building of the canal. Besides all
the massive tons of men, equipment and supplies the railroad hauled
around it did much more. Essentially all of the tens of millions of
cubic yards of material from the required canal cuts were broken up by explosives,
then loaded by steam shovel
onto rail cars and hauled out by
by locomotives pulling the
spoils cars running on parallel tracks.
The rock and dirt was first blasted loose by explosives. Two sets of
tracks were then built or moved up to where the loosened material lay.
The steam shovels, moving on one set of tracks, picked up the loosened
dirt and then piled it on the flat cars traveling on a parallel set of
tracks. The dirt was piled high up against the one closed side of the
car. The train moved forward as the cars were filled until all cars were
filled. A typical train had twenty dirt cars arranged as essentially one
long boxcar. |
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Labourers at work shifting
track |
Line of dirt cars |
Culebra Cut 1907 |
Culebra Cut 1907 |
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On arrival of the train at one of the approximately 60 different dumping
grounds a three-ton steel plow was put on the last car (or a car
carrying the plow was attached as the last car) and a huge winch with a
braided steel cable stretching the length of all cars was attached to
the engine. The winch, powered by the train’s steam engine, pulled the
plow the length of the dirt loaded train by winching up the steel cable.
The plow scraped the dirt off the railroad cars allowing the entire
train load of dirt cars to be unloaded in about ten minutes or less. The
plow and winch were then detached for use on another train. Another
plow, mounted on a steam engine, then plowed the dirt spoils away from
the track. When the fill got large enough the track was relocated on top
of the old fill to allow almost continuous unloading of new fill with a
minimum of effort.
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Cranes shifting track |
Steam Crane laying tracks |
Dirt train in Culebra Cut |
Culebra Cut 1904 |
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When the steam shovels or dirt trains needed to move to a new section,
techniques were developed by William Bierd, former head of the Panama
Railroad, to pick up large sections of track and their attached ties by
large steam powered cranes and relocate them intact without
disassembling and rebuilding the track. A dozen men could move a mile of
track a day, the work previously done by up to 600 men. This allowed the
tracks used by both the steam shovels and dirt trains to be quickly
moved to where ever it needed to go. While constructing the Gaillard
Cut, about 160 loaded dirt trains went out of the cut daily, and
returned empty—a train about every one and half minutes of the day. |
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Culebra Cut 1909 |
Dirt train and cars |
Aqua Clara Dam under
construction |
Clearing earth in Culebra
Cut |
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Most of the cars carrying the dirt spoils were wooden flat cars lined
with steel floors that used a crude but amazingly effective unloading
device, the Lidgerwood system. The railroad cars had only one side and
steel aprons bridged the spaces between the cars.
Techniques were developed to pick up large sections of track by steam
powered cranes and relocate them without rebuilding them. This allowed
the track to precede the railroad mounted steam shovels where ever they
needed to go. Massive scrapers were developed to scrape the dirt off the
dirt cars where it was being unloaded allowing them to be unloaded
rapidly. |
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Steam Shovels at work |
Steam Crane in Gaillard Cut |
Shovel loading dirt into
cars |
Dynamite crew |
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The railroads and the steam shovel were the two main pieces of power
equipment used to construct the canal. One of the suppliers of steam
shovels and cranes for the construction of the waterway, was Bucyrus
International, Inc. Bucyrus is a manufacturer of heavy mining equipment.
Founded in Bucyrus, Ohio in 1880, the headquarters were moved to its
current location in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1893.
Around the turn of the century the 95-ton steam shovel was the largest
the company built and they were used on many projects and Bucyrus
shovels were the most prevalent in use during the construction of the
Panama Canal. |
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Tin Kettle Hill - Steam
Shovel at work |
Panama Canal Steam Crane |
Shovel crew |
Steam Shovel in Culebra Cut |
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The railroads, steam
shovels, enormous steam powered cranes, rock crushers, cement mixers,
dredges, and pneumatic power drills used to drill holes for explosives
(about 30,000,000 pounds (14,000,000 kg) were used) were some of the new
pieces of construction equipment used to construct the canal. Nearly all
this new equipment was built by new, extensive machine building
technology developed and built in the United States. |
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Crane assisting with lift Gatun
Locks |
Locks Construction Site
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Overhead Cantilever Cranes |
Cantilever Crane and Steam
Shovel |
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The disposal of all the excavated
material was a very important aspect of the excavation. Nearly hundreds
of millions of cubic yards of earth and rock were moved and spread. Part
of the material was used to turn an island into a peninsula 3 ¼ miles
out on the Pacific Ocean, creating the Naos Island breakwater. Another
part of the material was used to create nearly 500 acres along the
Pacific Ocean coast to create the town of Balboa and the U.S. military
post of Fort Amador. Despite all this, millions of cubic yards of earth
were disposed of in the jungle. The largest disposal sites were at
Tavernilla, Gatun Dam, Miraflores, and Balboa. |
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Cantilever Crane in Quarry |
Crane in Culvert at
Miraflores Locks |
Cantilever Cranes |
130 ton Steam Crane |
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