Tom,
I should have been clearer. The
plant was shipping 24-30 loads of equipment each and every day by the late
60s. Plant started out building crawlers(D-4s,etc), then as wheel loaders were
developed, it also built those. The volume of crawlers slowly shrank while the
volume of wheel loaders literally sky rocketed. There were large, medium and
small
Wheel loaders. The largest required three HTTX flats to carry the
machine,tires,cab,bucket etc. Always struck me that the plant would build
these monstrous machines and then spend huge amounts of effort breaking them
apart.
Whether early on and served by
switch crews or after 1964 by a road wayfreight, the jobs and cars were
Eola based. It was routine to pull into Eola at the end of a long day
switching at CAT to find the east yard 4PM job switching the train from the
night before.
And in the west yard would be
cars of CATs lined up for west and north movement.
I could go into great detail but have already done so in article for the
BRHS for future
Publication.
Leo
Leo,
I take it that was 24-30 car loads a
week? Or was it a day?
Was the plant switched from by a
local from Aurora? If so, then was Aurora the point where the shipments went
either east to Chicago or west to Galesburg or Savanna?
A Bing maps look at the plant shows
wheeled loaders and backhoes. Do you recall what was being built there in
the 1960's. I would imagine it was still wheeled loaders but what else came
from that plant?
Tom Mack
Cincinnati, OH
---In
CBQ@yahoogroups.com,
<qutlx1@...> wrote :
It was announced on Friday that
the Caterpillar prod uction plant at Montgomery is closing. This plant was
once the largest under roof facility on the Q in the mid 1960s, even before
the massive additions in the late 60s.
800 production workers
will be furloughed. 1,200 positions in the office and support building will
remain.
This plant was shipping a 24-30 flat
car loads in the late 60s and well into the 70s.
Leo Phillipp