The railroad caboose was bought in 1997. Originally, our plans were to use it as an office and break room for our studio. 28 years passed and it was never fixed up. So, it got listed on Craigslist where a general contractor from St. Charles, MO saw the ad. He made the trip to see it in person on Friday, Sept. 19 and laid down the deposit.
On Tuesday, Sept. 23, a welder from Wilmore, KY came to cut the steps off etc. to prepare it for leaving.
Wednesday Oct. 1 was the day for moving it out. It started before sunrise with the contractor's crew loading up all the misc. smaller pieces before the crane and trucks showed up.
(all the photos from this one onward were taken by Meg White)
This is a 120 ton Liebherr crane from General Steel of Elizabethtown. It's the biggest crane that we've had out here (so far). It had a semi to carry its counterweights, pads and rigging.
The crane guys scoped everything out before getting set up.
I'd never seen a big crane with remote controls before.
These huge steel pads were fabricated by the crane operator (I was impressed).
It took a bit to get totally set up. Here you can see the spreader bar and rigging in place.
Finally it was time for the lift. The buyer is in the foreground ready to video the move.
The body of the caboose lifts off the 2 sets of wheels.
It was set on a lowboy trailer that extended for long loads like this. (Totally a class act!)
Then, we rigged up the trucks...
and set one behind the caboose and the other temporarily off into the grass.
We hooked up the rails.
The contractor's crew knocked the crossties off the rails after it was picked up a little bit.
The last one was in a bind and wouldn't let go. But, where there's a will, there's a way. These guys worked hard!
The rails and the 2nd set of wheels were loaded onto a smaller truck. Everything was tied down and moved out. It wore me out by the time everything got safely down my twisty 1/2 mile driveway and onto the highway. For me, this was... bitter/sweet. You might say, "an end of an era". I would have liked to have fixed it up, but instead I can put the money toward something with a higher priority.
