Removing the hydraulic turbines from the gorge at Livermore Falls circa 1990

[frenchriverland]

Hey guys:

I thought you might enjoy this adventure!! In the early 1990's I purchased some hydraulic turbines in the gorge at Livermore Falls, NH. Its a little off topic but with the thermite bars, crawler cranes, liquid oxygen and heavy equipment all going at once it resembled a war zone!

Livermore Falls

The guy I purchased theLima 34 crane from said it was WWII surplus from a Naval Base.

William K. Fay P.E.
West Ware, MA

 

[Roller]

What an adventure!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for sharing this experience, very interesting.

Frank

 

[hdexpert]

Wow, what a story!! The pics and story telling are excellent. I hope you two made a bunch of money cause that sure was a LOT of work!!

 

[exbrown]

Great story, and loved the pictures.

Thanks

 

[rickf]

As a former rigger I was looking at those worn and kinked cables and very questionable rigging practices. No counterweights or blocking for the tracks. You guys were very luck to have survived! BUT it all worked out. Thanks for the pictures.

 

[OPCOM]

Amazing! 54Reo needs to see this!

 

[AndrewH]

Cool post. I have operated the lima on our barge. It is named Fred Flintsone. We use it to do some dock maintenence and have used it to salvage boats. I'll try to find some pictures.

 

[frenchriverland]

It took about three weeks to salvage the machines. These are early 1990 dollars. We spent about $12,000 to remove and rehab the machines. We cut the shafts in 1/2 and made 4 turbines from the two camelbacks. We got $125,000 to rehab and retrofit one machine to Pioneer. We sold the other 1/2 of that machine for $25,000, as is. WE installed the other 1/2 of the second machine at our Tannery Pond site. We still own the fourth machine. These machines were on 50 feet of head. The thickness of the buckets to withstand that head was 3/8 inch plate. A little white blasting to get the scale off of them and a coat of paint produced a unit that was 90 % of brand new. If I purchased these individual Francis turbine/gatecases from Voith today, they would cost around $300,000 dollars per turbine. But the Livermore Falls camel back machines had two turbines (left hand and right hand) on a common shaft. So to reproduce the entire camelback with its heavy castings would cost around $700,000 in todays dollars. Did we make any money? We sure had a lot of fun!!!

 

[m16ty]

I'm accually suprised the crane would even lift it's own boom without the counterweight.