There is a Browning steam crane listed abandoned on the river bank in Winsor, Ontario. Anybody know anything about it? Is it still there? There was a photo on the net several years ago but it seems to have vanished.

Listed? Listed where? I've lived 2 hours from Windsor my whole life and have never heard of it.

The crane is listed in the preserved equipment section of the 2014 Canadian Tackside Guide. I remembor seeing a photo of it end down in the river. It looked to have been on a short pier that had colapsed.

That listing is not in the Trackside Guide just two or three years before.

So? It is listed now.

So?

I didn't start this thread with the intention of having a pissing match. I am just seeking information on an abandoned crane. There are very few Brownings left so information is hard to come by. As you may have noticed cranes are the basterd step child of rail preservation and research.

My best friend living in Dearborn at the time and I sailed past a large scrap yard located on the Canadien water front back about the late 1980s or so and saw a steam locomotive crane sitting part way off the end of the scrap yard track. At the time it looked like it wouldn't take much of a push for it to disappear into the river which is deep at that location. Think cheap asbestos disposal. I worked 38 years in engineering for for a railroad . Nobody cared, nobody knew, almost everybody did it. I took 1 or 2 pictures , now buried in a box somewhere . I think John may have written the time and location down in the ships log . IF I come across them I'll post it. Good luck with your search.

Thanks for the information. That sounds like the crane I saw the photo of. Looking at Google Earth I see a big scrap yard between Front Road and the river next to Fighting Island but it has no rail service. Most of the riverfront looks to be parks and high end housing now.

Then don't give flippant replies like "So?".

I just talked to my friend and he said we saw the crane in 1988/89 . It was in Luria Bros. scrap yard in Windsor. He didn't know what became of it. There was also a locomotive crane that a marine contractor had in his yard were he kept his barges, tugs, work equipment ,etc. on an island on the east end of the Detroit river. There was a small rail yard on it were the crane would work between it and the dock bringing equipment to and from the work barges. There was also a very large barge mounted steam crane docked there. And next to that a fantastic steam powered dipper named something like Odomadin. She had two ALCO locomotive boilers in her to power the machinery. I believe her dipper could reach 40' below the waters surface. I was told she dug the 40' deep channel that goes across Lake St Clair. There was an ALCO builders plate on her, whether or not it was for the whole dipper or just the machinery I don't remember. It's all gone now.

Thanks for the information. The only scrap yard on the Windsor side of the river that has rail service now is K Scrap Resources, LTD. There is no sign of the steam crane anywhere so I guess it is long gone. A day or two with a troch would do the job.