Sick shots Shawn....Man I would love a American crawler model. I REALLY want the 9310!

Justin

awesome pics shawn, id also like to see all 3 cranes in 1/50

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Brandon

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Great pics! Never realized they had that much mobility with a load like that, especially in tandem. Thanks for posting.

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Chris

That's a great find ! One of the cranes ( crane on the left in the first picture ) looks very much like an American 9280 to me, which are very few and far between these days.

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- Danny

very nice shots..what is the location of the 21000 again, it's time for a trip.


and, for the Dallas area people, there are three large liebher's crawlers at 635/121/114 interchange just north of DFW airport (looked like 1280 with no jib)...lots of construction going on there, eventually I'll make it back for pix.

Maybe!

Me and jake were there earlier I got close ups of the americans
I will post the 21000 pic later once the wife is done with her school work
The 21000 site is now lockdown with no trespassing signs. You have to get access from the state to go in therwe now. I did not see the sign until we were leaving

Jason

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NIkl Scale Models

Great catch, great set of photos! This is my vote for "Forum Photo of the Year: Cookie Category":


Fantastic shot! I bow to you sir.

- Chris

I'd have to go pull some of my reference materials, but I am going to suggest 9310s or 9320s. The 9280s were very limited and likely "specials." The 9280s are in a class around New York like the big 900s Crane and Machinery had built for the various tunnel contractors for use around Chicago some years ago. The 9280s are not listed in any of the normal guides. I am going to suggest that the 9280s were originally built for Castaldo though I am uncertain.

The big standard machines were the 9299 at 165 tons with 300 feet of boom and 100 feet of jib in the long reach version. While built until almost American's demise, it was their flagship until about 1970 or 1971. The 9310 was introduced around the same time as the Manitowoc 4100 and was a 225 ton machine. The main long boom was 350 feet with the 100 feet of jib. The final variant and introduced later was the 9320 at 250 tons. It used the same booms lenghts as the 9310. The 9320 was also available in a tower attachment which with tower, lufifing boom and jib went to 480 feet.

American offered three boom tips of which several included more than one section. The longest used a 50 foot inner tapered and an outer 50 foot further tapered tip section. It is sometimes called the Castaldo tip in honor of I am sure the customer that requested it first. Castaldo was a New York City area owner of large long reach Americans and I suspect likewise the owners of the initial 9280s. At one time it was they and Gerosa's Manitowoc 4100 crawlers. Interesting to note the Gerosa ran the Americans in the truck variants. There very very few sheeves in this tip as you usually only ran a single or double part.

The heaviest was the McHugh tip which is all sheeves and was used on very short booms. Again named after the requesting customer. It would the needed parts for a 250 ton or more lift. While McHugh drove the creation of the earlier big American truck cranes, they also indicate that they had a 265 ton crawler. Again this is not a normal American truck model. Likewise they supposedly went to 500 feet of boom or more. I am almost certain that this was not a self erecting configuration.

Maybe some of our New York area members know more. Otherwise I'll have to track down an old Chicago area acquaintance who might know.

The pictured cranes are definitely of the 900 series at their finest. We can always look for 1000 series and 1100 series as they existed as well in very small numbers. These were the American response to the big Lima's and P&H's at 300 tons and were respectively 350 and 450 ton Machines. Only Link Belt in an earlier attempt at the big machine market attempted to compete with 250, 300, 400 and 500 ton machines. I believe these were the 718, 818, 918 and 1018s.

Those pictured seem to have the standard boom tip which was a balance between capacity and reach.

Thank you Plumber for these nice pics, the cranes are definitely 9310's, not the 9320 whose the undercarriage is more heav. I'm building one in 1/10th scale, i have enough blueprints but the 9320 cranes are rare, especially with white Terex colour.

DC craneman: thank for your details , i am fascinated by American crane and early truck crane from this St Paul company based, McHugh had an impressive fleet o heavy American crane, but through the rare pictures i have, it seems like if each american heavy truck crane was sepcially designed for the customer? there are really some differences ... not like for the P&H big trucks cranes which were in the same design ( some had a different truck carrier cab but tthat's all).

My big project would be to mount my upper 1/10 american body on a carrier, like the compact ones used by McHugh: i really like their carrier used for their big 250 T cranes.