Steam excavator

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Steam excavator during the construction of the Western Pacific Railroad (USA, 1906)
Rail-supported shovel steam excavator (Australia, 1931). The steam boiler - a standing boiler  - can be clearly seen on the excavator  .
Steam-powered floating dredger as a bucket chain dredger (1911)

A steam excavator is an excavator powered by a steam engine .

history

Steam excavators were built in the mid-19th century. They were the first powerful construction machines for earthmoving; Their use made many large construction projects of the industrialization era , such as the construction of canals, railway lines, open-cast mines and large industrial plants, possible. Steam excavators had their heyday at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Steam dredgers were used to build the Suez Canal around 1865 and - the same - to build the river on the Danube after the flood of 1862 in 1870. From the 1930s onwards, they were increasingly replaced by dredgers powered by electric or diesel engines .

Types

Steam excavators were available in various designs, both in terms of the method of locomotion and the construction of the grave vessels:

Due to their great weight, steam excavators were usually designed as rail vehicles (similar to a slewing rail crane ) for movement . If the construction site was away from the fixed railway lines, which was usually the case, the tracks were laid "on the fly " especially for the excavator . Constructions on chains or wheels were less common . Steam-powered dredgers (wet dredgers ) were already available for hydraulic engineering .

The first steam excavators were simple Eingefäßbagger , mostly as a backhoe (with high - or bucket ), later often Dragline with grab or dragline . The most powerful and largest steam excavators, used in mining and in sewer construction, were bucket-chain and bucket-wheel excavators .

Well-known manufacturers

Well-known manufacturers of (land-based) steam excavators were among others:

literature

  • Peter Manktelow: Steam Shovels (=  Shire Library Album Series . Band 355 ). Osprey Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-7478-0483-4 (English).

Web links

Commons : Steam Excavators (Land Vehicles)  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files
Commons : Steam Dredger (Dredger)  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Schütte: The history of the steam excavator. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 22, 2014 ; accessed on February 21, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rainerschuette.de
  2. ↑ Fritz Scheidegger (Ed.): From the history of construction technology: Fundamentals (=  From the history of construction technology . Volume 1 ). Springer, 1994, ISBN 978-3-7643-5069-7 .