S. Berliner, III's McHugh Road Load Page
keywords = McHugh Mc Hugh road load heavy haul haulage lift Trabosa Cline schnabel
Updated: 23 Sep 2008, 23:35
ET
(Created: 21 Feb 2007)
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McHugh Road Load Page
Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher
McHUGH ROAD LOADS
Gigantic highway and off-road trucks and trailers
HEAVY HAULAGE
and we mean HEAVY, here!
[similar to railroad Schnabel
and other GIANT railroad freight cars]
[BIG LOADS - BIG PICTURES!]
This site has now been visited 
times since the counter was installed.
NOTE: I regret that some of my internal links refuse to
work; if they don't, please click "Back" and scroll.
(Details below - images © McHugh - all rights reserved)
McHugh Then and Now
All images on this page, unless otherwise noted, are © McHugh
and may not be copied or used in any way without the prior, written
consent of the McHugh family.
INDEX
On this McHugh Road Load page:
(30 Aug 08)
History of the McHugh Firm.
USS Fairless Vessels.
Philadelphia Red Arrow Cars.
McHugh #243 Tractor.
McHugh Technical Background.
McHugh Bros. Equipment List.
Excerpted McHugh Bros. Equipment Diagrams.
On McHugh Road Load Continuation Page 1:
(17 Sep 08)
1980 McHugh Bros. Brochure.
Moving the Franklin Institute's
707.
(18 Sep 08)
and just scroll on down for much more!
(19 Sep 08)
On the main Road Load page:
Road/Highway Schnabels - material
moved from main RR Schnabel Car page,
MOVING LOCO #833 - moved
to Road Loads page 4 (on sbiii.com) 16 Mar 2005
MOVING COKE DRUMS in ALBERTA
On the Road Load page 2:
MOVING THE GLENWOOD TANKS,
Road Load Models (moved to this page
01 Mar 05),
Mammoet Mammoth Road Loads,
plus just scroll away.
On the Road Load page 3:
Curved Girders.
Danly Press {to follow}.
Miller Transfer Rig.
Moving Big Muskie's Bucket.
Road Load Models (moved from cont.
page 2 on 01 Mar 05).
Road Load Miscellany.
Bay Crane.
On the Road Load page 4
(on sbiii.com):
Moving Big Boy (Loco) #4023.
On the Road Load page 5:
CRNL Coker to Ft. McMurray
BIG Ooops!
(American Transport in Wyoming).
Columbia Gorge.
Alberta SAGD Steam Generator.
On the main RR Schnabel Car page:
Scroll away, plus these specifics -
Schnabel Diagram.
Schnabel Car Loading Technique.
Schnabel References.
Road/Highway Schnabels - moved to this page 16 Mar 00.
On the Schnabel Continuation Page 0:
36-wheel 880-Ton Schnabel Car(s).
Mammoet/ETARCO Mammoth Rail Loads.
On the Schnabel Continuation Page 2:
Scroll away, plus these specifics -
Model Schnabel and other Giant Cars.
Schnabel Miscellany.
Something has to lift these giant loads; see Big Cranes.
Jump to SB,III's RAILROAD Page for a goodly set of RR links
and to SB,III's MODEL RAILROAD Page for a goodly set of model RR links (yea, verily, forsooth!).
McHUGH HEAVY HAULAGE
Highway and Off-Road Variants of
SCHNABEL and other
giant RAILROAD CARS
If this subject interests you, you must also see SB,III's
Road Load page, et seq., and Tom Daspit's site (and others),
linked thereon!
ABB Image from R.I.C.A. (see below)
ABB Power Generation, Inc., Schnabel Car with what appears to be a
Reactor or Boiler Load.
Then here is the Krupp-built 36-wheel CEBX 800 toting a 35.080m (111'
93/4") reactor vessel on 05 Jan
1991 in Saskatoon, Sasketchewan (Canada); it is a composite panorama
made up of six (6) or seven (7) photos:
(1991 photos courtesy of Jim Banner - all rights reserved)
These railcars are shown here as teasers; see
RR Schnabel Cars, et seq., for more on these rail equivalents of
giant road vehicles.
McHugh Heavy Haulage and Road/Highway Loads
McHUGH RAILROAD
MAINTENANCE EQUIPMENT, INC. specializes in Locomotive Cranes
and Locomotives, selling and maintaining them worldwide,
including stocking parts and providing service.
"Locomotive Crane Parts & Repairs, Locomotive Parts & Repairs,
Industrial Plant Locomotives, Locomotive Traction Motors, Locomotive
Crane Traction Motors, Barko Hydraulic Locomotive Material Handlers,
Hydraulic Knuckle Boom Locomotive Material Handlers, Locomotive Crane
Generators, Locomotive Generators, Locomotive Mounted Material
Handlers." (among other things!).
A multi-generation family enterprise, McHugh came to my attention
when J. C. McHugh sent me photos of a boxcab
diesel locomotive they have lovingly restored to operating condition
and show at meets; a 1924 General Electric trolley box motor rebuilt
by Mack into diesel-electric #4 in 1939. The Mack is covered on
its own Survivor Boxcab page and one of the
pictures shows it on a McHugh Bros. flatbed. That's all it took
for me to get interested in Mc Hugh far beyond railroading!
(Photo courtesy of, and © J. C. McHugh - cropped and enhanced - all rights reserved)
[Click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture]
[March, 1970 - Mack #4 on a McHugh tractor trailer at the Rockhill
Trolley Museum site in Rockhill Furnace, on the way to the New Hope &
Ivyland short line railroad in eastern Pennsylvania.]
[More on the RTM below.]
McHUGH RAILROAD MAINTENANCE EQUIPMENT, INC.
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 8, Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
19030
Phone: 215-949-0430 / Fax: 215-949-0422
Plant Location: 225 Lincoln Highway, Bldg# 3 at Strick,
Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
E-mail: info@mchughlocomotiveandcrane.com
McHugh History - Paraphrasing J. C. McHugh:
C(harles). J McHugh Co, started in 1896, with
P.U.C. certificate #87 for the State of Pennsylvania Hauling Authority,
until 1989, when J. C.'s dad's last two brothers left the business.
Hauling was done with with six teams of horses and eight special
wagons, as well as with two steam tractors used for rigging.
C. J. McHugh & Son - 1916
E. P. McHugh - 1932 (plus several other operations until 1959).
McHugh Bros. - 1958 - equipment rentals (started by J. C.,
Sr. - "Jimmy") - rigging, crane rentals, heavy hauling, railroading.
There were a number of firms operating under the McHugh family ægis:
(23 Sep 08)
Any equipment that was in Pennsylvania (at Penndel) was Bucks County
Construction Co. J. C.'s grandfather passed in a boat accident
in 1959 and that corporation was his. His father's company
(McHugh Bros.) was started in Miami, Florida, when Jimmy was at school.
Bucks County Construction Co. was incorporated in 1941 and went out of
the construction business in 1959 (when E. P. McHugh passed on); BCCC
had the I.C.C. rights for hauling and until 1981 you could see in small
lettering "BCCC ICC#" and along with a "PUC #". In 1981, that
business was absored by McHugh Bros. Heavy Hauling.
Equipment was painted with Bucks County Construction Co. until 1969.
You can see the small McHugh Bros. in white on the front engine hoods.
It was also applied on the crane operators upper cab doors and on the
other side as well. As equipment was repainted back then, new
lettering was applied, with the large "BCCC" removed from the cranes
and the small ones from the trucks.
There were several McHugh Bros. companies:
McHugh Bros. Heavy Hauling, Inc.
McHugh Bros. Crane Rentals, Inc.
McHugh Bros. Equipment Corp.
All started in the early 1960's and ran until 1985. There were
also many other subsidiary companies.
E. P. McHugh II specialized in hauling; it was in J. C.'s cousins'
name (a non-union company for hauling nation-wide with owner operators,
not "the big stuff".
Shore Fast Line Railroad - E. P. McHugh II, and J. C. McHugh were the
family members partnered with a stone quarry on this operation.
J. C. had "threatened" me with some more neat photos, like moving a
707 jet from the Philadelphia airport into downtown Philadelphia to
the Franklin Institute, moving a 610-ton reactor in 1973, plus every
day moving of 200-ton American crawler cranes with the crawler tracks,
counterweight, and base section of boom, on a 250-ton I-beam trailer,
long bridge beams, vessels for refineries, etc. (some 400 foot long).
[Bring 'em on - THESE I hadda see! - see the index, above.]
Here's a very old color shot of McHugh Bros. moving a slew of 20'
diameter by 16' high blast furnace segments from Ohio to United States
Steel's Fairless works in (surprise!) Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
[Gee, where have we just seen that town?]:
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
While we're back in the past, here's a great shot of
NINE-year-old J. C., replete with safety helmet, work boots,
and work gloves, attaching the red flag to #61, a 1925 J. G. Brill
Red Arrow center-door car from the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation
Co. on its way from storage at the McHugh's old Penndel yard where it
had lain ca. 1968/69 to its removal in November 1985, when it then
went to a farm near Allentown, Pennsylvania:
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
As J. C. put it, "heavy hauling has been in my blood since an early
age".
#61 has, for the last couple of years, been stored in a trolley car
barn at the Rockhill Trolley
Museum at Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania (near Orbisonia and the
East Broad Top), pending future restoration.
[While I have little interest in traction, this story has
ramifications like all get out! #61 had always been RTM's and
Jimmy McHugh (J. C. McHugh, Sr. - J. C.'s dad) stored it at no charge;
they left the old family business in November 1985 and the rest of
the family said all the RR equipment had to go. Jimmy was an RTM
member and always did this type of work at no charge. There are
FOUR such cars around, two of which are running!
Typical of suburban trolleys built around 1920, Philadelphia Suburban
Transportation Company's Red Arrow Lines cars were large, heavy,
double-ended cars; the PST concealed arched windows with tacked-on
sheet metal after World War II, in an attempt to modernize the cars.
1926 #66 (running) and #73 (unrestored) are at the
Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington (near Pittsburgh).
#73 is important to the PTM because it will enable operation of
two-car trains, just as Red Arrow did at times of heavy traffic.
1926 #76 is running at the Electric City
Trolley Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania; it was originally built
for the PSTC’s predecessor company, the Philadelphia & West Chester
Traction Co, the highest-numbered car of a 32-car fleet of such cars
bought in three orders, starting in 1919. These crowd-swallowing
trolleys roamed the "Red Arrow Lines" system from the 69th Street
Terminal in Upper Darby to suburban terminals in West Chester, Ardmore,
Media, and Sharon Hill. As more modern cars arrived over the
years, the remaining large, heavy Center Door cars were relegated to
rush-hour "tripper" service, school trips, and winter operation to
keep the lines clear of snow. Car #76 was retired in 1976.]
{text per RTM and ECTM
One guess which hauling firm stored and moved these cars
to their respective museums (at no charge)?
When the old McHugh Bros. firm broke up in November 1985 and old #61
had to be moved precipitously, she was loaded out by the volunteers of
the Rockhill Trolley Museum onto a tractor trailer at McHugh's Penndel,
Pennsylvania, facility on the second weekend of November; here is a
picture of that event, with J. C. McHugh standing next to the crane, a
165-ton American Crawler Crane operated by his dad, Jimmy McHugh:
(17 Sep 08)
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
Unfortunately, other parties intervened and, while the Cornwell
Railway freight motor had its truck assemblies removed and delivered
to RTM, the body was set on fire and burnt to the ground.
Happily, the McHugh team is still able to help out the EBT, RTM, and
WK&S with donations and has continued their close relationship with
all three organizations; that's been a long-term commitment.
Here we have old photos of McHugh tractor #243 with a Trabosa trailer
unloading a boiler vessel from a barge, using McHugh 200-ton and
220-ton truck cranes in 1972:
(Images © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Images © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
Jimmy (J. C., Sr. - a mechanical engineer) was involved in the design
of the first 6-axle and first 3-axle drive, 6-axle crane carrier in
1960. He had Hendrickson build them and they were the first
carriers that were not made of a large casting and used the then new
USS T-1 steel. At that time, it was the largest crane of 100-ton
lift capacity using a American hoist upper works:
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
The label in the lower right reads:
SUMMER 1965
Hoisting "GEMINI"
space capsule
GENERAL ELECTRIC
In the early '50s, E. P. McHugh had the world's largest truck-mounted
crane; it was a 45-tonner. J. C. had a color brochure around and
scanned it and sent it to me. He wrote, "It really shows some
neat moves. - - - a fellow made me a model of our old #243 heavy
haul truck from them." The model was in HO (1:87.1). Well, I
found that brochure of such great interest that I have reproduced it
in full and excerpted all the illustrations separately as well; see
the 1950s McHugh Bros. Brochure on
McHugh Road Load Continuation Page 1.
(17 Sep 08)
The 3 big trucks were:
a 1960 Hendrickson #53, with a 671 engine, 7-speed tranny, 5-speed
aux. tranny, 65,000# rear axles, heavy-duty walking beams, and a
9' 3" wide back end (truck tire to tire);
a 1970 Cline 3-axle dump truck, converted into a 3-axle heavy haul
tractor, redesigned by Jimmy McHugh; and
a 1970 Cline 3-axle dump truck, converted into a 4-axle heavy haul
tractor, redesigned by Jimmy McHugh; the units two-axle steering
system was removed from an old '50 American truck crane (from which
the upper works had been made into a crawler crane).
The trailer was a Trabosa, made in Spain; two were made at the same
time, one for McHugh and one for Aycock:
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
[For photos of these trucks, and more, see the 1980 McHugh Brothers
brochure
on McHugh Roadload Continuation page
1.]
(18 Sep 08)
J. C. found these old McHugh Bros. rigging, crane, and heavy hauling
equipment lists [(please bear in mind that they are NOT
current!) Detail enlargements follow.]:
(Image 1 - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
(Images 2 & 3 - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
[These first three are of such great interest, explaining how
multi-axle trailers work, that I have excerpted the images separately
below.]
(Image 4 - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
McHugh Equipment Diagrams (excerpted from images 1, 2 and 3,
above)
(excerpted from Image 1):
(Excerpted images 1a, 1b, & 1c - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted images 1d & 1e - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(excerpted from Image 2):
(Excerpted image 2a - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
(Excerpted images 2b, 2c, & 2d - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted images 2e & 2f - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
BASIC PLATFORM TRAILERS (excerpted from Image 3):
(Excerpted images 3a & 3b - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted images 3c & 3d - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted image 3e - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted image 3f - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted image 3g - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
TURNING RADII (excerpted from Image 3):
(Excerpted images 3h, 3i, 3j, & 3k - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted images 3l, 3, 3n, & 3o - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
(Excerpted image 3p © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
Lastly, J. C. sent me this modern picture of an EMD SW-8{?}, modified
for remote control for ArcelorMittal, the world's number one steel
company (probably for Chicago-based Mittal Steel USA) and sitting on a
McHugh rig:
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
(Excerpted from above image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
ArcelorMittal locomotive #003 has just been off-loaded from the
McHugh heavy haul tractor trailer and is now having the second truck
assembly being pulled into place so the unit can be lowered onto
both truck assemblies:
(23 Sep 08)
(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}
Left below - This photo is of J. C., his wife (Ann), and dad (Jimmy):
(Images 2 & 3 - © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed images for larger, sharper pictures.}
Right above - Here the driver is having a few McHugh men check the load
height with a measuring pole and a level placed on the roof of the locomotive.
See also the 1950s McHugh Bros.
Brochure on McHugh Road Load Continuation Page 1.
(17 Sep 08)
See Road Load page 1 for related links and references
Here are some of my own site links (12 May 00):
My own Road Loads page, et seq.,
My own Tractors page, and
My own Big Cranes page, et seq.
THUMBS UP!
THUMBS UP! - Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
S. Berliner, III
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III -
2008
- All rights reserved.
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