Half-track dump trucks

[BrokenTrack]

Cole Transportation Museum in Hermon, Maine has a few half-tracks. But they also have a Thew Front Shovel. The neat thing was, it was one owner machine, and the owner drove it into the museum under its own power. If you ever get a chance to go...GO...it is the best $10.00 you ever spent, and the place is jammed with all kinds of stuff.

Myself, I never thought the Linn Half Track ever got a fair shake, if they had put a donkey engine on the back, it would have been the first skidder.

 

[ArlyA]

What year was the photos taken? The Panama canal was done in 1918 and I would guess this was slightly more recent. Love this industrial history.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I got to drive a steam powered half-track a few years ago. It was at the Maine Heritage Days where the State of Maine rebuilt a steam Lombard Log Hauler. They said that since tax payers paid to rebuild it, they would give rides, and let taxpayers operate it.

Most were used for logging, but a few people and municipalities did put dump bodies on them so they could haul sand, and plow snow off the roads.

 

[bcp]

Loggers used them, too. Linn was the builder of most of them.

Built until 1950.
10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

Bruce

 

[Hay Dude]

Loggers used them, too. Linn was the builder of most of them.

Built until 1950.
10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

View attachment 651907


Bruce

Wow, what a neat, tough ol truck that yellow Linn halftrack is. Thanks for sharing.

 

[bindian]

If'n you ever retire, maybe you could get the heck out of Texacuss and mosey up to Washington State and looksee at the Polson Museum ..... They have the great great grand daddys of that Morooka you have been pining over. And the shovel thing.....

Texacuss?........... you're jealous. I'm past the Morooka as my pond is F-I-N-I-S-H-E-D.
hugs, Brandi

 

[BrokenTrack]

I really liked the Linn Half-Track.

I live in Maine, so I am supposed to have an affinity for the Lombard Log Hauler which was the first bulldozer to ever go into production. And growing up, the shop where they were made was just across the river from where my Grandfather lived in Winslow. We would cross the Two Cents Bridge and see a Lombard they had on display there.

Over the years, the machine was getting stripped, so my Grandfather told the City of Waterville and they enclosed it so vandals would not take what was left.

I think Lombard built them right up until the late 1940's...steam, gas and then diesel.

My wife's family, they built a wazoo of logging railroads in California...the Towle Brothers.