Kinda Neat Old Pictures from Central Illinois

kruser · Jan 23, 2014

in the late 1930's
Take a look at the truck dumping rock in the upper part of the second picture!

Anonymous-0 · Jan 23, 2014

brave soul!

M Nut · Jan 23, 2014

Can see why they have that truck chained up on the tires. I'd want all the traction I could get too!

Billy NY · Jan 23, 2014

Nice, big ole civil job, we have retaining walls like that not too far away, cool to see how they were built, I'll bet from the same era. I will say one thing, trench safety has certainly come a long way, I'd not want to be in that one, maybe the soils were stable or hard, but I have dug one person out of a smaller trench collapse, and have been in one trench collapse myself, was holding a rope, that was connected to a phone cable to support it, it fractured behind me, collapsed, I rode it down 20 feet, held on to that rope, and started waving my other hand to the excavator operator, so he would not hit me with the bucket, he set it close to me and I took the elevator up and out. Soon after, boss man had me go with the lowboy and get a trench box, I said to him, "day late and dollar short isn't it ? LOL ! Well better late than never, was in fine sand too, he was well experienced with a large highway contractor, sometimes people do things for odd reasons. That was a miserable 1000' of 8" sewer line, and they had to go back, dig it up again, it sagged.

rrlund · Jan 23, 2014

Kind of a spine tingling moment there with the brakes those trucks had.

Stan - Florida · Jan 23, 2014

50 some-odd years ago, before I-74 was built, we took US 150 across your part of the state. Not sure where we caught it from 136 over in the eastern part, though.

Somewhere along the line, maybe around Coal Valley, off to the south there was a gigantic shovel that we could see. Was that strip mining on a big scale?

I guess I don't expect you to remember that far back, but maybe someone will chime in.

Stan

Sean Feeney · Jan 23, 2014

Good eye's

Pops1532 · Jan 23, 2014

Stan, The Coal City-Braidwood-Essex area was a big strip mine area. Peabody coal was still operating there in the early 70's. That's well north of the I-74 corridor though.

Pops1532 · Jan 23, 2014

(quoted from post at 00:30:58 01/24/14) Nice, big ole civil job, we have retaining walls like that not too far away, cool to see how they were built, I'll bet from the same era. I will say one thing, trench safety has certainly come a long way, I'd not want to be in that one, maybe the soils were stable or hard, but I have dug one person out of a smaller trench collapse, and have been in one trench collapse myself, was holding a rope, that was connected to a phone cable to support it, it fractured behind me, collapsed, I rode it down 20 feet, held on to that rope, and started waving my other hand to the excavator operator, so he would not hit me with the bucket, he set it close to me and I took the elevator up and out. Soon after, boss man had me go with the lowboy and get a trench box, I said to him, "day late and dollar short isn't it ? LOL ! Well better late than never, was in fine sand too, he was well experienced with a large highway contractor, sometimes people do things for odd reasons. That was a miserable 1000' of 8" sewer line, and they had to go back, dig it up again, it sagged.

You were lucky Billy!
A friend of mine got buried and lived to talk about it. The smell of freshly dug dirt makes the hair on his arms stand up.

TomH in PA · Jan 23, 2014

"Back it up to the edge and hit the brakes"

I hope they had a cable on that truck, but back then who knows?

Bob Bancroft · Jan 23, 2014

It ought to be chained to something in front of it. Maybe it is? I can't tell.

Stan - Florida · Jan 23, 2014

Pops,

Well, it's been a long time since I saw that machine. I might have even seen the area you're talking about from I-74 in later years, but I'm really sure it was south of whichever road I was on.

A mind is a terrible thing to lose, or, more correctly, "A mind is a terrible thing".

Stan

the tractor vet · Jan 23, 2014

I worked on jobs like that and back then a ditch box was unheard of . On one sewer job with bad dirt and with the depth we had to change from the backhoe to drag line and to level bottom of ditch we put the D 4 down there . The bottom was about ten foot wide and the top was well over thirty feet wide . Made back fill real hard so as not to move the pipe .

dgasper · Jan 23, 2014

Stan wrote "50 some-odd years ago, before I-74 was built, we took US 150 across your part of the state. Not sure where we caught it from 136 over in the eastern part, though."

I lived in Champaign back in the 60's and early 70's.
If memory hasn't failed, 136 crossed 150 a few miles southeast of Le Roy.

Stan - Florida · Jan 23, 2014

Yep, that sounds right. It was a long trip from Crawfordsville, Indiana to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in those days, especially in an 85 horse Ford Falcon.

Stan

oleblu · Jan 23, 2014

Stan-Florida, drop me an e-mail at [email protected] I can't get yours to work.

oleblu · Jan 23, 2014

Thought those were pictures of the footings for the new Kruser Homestead and Oliver Tractor Emporium....till I read the caption.

Pops1532 · Jan 23, 2014

Well Stan, your memory is pretty good. I've lived in IL all my life and never heard of Coal Valley so I just looked at Bing maps and found Coal Valley on 150. It's not far from the quad cities. Coal City is almost straight east of Coal Valley.

And to the person that said 150 and 136 crossed near Leroy in central IL. That's exactly right. They also meet again in Danville on the east side of the state.

504 · Jan 23, 2014

There is a big rock and some other kind of stop behind it.

ShadetreeRet · Jan 23, 2014

Always interesting to see how they did it "way back when". I have seen photos of the Hoover Dam when it was under construction, the dump trucks looked like they could carry about a cubic yard. But that's still better than horse and wagon.

ohiojim · Jan 24, 2014

I'm surprised there is enough room in the cab of that truck for the driver and his go-nads

Billy NY · Jan 24, 2014

What was really strange was, the owner of this outfit I worked for was about 3 years older than I at the time, we were in our 20's but he grew up in this business, ran highway crews, his dad was the best, and was formerly a partner in that large company that has done very well, with an impeccable reputation, I had them on a huge state job in '98-'99, you will not find any better in that business around here. Both of them knew better, thats the part I never got, they were not new at this, heck, his dad taught me how to run excavator, dozers I knew since a kid, just a great guy to work with, he was in that excavator when I was hanging from the rope, big smile on his face when he turned back from casting the previous bucket, it was comical, but could have been deadly too. It was fine sand, high water table. 2 things we got after that job kicked our proverbial @sses, a trench box and a 1000' of well points ! I never got why we did not have those things when we mobilized. I still see him around, he always treated us good on the pay, we worked hard, but I appreciated that, just the sand surfing in the trench was a little odd ! LoL!

Billy NY · Jan 24, 2014

Thats what happened with this sewer line, it was that sand and water table. I think we tried using the angle of repose to open up that deep trench, but it was so much material, loose, then the undisturbed would fracture, and you could predict when it would collapse. Our foreman at the time, a younger man than I, less experience, left the grade stick further back in a 6' deep trench I was digging, we were uncoiling copper tubing for a lateral to the 12" water main. He proved that timing theory, where the walls would fall in not long after you opened up the cut. I said do not go any further back, find another way to grab that stick from above, or we'll will dig it out. Next thing I knew, he ran down the trench, got the stick, but on the way back, close to where we were, a huge chunk broke off, threw him to the opposite side of the trench wall, pinned him up to his mouth, took the wind out of him, it took me almost 2 hours to hand dig him out, the sand would not let him go, nice easy saturday morning job, be done at noon, we were done them he went to ER to get checked I went home.

Stan - Florida · Jan 24, 2014

Pops,

Thanks for the comeback. Danville might have been where we caught 150. Heck, it really doesn't matter all these years later.

Stan

Stan - Florida · Jan 24, 2014

Pops,

I looked at a map, and I'm pretty sure we did hit 150 at Danville.

Stan

mj · Jan 24, 2014

(quoted from post at 18:46:39 01/23/14) 50 some-odd years ago, before I-74 was built, we took US 150 across your part of the state. Not sure where we caught it from 136 over in the eastern part, though.

Somewhere along the line, maybe around Coal Valley, off to the south there was a gigantic shovel that we could see. Was that strip mining on a big scale?

I guess I don't expect you to remember that far back, but maybe someone will chime in.

Stan

At one time in the '70s the 'WORLD'S BIGGEST SHOVEL' was down at Victoria which is SE of Coal Valley, so I suppose that there was some strip-mining going on all though that country. I remember that you could see that big shovel for quite a distance as you drove up to it. There has been mining going on there since ??????? That coal field must be pretty big as there were people digging it quite a ways to the West of Victoria but at about the same latitude, way over to Alexis and beyond; it probably goes East of Victoria as well. I imagine that somebody still living around those parts can tell us all a lot more

Stan - Florida · Jan 25, 2014

MJ,

Thanks for the comeback. It's nice to know that my memory has not turned to mush after all - LOL.

Stan

Stan - Florida · Jan 25, 2014

Pops,

I think my memory is gone after all. I looked up Coal Valley on a map, and it's nowhere near I remember seeing that gigantic shovel.

Oh, well!

Stan

Kinda Neat Old Pictures from Central Illinois

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