Woodbridge Wagon Train

Yesterday I mentioned, in so many words, towing welding machines around the old neighborhood. It was one machine at a time, typically. Yet I remember one day having to move many smaller welders in a more unusual manner.

Gas drives were larger welders powered by gasoline engines. Hence, gas drives, as the welder part was driven by the engine. The smaller ones were electric drives, powered by either 220 or 440 three phase current. 

A gas drive (all of our welders were on wheels) could be hitched to a car or pickup or some such and moved around. Electric drives normally had to be raised by a hoist into the back of a pickup or larger truck for transport. That was fine at the shop where we had modern workhouse amenities. Well, relatively modern. We are, God love him, talking about Joe Cosgriff after all. 

That aside, we needed to move a couple dozen electric drives from a satellite garage (one we rented for storage but away from the main Shop) back to the old barn. Yet there was no way to load the units, which weighed around 1100 pounds, onto the bed of a truck. 

Yet me Grandpa Joe, inventive gent that he was, and I don't mean that so bad as you may think, found a way to work around that. We lined up 6 or 7 electric drives at a time, strung them together with chain and tow ropes and heavy regular ropes and, yeehaw, pulled them the several blocks to the old barn. I'd hazard to guess the lines were better than a half block long.

There would naturally be a bit of clanking and crashing among the welders, so we'd go slow, content to let them bang into one another but not tip or run into anything else. Too, we pulled them through alleys so as not to affect regular vehicular traffic. But we got 'em moved, no real harm, and no foul at all. They were Joe's welders, and if he didn't care about cosmetic damage to them, why should we?