Wednesday, January 23, 2008

1892 Morgan Crane to be Preserved


The Tod Engine Foundation has recently acquired an 1892 vintage overhead crane manufactured by Morgan Engineering in Alliance, Ohio. This crane is of particular historical interest and will become an important artifact for display and use at the Tod Engine Heritage Park. The crane was originally built for Otis Steel Co. in Cleveland, and used there until the plant closed after WWII. At that time it was sold and moved to Masury, OH and placed in a new building there. It is there to this day. Still fully operational, the crane continues to make lifts to its rated capacity. However due to its age and its need for a dedicated operator, it is to be replaced with a more modern AC crane.
We will be moving the Morgan crane to the Heritage Park this spring for inclusion in the engine house. however, this complicates matters since to include it in the building we have to redesign the structure for a narrower width and add crane columns and runways. This will increase the cost of the structure, however that will be mitigated by the sale of our current 5 ton Wallace gantry crane. In the end having an authentic steel mill crane in our building will certainly make for a much more authentic visitor experience.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

My name is Keith Hudgins. I am the co-owner of EC&M Company (The Electric Controller and Manufacturing Company). I was wondering if the old Morgan crane uses EC&M electrical control? We are a very old company that dominated the crane control business throughout the early part of the 1900's. If we added control to this crane, we may have some original drawings. You can see our web-site at www.ecandm.net. Our control is easy to spot because of the distintive EC&M logo. For what it's worth, we still work very closely with Morgan to provide controls for cranes even today! My email is hudginsk@ecandm.net.