The old pump house on the Missouri had a setup I'd never seen

Took a delivery run up to Sioux City last Tuesday and stopped for lunch by the river. There's this old pump house that's still in use, and I walked over to watch the crew work for a bit. Their dredge had a winch system where the anchor lines ran through a single central spool instead of separate drums. That thing handled the swing like nothing I've ever run. The operator said it cuts their repositioning time down to about 4 minutes from the usual 15. I asked about wear on the line, and he said they replace it around 600 hours, which seemed short to me, but he swore it's cheaper than a pulled anchor. I took some photos on my phone, but they don't really do it justice. Has anyone else run a single spool setup like that, or is this just a river thing?

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coran638d ago

My buddy ran a dredge down near St. Louis for years and he told me about a similar setup on a old converted barge. Said the single spool was a nightmare at first because the cable would birdnest if you didn't keep tension just right. He burned through a whole spool in one season before he figured out the trick was matching the line size to the load or something like that. After that he loved it though, swore he could swing that bucket into spots the other guys couldn't reach. He moved on to a different outfit and still talks about that winch like it was his first truck.

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