If you ask the question: "without what would the great construction projects of the first five-year plans be impossible?" in fact, they would have been physically impossible (at least in a comparable time frame) without steam excavators, which made it possible to accelerate the pace of excavation tenfold.
Without them, these construction projects would have dragged on for decades.
Without them, these construction projects would have dragged on for decades, and it is far from a fact that they would have had enough labor. The history of Stalin's industrialization began in 1882, in the town of Bucyrus, Ohio, where a rail-borne steam excavator called Thompson's Iron Steam Shovel, Thompson's Iron Steam Shovel, was put into serial production at the local Bucyrus Foundry & Manufacturing Company. This unit became the prototype for the first and only Russian pre-revolutionary steam excavator "Putilovets", the production of which began in 1903 at the Putilov machine-building plant.
Unlike modern excavators, which are hydraulically powered, Byusair's all working mechanisms were powered by chain winches. The bucket volume was 1.4 cubic yards, and the excavator crew consisted of four people: the driver, also known as the "crew commander", the fireman, the lubricator and the bucket operator. In addition, each excavator was assigned a brigade of railroad workers of seven people, who manually laid the rails in front of it. The mass of the vehicle was 75 tons. A little later, a more powerful 85 ton modification with a two cubic yards bucket appeared. At the time of its creation, Thompson's excavator was considered the most productive in the world. In a day, he could take out and move to trolleys up to 4,000 cubic meters of soil. For comparison, the daily production rate per one excavator was, depending on the complexity of the soil, from 2.5 to 4 cubic meters. Thus, one steam shovel replaced up to a thousand ordinary ones. At the same time, it was relatively simple to manufacture and could be produced at any steam locomotive plant.
It is not surprising that when in Russia, due to the large scale of railway construction, the need arose for excavators, a Byusyrus car was taken as a model, although by 1903 it was considered not new. From 1903 to 1917, 37 "Putilovtsy" were built in St. Petersburg, which worked throughout the country, from Eastern Siberia to the Kola Peninsula.
In 1929, the industrialization program required the resumption of excavator production. They decided not to bother with the development of a new machine, but simply shook off the dust from the drawings of the Putilovets and transferred them to the Kovrov Mechanical Plant, which was to become the flagship of the Soviet excavator building. There, the development of the production of an earth-moving machine at first went neither shaky nor roll. The first prototype was made only in the spring of 1931, the second was assembled a few months later. Such a pace of work, of course, did not please the authorities, and they decided to drastically accelerate them, transferring the plant to the OGPU. I don’t know (although I guess) what methods the Chekists used, but under their strict guidance, the enterprise instantly started working with machine-gun speed, having issued as many as 177 excavators in 1932-34. That is, in three years they were made almost five times more,than the pre-revolutionary Putilov plant produced in 14 years!
Due to the change in the place of production, the name of the car was changed from "Putilovets" to "Kovrovets". "Kovrovtsy" were used at many construction sites, but most of them were sent to the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, where the appearance of these powerful units made it possible to sharply intensify earthwork. For example, at the so-called Deep Excavation in the Khimki area, tens of thousands of excavators in the first two years took out two million cubic meters of soil, and over the next two years 32 excavators removed eight million cubic meters from the channel of the future channel, digging a giant trench 24 meters deep and 140 meters wide. meters and a length of six kilometers. We can say with confidence that without the "steam shovels" this and many other construction projects would not have been completed before the war.
The most surprising thing is that some copies of "Kovrovtsev" worked until the end of the 1980s. Unfortunately, not one of them has survived to this day; in the "troubled times" of the 90s, all these epoch-making machines were dismantled for scrap.
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Thompson's car was mounted on a long four-axle railway platform and resembled a boxcar. A horizontal steam locomotive boiler fed three single-cylinder steam engines with a total capacity of 150 hp. One provided the movement of the excavator, the other - the horizontal rotation of the boom, and the third - the movement of the bucket. The boiler was fired with wood or coal. The cabin was lit with kerosene lamps.
A drawing of a Thompson excavator manufactured by Byusyrus.
Thompson's "Steam Shovel" on the Panama Canal. 119 excavators were involved in the construction of this large-scale hydraulic structure, of which 77 were from Byusyrus.
Another excavator of the same brand. Thanks to the removed side, the cylinder of the steam engine that operated the boom swing mechanism is clearly visible.
Thompson's excavator in a sand quarry somewhere in the USA. The name of the manufacturer is written on the board.
"Putilovets" is a Russian copy of "Byusyrus". Sand quarry near the village. Caps (now the Leningrad region), where in 1912 the line from Tosno was laid. The excavation is carried out with a steam excavator from the Putilov plant.
"Putilovets" on the construction of the Siberian (Amur) railway in 1912 or 1913. Pay attention to the man with an ax on the back platform, who chops wood for the furnace.
Partial-revolving steam excavator on railway with a bucket with a capacity of 2.5 cubic meters "Kovrovets". Photo from the book of N. G. Dombrowski "Excavators".
Excavator "Kovrovets". Photo from the magazine "Construction Mechanization".
At first, earthworks on the Moscow-Volga canal were carried out like this. The performance was somewhere on the level of ancient Egypt.
Then the "Kovrovtsy" appeared and things went more fun.
Development of excavation with the "Kovrovets" excavator with loading of soil onto railway platforms (Moscow-Volga canal). Photo from the magazine "Construction Mechanization".
Pay attention to the abbreviation NKVD on board the cockpit. The picture was taken in 1934 in the area of the Glubokaya Vymenka
Assembling the excavator "Kovrovets", sent to the construction of the Saratov plant of agricultural machinery.
The steam semi-universal full-revolving crawler excavator MIIIP-1.5 (or M-III-p) with a bucket with a capacity of 1.5 cubic meters is the first Soviet crawler excavator, mass-produced since 1932 by the Votkinsk machine-building plant according to the drawings of VTKE (All-Union Design and Technical Bureau of Excavator Building or "Proektekskavator", created in 1930 by the decree of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR).
The world's largest steam-powered excavator was built by Marion Power Shovel. The machine was assembled in 1906 for the General Crushed Stone Company, which originally used an excavator in a quarry to extract stone. At first, the excavator was put on rails closed in a circle, and the wheels were like those of trains, only much larger considering that the weight of the machine was 105 tons. After a while, the manufacturer released a special kit for converting an excavator to a crawler track, which was done in 1923. In the state of New York, almost at its northernmost border, there is a town called Le Roy. The fact is that literally 3 kilometers from Le Roy, on a fenced site, there is one of the old wonders of mechanical engineering. At the moment, the car is badly rusted. The original boiler is still there,which, judging by the state and eyewitness accounts, can still be restored. The mechanisms that made it possible to move the bucket rusted so much that they can no longer be touched - they will fall apart.