Locomotive Cranes 56 and 57   
by Mike Gerenday

The Alaska Railroad has had a few large wreck cranes over the years since its beginnings in 1914 to aid in salvaging and recovering locomotives and rolling stock after a wreck. Known as “Big Hooks” on some railroads, the “Big Hooks” of the Alaska Railroad were impressive pieces of machinery. LC 56 and LC 57 were built by Industrial Brownhoist and are 75-ton wrecking cranes. Both were put into service in September 1947 and were steam powered and burned coal, but sometime probably in the 1950s they were converted to oil.

The LC denotes Locomotive Crane, meaning that they could move under their own power during salvage operations using large gears that connected to the mechanisms that power the crane. Now because these LC cranes were self-propelled didn’t mean that they could travel to a site by themselves. Wreck trains could be long with tool cars, flat cars with track panels and wheels, and even outfit cars for the big jobs. Regular motive power was needed to haul all the equipment to the job. But there were exceptions. It’s been said that when the Sutton Branch was placed out of service and the rails were lifted in 1969-70, an LC crane was used to pull up the rails and loaded flat cars up and traveled back towards Palmer. Remember, these pre-dated the current LC cranes made by Ohio and American.

These cranes were used right up to the late 70s early 80s as I’ve seen photos of them in the Anchorage Yards. There’s plenty of photos of both LC 56 and 57 in use or in storage. The cranes themselves have tenders that came from the 300 class USATC 0-6-0 switchers that were scrapped in the 1950s when nearly all steam locomotives were retired. The tenders used were nearly clones of the same USATC tenders used with the 550 class locomotives though they were a little shorter by a foot and carried slightly less fuel and water.

By the time LC 56 and 57 were retired, newer methods of cleaning wrecks were being used, such as large tracked cranes used for laying pipes and on track equipment like the large Pettibone crane. I believe these were the last ones in service with LC 55 being retired sometime in the 1980s though the dates of retirement on all these cranes is unknown at the time of this writing.

One tender 0039 from LC 56 was acquired by the 557 Restoration Company in Wasilla Alaska, a group restoring Alaska Railroad’s last steam locomotive 557. Since the 557 is a USATC S-160 the tender used with LC 56 was an appropriate match and it was also in the best shape. LC 56 has an accompanying tool car, 0031 that was built with a shed on one end. This would have had all the tools, chains and rigging needed to clean up a wreck. The car was home built and, in my opinion looks like it was originally a 13xxx gondola with the sides and ends cut down and converted to this tool car.

LC 57 has its tender, 0034 also from a scrapped USATC 0-6-0. If you look, you can make out United States Army under the chipped paint. Flat car 0040 built in 1918 is also with LC 57, this would have been used in revenue service until it reached its useful life and was transferred into MOW service where it carried supplies and tools for wrecking service. The trucks on the car now show you what it would have been used for. With these photos you can see details such as boilers, air compressors, tie downs, lettering and many little details that may aid someone who is looking to detail a crane in miniature. I encourage you to take a close at these cranes, it took a lot of work to make these run and back then there weren’t really any safety features such as guards and covers, so whomever was operating the crane had open winches and gears just inches from them!

Page created 6/23/21 and last updated 6/23/21 BACK