Welcome to Burro Crane
Posted on February 5th, 2014 by Jim McGillis
Union Pacific Railroad Burro Crane BC-47 at
Seven Mile Canyon
In May 2013, I drove from
Downtown
Moab, via U.S. Highway 191 North. My destination was the
turnoff to Utah State Route 313, which is the gateway to
Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park.
Although the distance was only eleven miles, the turnoff at
Route 313 seemed like another world. Far from the shops and
restaurants that make Moab so inviting to tourists, my
destination was hot, dry and desolate. “Seven
miles from nowhere”, I said to myself.
Almost
as soon as I turned on to Route 313, I spied an interesting
contraption parked on a nearby railroad siding. With my pickup
truck, I had easy access to the location of this unusual
mechanical beast. Nearby, a weathered railroad sign identified
the place as “Seven
Mile”. Union Pacific Burro Crane BC-47 became “The Burro at
Seven Mile”. In six-inch letters on the rear of its turret, the
words, “BURRO CRANE” stood out on its cast iron ballast. In the
dry desert air, that cast iron emblem could last for millennia.
On first glance, the turret of the Burro Crane looked like an
antiaircraft gun from a mid-twentieth century warship. Upon
further inspection, the function of the Burro Crane as “maintenance
of way” equipment became obvious. With its flatcar as a
tender, the Burro Crane was a mobile track repair vehicle. The
Burro’s compact, rounded turret allowed it to swivel without its
ballast overhanging an adjacent rail line.
Nearby,
old and worn-out railroad ties lay in a pile. In addition, at
track-side was a collection of bent and worn steel rails. Rather
than utilizing welded steel rails, the old the
Potash
Branch line features 1960s railroad technology. In keeping
with railroad construction throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, wooden ties were set into gravel. Using
large wrenches, nuts and bolts secured one track to another. For
stability, spikes held the rails to the ties. Replacing earlier
manual labor, the Burro Crane and its tender helped to automate
the track repair process.
Accompanied by a small crew, the operator could use the Burro
Crane’s diesel engine to propel both Burro and flatcar to a
prospective repair site. If rails required moving, the repair
gang would first remove the bolts between the
affected
rails. After removing the spikes on the affected rails, the
burro would use a cable-strung electromagnet to lift each rail
from the roadbed. If the repair required new railroad ties, the
Burro Crane could lift out any damaged or derelict ones. A
bucket could scoop up new gravel from the flat car or
reconfigure existing ballast at the scene. Once the ties were in
place, the gang could bolt the rails back together and then
drive spikes into the new ties.
By today's standard for
automated track-laying along mainline roadbeds, the Burro
Crane and gang system seem archaic. Still if repairs are only
occasional and are not extensive in nature the Burro Crane’s
throwback design and relatively diminutive size can be more
economical than the use of heavier equipment. With weather and
monkey-wrench protection for its power train,
this
vintage piece of equipment could go on operating indefinitely in
the dry climate of the high desert. In wetter climates, most
similar units have disintegrated into piles of rusty scrap
metal.
The geographic setting at Seven Mile is epic. The crane's block
and tackle dangled only six feet from the ground. The angle of
the lattice-boom appeared ready for business. In the background
are the
Klondike Bluffs of
Arches
National Park. From another angle, the view beneath the long
boom is of the
La Sal
Range, far past Moab. Other than the power poles and their
high-voltage lines that cross near Seven Mile, the Burro Crane
was the most prominent human-made object in sight. In fact, it
appears on
Google Maps (2014 version) much as it did the
day
of my visit.
With a Union Pacific emblem on the side of its cab and its faded
yellow paintjob, the Burro Crane appeared to be authentic Union
Pacific rolling stock. Soon I determined that Burro Crane BC-47
more likely started life with the old Denver & Rio Grande
Western Railroad (DRGW),
which is a precursor to the contemporary Union Pacific.
The giveaway is the flatcar tender, which appears to be even
older than the venerable Burro Crane. The flatcar still bears
DRGW
markings. Spray-paint on the side of the flatcar indicates that
the last date of inspection or repair was 4-‘84, almost thirty
years prior. In the Old West, a prospector and his burro
were
mates for life. Since the arrival of this burro, more than half
century ago, the old flatcar and the new burro mated and then
stayed coupled for life.
As I began my research into
Burro Crane BC-47, I found that it might be the last Model
40 Burro Crane operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. My Google
searches yielded only two pictures of Union Pacific Model 40
Burro Cranes and both were of BC-47. In the past decade, BC-47
has apparently stayed close to home. Those two photos of the
crane and tender were taken in nearby
Green
River, Utah and Grand Junction, Colorado. With its age and
size, it is unlikely that BC-47 would stray beyond the Western
Slope of the
Colorado
Plateau.
If
indeed the Burro at Seven Mile is the last of its breed operated
by the Union Pacific Railroad, it would be interesting to see it
in action. I propose that rail buffs in Moab and fans of the
Union Pacific Railroad request a public demonstration of Burro
Crane BC-47. Since it already sits on a siding, that
demonstration could include lifting old rails and ties on to
transport vehicles for disposal at an appropriate location. If
anyone out there can help to arrange such an event, please
contact me at my email address below. I shall be happy to
attend.
Author's Note, July 2024: The "Moab Burro"
was last spotted in October, 2020 in the old mining support town
of Cisco, Utah. To read about that discovery, click
HERE.
If anyone knows its current whereabouts. please contact me via
email.
This is Chapter 1 of a two-part article on railroad Burro
Cranes. To read Chapter 2, please click
HERE.
