National Construction Equipment Museum

About 3 wks ago I attended the 24th Annual International Convention & Old Equipment Exposition at the National Construction Equipment Museum near Bowling Green. I didn't know about there was such a museum and/or such a convention. Since it was so close, I decided I better attend and check it out. I had no idea what to expect. The museum is pretty new. The organization has 30 acres or so, a restoration shop and a museum building.

There was a lot of old construction equipment on display and being used. It ranged from teams of mules and steam powered tractors pulling equipment to gasoline and kerosene powered equipment. Many of the shovels used cable systems rather than modern day hydraulic systems to move dirt.

At the back of the lot they were digging a big hole. Maybe it is the beginning of a pond. Toward the front was a large pile of dirt. At the edge of the pile, several shovels were filling old dump trucks. The trucks emptied their load on the pile. Bulldozers and pulled blades would level it. It never seemed to stop. The moved dirt around, leveled it and moved it again. Kinda like on real construction projects.

Here are a few of the photos I shot.

Several vintage shovels digging the pond.



A steam tractor pulling a pair of scrapers.



A Marion shovel at the edge of the big pile loading trucks.



An old bladeless bulldozer pulling and even older blade, leveling a load of dirt that the shovel just loaded into an old dump truck.



A team of 8 mules ready to demonstrate a blade similar to the one in the previous photo.



Is this the forerunner of the popular 'Gator?'



This old scraper was built in the early '50's. Check out the streamlined body style.



This scraper is vintage WWII. Note the cables -- no hydraulics on this one.



An old 'side dump,' dump truck.

A Jeep with a back hoe on the back and a blade on the front. Those old jeeps had all kinds of attachments. Kinda like the present-day Bobcats.

Not sure about the story on this one. Looks like someone modified a cab over school bus so they could haul this small scraper.

Near the concession area was this really neat layout. Basically a pile of gravel and sand. All kinds of older construction toys for the kids.

This part of the museum grounds was really neat! Someone built a scale model of a conveyor system. They rigged up a drag line bucket to remove stones from the quarry. The drag line dumped it load into an elevated hopper that separated the stones by size. The larger size went by conveyor to waiting trucks. The smaller size fell onto a another conveyor belt to waiting truck. Some of those old trucks had a hydraulic cylinder to lift the bed and empty the load. There was a crank to operate drag line and a crank on each of the conveyors. Unfortunately I was too tall to get a turn at one of the cranks or drive one of the dump trucks.

This disgusted looking mom just doesn't understand. This is a heck of a sandbox to play in!! Why would anyone want to go home or even eat?? I know that they would have had to drag me away from there kickin and screamin too.