I enjoyed the youtube. In asnwer to how that locomotive was rigged for jacking, there is a diver shown in one of the photos. He wears the old "hardhat" diving dress, and the glass portlight on the front of his helmet is swung open. The diver sports a heavy dark handlebar mustache.
The style of jack shown in the youtube was quite common for heavy work. I saw them used in Paraguay in 1981. At remote sawmill sites, a semi-portable mill was brought in. To power these mills, a "Locomobile" type of steam engine/boiler unit was also brought on site. The locomobile consisted of a firetube boiler with internal combustion chamber, and a tandem-compound steam engine mounted on top of the boiler. These were apparently built to a German design ( approximately what the youtube of the Wolf factory shows being built). The locomobile steam power units were the heaviest single part of the sawmills, and arrived on lowboy trailers. These were skid mounted units, so needed to be unloaded from the lowboy. To unload the locomobile from the low-boy trailer, jacks very much like the "Becker" jacks in this youtube were always used. four such jacks were set on wood "mats" (pieces of heavy timber like 8 x 8's, through bolted together). The mats spread the load onto the ground.
The four jacks were hand cranked, just as in this youtube. Slow going, but it worked and was a very sure and safe means of lifting and lowering heavy loads. In the USA, I believe Whiting made similar types of jacks, electric motor driven, for work in railroad shops.
An interesting point to consider about this youtube is whether the locomotive and train were running on a "winter ice railroad". In some parts of Russia, particularly during WWII, rails were laid on frozen lakes and trains run on track supported by the ice. During WWII ("The Great Patriotic War" to the Soviets), during a long siege, the Russians laid rails on Lake Ladoga, which was frozen. The eventually had a double tracked line on the frozen lake to bring in food and other supplies and take out sick and wounded people. I've seen old footage of women in the most bitter cold imaginable, laying ties and rail on the ice on Lake Ladoga.
I get the impression this locomotive and train may have been on a temporary track laid on ice. If I am off base in my thinking, I'd be interested to know how that locomotive broke through ice and landed in the drink. Another interesting point is how a boiler, with steam up, survived a cold dunking without exploding. I know when ships were torpedoed at sea, as the seawater surrounded hot boilers, explosions were quite common. When a ship was in danger of foundering or taking on water to the point of flooding the machinery spaces, the engineers usually tried to have their crew get the boilers as full of feedwater as possible. This was to reduce the risk of explosion when the cold sea water hit hot boilers. On the other hand, there is that old "Marmaduke" story where he ran a traction engine through a flooded creek under its own steam without damage. I imagine the locomotive in this set of photos probably had its firetubes loosened by the shock of the cold water.
I enjoy these Nigel Fowler Sutton photos. It is a window into some of the world my grandparents emigrated from. My grandmothers on both sides of the family emigrated from what was then Czarist Russia. Both had small children with them, and both took trains to the ports of embarkation. My father's mother and her children took a train from Wolkowisk, which is Byelorus, and was said to be a railroad hub. She took something like 6 small kids and got on a train which took them to Libau- a Latvian port where they boarded a ship to the USA. My mother's mother emigrated in 1917. She came from a tiny place called Lunienetz. It is near the present day Chernobyl, and was in the marshes along the Pripyet River. Because of WWI, my mother's mother and her infant son took a train to Vladivostok, then a ship to Yokahama, Japan. From there, my grandmother and her infant son took another ship to San Francisco and then a train to East St. Louis, Illinois- where my mother was born in 1918. Mom is still with us at age 99, still driving to some extent, still using a computer and sharp as ever. Her mother made it to 102, and the infant son she carried on that journey made it to age 94. My father's father fought in the Czar's Army in the Russo-Japanese War before coming to the USA. He lived to a ripe old age, and lived on a typical diet for that place and era: hard black bread or rye bread, onions, radishes, potatoes, tea, and his own vodka. I can remember seeing him show my father how "good" it was by flaming some off in a spoon. The stuff burned off with nothing left in the spoon. That grandfather made it to almost 90, died in his own bed, so a diet of herring, and that high proof vodka did not hurt him any.
My mother's mother was someone I knew pretty well, as she died in 1992. She had come from a little village with mud streets and thatched roofs on the houses to the USA. She saw things we take for granted come into use, and lived to travel on a jet airliner. She told me bits and pieces of her journey to the USA, but never remarked about the contrast of travelling in a jet airliner, or watching television, having central heat, inside plumbing and all else we take for granted.
My mother's mother told me that, on the train trip from her village to Vladivostok, it was cold weather. At every station, the passengers would shuffle (wearing felt inner boots or boot liners) up to the locomotive. The engine crew would fill the tea-pots (known in Russian as chainiks- in the russian or Yiddish my grandmother spoke) with hot water right out of the locomotive boiler. The passengers would shuffle back to their compartments and make tea and have it to keep warm with until the next stop.
The men in those photos simply worked hard in bitter cold because that was all there was- and the work was probably a step up from the life of a typical Russian peasant in those days. Chances are they had a pull of good strong vodka and kept on working, glad of having that job.
The people in this set of photos are likely made of the same stuff as my forebears. I laugh about the weather reports and newscasters nowadays. Get a couple of inches of snow down in NYC and the weather forecasters and news reporters are acting like it is a serious blizzard. My ancestors had nothing like the warm clothing we have, let alone cars or pickups with that miracle of a heater/defroster. My grandmother told me that sometimes in Russia, the winters were so cold that a person had to be careful when coming indoors. The normal impulse was to take a cup of hot tea from the chainik or samovar ( a charcoal heated tea pot with a center flue). If a person came in from that bitter cold and immediately drank hot tea, there was a good chance of cracking their teeth from the thermal shock. After coming in from the cold, people had to wait a bit before drinking tea. My ancestors, and the people in these photos got out in the snow and cold beyond our imagination and did what they had to do, whether it was going to tend livestock, get to the village for supplies or religious services, bury their dead, or take a bunch of small kids and head for the USA. The people in these photos probably thought it was all in a day's work to go out in bitter cold and pull a locomotive up thru the ice with hand cranked jacks. Even the timber used for the cribbing and sheer legs in these photos was cut by hand and likely dragged and lugged into place by manpower. Bundled up in layers of wool and maybe sheepskin, wearing shapeless boots with felt liners, and mittens, these guys managed to do the job shown in the photos. Not included in the series of photos is the fate of the engineer and fireman. I imagine they survived, probably just took a few good slugs of high proof vodka and, if lucky, got into a railroad car with a wood stove going.