Andy FitzGibbon
Diamond
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2005
- Location
- Elkins WV
I just heard, belatedly, that member Rick Montague (rammerc) passed away early this year. I have no further details of his passing.
Rick hadn't posted much in the last few years, but he still looked at the Antique forum regularly. He was born in Cincinnati, and went to work in the radial drill department at LeBlond just out of high school. He eventually took a job at the Cincinnati water department, just after the huge triple expansion pumping engines were decommissioned (google "Cincinnati triple steam"). He once showed me a box of brass oilers and fittings he'd removed from the engines... as they were slated to be scrapped, he and his fellow employees would lower each other down into the well in the crane cage to remove items for "personal scrapping". Eventually, the city realized that they weren't sure if the building would stay upright once the weight of the engines was removed, so the scrapping was called off and they are still in place.
Rick continued in the public water field after his move to Florida in the 1970s. He was an enthusiastic and prolific collector of all things esoteric and mechanical... guns, watches, fishing reels, outboard motors, machinery, motorcycles and cars. He had a knack for turning up rare and unusual machines... I bought my Federal planer from him, along with the only Pratt & Whitney 3C "combination" lathe and mill I've ever seen (both machines on one 10 foot long bench).
We kept in touch for many years, and I visited him in Florida a couple times. He'd moved out of the city about ten years ago, and was really enjoying the riverside property that he and his wife purchased north of St. Petersburg.
Andy
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Rick hadn't posted much in the last few years, but he still looked at the Antique forum regularly. He was born in Cincinnati, and went to work in the radial drill department at LeBlond just out of high school. He eventually took a job at the Cincinnati water department, just after the huge triple expansion pumping engines were decommissioned (google "Cincinnati triple steam"). He once showed me a box of brass oilers and fittings he'd removed from the engines... as they were slated to be scrapped, he and his fellow employees would lower each other down into the well in the crane cage to remove items for "personal scrapping". Eventually, the city realized that they weren't sure if the building would stay upright once the weight of the engines was removed, so the scrapping was called off and they are still in place.
Rick continued in the public water field after his move to Florida in the 1970s. He was an enthusiastic and prolific collector of all things esoteric and mechanical... guns, watches, fishing reels, outboard motors, machinery, motorcycles and cars. He had a knack for turning up rare and unusual machines... I bought my Federal planer from him, along with the only Pratt & Whitney 3C "combination" lathe and mill I've ever seen (both machines on one 10 foot long bench).
We kept in touch for many years, and I visited him in Florida a couple times. He'd moved out of the city about ten years ago, and was really enjoying the riverside property that he and his wife purchased north of St. Petersburg.
Andy
Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk