I wonder what the service/working life was for the Buda diesel engine. During WWII, Buda furnished some 6 cylinder diesel engines for use in diesel-electric locomotived built by Whitcomb (subsidiary of Baldwin Locomotive Works). These locomotives were furnished to the US Military and shipped to Europe. The Buda diesels had a dismal record of cracking cylinder heads in service more often than not. Trains were being run by the US Army with three of the Whitcomb diesel locomotives on the head ends. Each locomotive had two of the Buda diesel engines. The thinking was that with a total of 6 engines, a few were going to develop cracked cylinder heads on the run, but there would still be enough power to get the train over its run.
Possibly, the Buda engines on the Whitcomb locomotives (I saw a Whitcomb up close and personal only once) had the mechanical superchargers (Roots blowers) on them. This may have contributed to the cracking of the cylinder heads. The Bucyrus Erie crane or shovel in the brochure has a naturally aspirated Buda diesel engine, so maybe more long-lived. I was intrigued by the "pony" engine for starting the diesel engine. It sits cross-wise at the top/front of the engine. It looks a bit larger than the pony engines used on the old 'Cat diesel engines. Years ago, I saw a monster of a Waukesha standby generator engine. It was a gasoline engine, an in-line 6 of some huge displacement. It had a little flathead 4 cylinder engine as the pony engine, and that pony engine was started with a rope. I wonder if the pony engine on the Buda diesel had an electric starter, or whether a ripcord was used to start it.
Times were definitely simpler. There is nothing electronic on that Bucyrus-Erie crane/shovel. All the controls appear to work by direct mechanical linkages, no air servos or hydraulic servos. The brochure claims the crane or shovel is easy on the operators, with responsive controls with good feel to them. I wonder how much of that claim was "editorial license" ? Seeing the heavy levers and direct mechanical linkages, I was reminded of some of the ancient cranes I'd been around briefly. No matter how well B-E may have designed the linkages and brakes and clutches and control levers/pedals, I would think that it took some muscle to run that type of crane. Add some wear or slop in the linkages and some worn friction linings and I am sure the operators had to throw a bit more muscle onto the controls.
Seeing the load chart reminded me how far cranes have come. The newer generations of cranes have on-board dedicated computers which monitor the various parameters (boom angle, length of boom, direction of the boom relative to undercarriage, load being raised, etc). These computers are essentially "automatic load charts" and will sound warning signals if an operator is getting into trouble, and can stop the crane from further movement if the operator is picking a load which will make the crane unstable. The only movement possible at that point is to get out of trouble (such as raising the boom to decrease load radius and lowering the load). The older cranes like this B-E had a pointer on the bottom section of the boom to give a visual indication of boom angle, and possibly, a load chart printed on a metal plate in the crane cab. After that, it was up to the operator to have studied the load chart and determined if the length of boom, number of parts of rigging on the main load hoist, and all else were going to be within the safe operating limits of the crane. The new generations of hydraulic cranes mounted on truck carriers have pretty much obsoleted a lot of the old "friction cranes" with "lattice booms". The new cranes are quite complex and rely on electronics and electrohydraulic controls. Quite a complex animal when compared to these old Bucyrus Erie cranes.
The reality is that if a person found one of these old Bucyrus Erie cranes with the pony starting engine on the main engine sitting abandoned and not stripped out nor seized, chances are they could get it running again with a box of tools. If they found one of the newer generation of hydraulic cranes sitting abandoned, chances are good they'd discover a number of the components were obsolete, and that they needed a couple of batteries to juice things up. Once they got power into the newer crane's wiring, they would likely find that they needed to plug in a laptop computer and have the right software to figure out what problems existed in the different systems. They'd also find that the electrohydraulic control valves were quite sensitive to dirt and water in the hydraulic oil, and might well find some of those control valves were not working. Meanwhile, the guys who found the old Bucyrus Erie crane might well have walked it out of where it had been abandoned and could well have been running it to play with it, or walked it up to load out on a lowboy. I was kind of surprised to see the Buda diesel engine in that B-E brochure, thinking they would have used Detroit or Cummins diesel engines. I know P & H, who was a competitor to Bucyrus-Erie, and also a Milwaukee firm, used Detroit power in a lot of their cranes in that same time period. Why B-E chose Buda is another matter. Cummins made a good solid 6 cylinder diesel of similar rating, with nowhere near the headaches (pardon the pun) that the Buda engine had. For a rarer engine, also built right in Milwaukee, there was the Murphy diesel. A Murphy diesel was so heavy that chances are a crane did not need too much additional counterweight. Murphy diesel made it into some cranes, shovels, and draglines. The Murphy diesels were a 1200 rpm engine, with handholes on the side of the crankcase to access big-ends. The Murphy engines were 4 cycle, overhead cam engines, and were really massive. Possibly Northwestern used them on some of their shovels. I would not have been surprised to see a Murphy diesel in the old Bucyrus-Erie cranes in this brochure.