Pretty neat piece of MoW equipment

[Norm P]

A few weeks ago I was back home in eastern Kentucky (yeehaw) poking around the flood loaders and other coal goodness when I ran across this interesting piece, looks like a brush cutter to me:



Closer view of cab:



Here's an overview of the siding it was on.  My father built the siding and unit flood loader in the background.  It's abandoned now, the shaker, tipple, most of the siding, and most of the beltline are gone.  Quite a difference from the pictures he took while it was under construction in the early 80s

[Ian MacMillan]

Nice! Kinda like a new spin on the Swingcrane.

[Hyperion]

Those Vaia cranes are actually used for a whole host of duties.

They are, occassionally, used for brush cutting.  But there's better equipment out there for that.  Their primary duties is just picking up stuff.  They have a small variety of different attachments that can be used on the end of the arm.  They're probably most often used for picking up ties, but can be used to pick up virtually anything an MOW gang would need to pick up except ribbon rail, which is generally Grove crane duty.

[Ian MacMillan]

I want one, it would be very useful at my railcar club. Moving ties, picking up brush, cutting brush...

[CSX700]

I saw one of these siting off the tracks right by my heritage society with a stump grinder attached.