Earl Edward Smith

A photo of a steam shovel taken by Earl Edward Smith. A Bucyrus Erie steam shovel loaded on an Ontario & Western railroad car. My uncle is not sure where this picture was taken. He thinks possibly Goshen, NY but it could have been somewhere else; e.g. Whitney Point. Not only did the O& W run to many places Earl worked, but their cars ran on other lines also.

My uncle noticed that the shovel in the photo is a "light color". This reminds him of a story Earl told.

Mr. Hopkins (Earl's boss) visited a job and said that was the "worst looking shovel, it needs to be painted." Earl or someone went to a store in town and bought paint. The only paint the store had enough of was pale green - so the shovel was painted green. My uncle thinks this might be that shovel.

My uncle tells about the job in Goshen. Earl had worked for Mr. Hopkins at the Albany Sand & Gravel Co. for many years, both in Albany and on various construction sites in NY and PA. He left Albany Gravel in the 1940's and worked for Everett Van Kleeck at his garage in Kingston. Shortly after the garage closed in the 1950's, Mr. Hopkins called Earl. He had sent the last old steam shovel he had to a job in Goshen, NY (this could have been it sitting on the RR car). They were having trouble getting the old shovel to run and he asked Earl to go down and see if he could help. He did, and my uncle thinks Earl might have worked there for a while.

Some years later when my uncle was working as a truck driver - hauling milk in a tanker, he passed through Goshen. He noticed an old shovel sitting there rusting away. Later he mentioned this to Earl. Earl asked some questions about the shovel and said "That's my old shovel. They didn't use steam shovels anymore after that job, so they just abandoned it there".

A correspondent agrees that the photo does seem to be of Goshen, NY and notes that the house in the background looks like one across the street from where he grew up.