When I took over this magazine in 2001, we ran a department called Iron Works that highlighted a piece of historical construction equipment. Each month, senior editor Lynn Landberg tracked down a machine and a photo, then wrote a brief description of the machine.
We had been doing this for years, and when Lynn retired we brought in Keith Haddock, arguably one of the industry's most recognized writer of equipment-related books. Keith did Iron Works for us until we retired the department in the late 2000s.
The mail started coming in. I was surprised how many of our readers expressed dissatisfaction with my decision.
After several years hiatus, Iron Works is back. It's now a regular part of our Managers Digest section in the print and digital versions of the magazine, and it's also posted online.
Our new contributor is none other than Tom Berry, the archivist for the Historical Construction Equipment Association in Bowling Green, Ohio. Tom approached me at Conexpo-ConAgg this year, and we quickly reconnected. I was glad to accept his offer to start the feature back up.
We ran Tom's first piece in July, on Euclid scrapers. Since then, Tom's written about Universal Crane's wagon crane and Brown Hoisting's power scraper shovel.
I continue to be surprised by the interest in old iron. If there's something you'd like to know about, or something Tom and his group could track down, let us know. Post your comments here, and we'll see what we can uncover.
