Photo by George Lauby John Deere 400 D articulated dump truck helped clear sand and debri from the S. Platte River for the Buffalo Bill Ave. extension. The truck can carry 40 metric tons. It's powered by a 413 horsepower V6 Mercedes-Benz engine. The new price - $527,000.

Photo by George Lauby One of the city's 2008 Elgin Pelican street sweeper. Price - $122,671.

Photo by George Lauby Some of Lincoln County's 770B road graders. New price (1988) $82,000.

Courtesy Photo­Image A coal pusher at the Gerald Gentleman Power Plant is 44 feet long, 18 feet high and driven by an 880 horsepower engine. The purchase price in 1999 - $1.12 million.

Photo by George Lauby 2006 Case IH STX farm tractor. 325 HP. Cost - $135,000 at Fairbanks International.

Photo by George Lauby 'Guzzler' hazardous material vacuum (2008) runs on the road or the rails. Cost - $350,000.

Courtesy Photo­Image Two Cat crawlers with side booms can right a locomotive. Value of a 1980s model -- $250,000.

Photo by Rick WIndham Big crane on Lake Maloney dam.

Photo by Ben Schwartz The city's big fire department ladder truck.

Photo by George Lauby John Deere's biggest farm tractor, a 9420, costs $325,000 new.

Photo by George Lauby The city's 1997 Bandit Beast Grinder eats brush, shrubs, small stumps and pallets and cost $100,000 in 1997.

Photo by Ben Schwartz The Magnetom Espree MRI machine at the Imaging Center cost $2 million.

A crane that can lift 100 tons currently sits atop the dam at Lake Maloney, driving steel sheets of iron 17 feet into the lakebed, shoring up the base of the 75-year-old dam.

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It's a big job for a big machine.

The boom of the crane is 120 feet long. Attached to it is a hydraulic hammer that drives the 20-foot sections of sheet piling into place, where they will remain for decades.

The crane weighs 214,000 pounds, or 107 tons, which means it can almost lift its own weight.

The crane - a 1998 Manitowoc 222 -- is valued at nearly $2 million, according to a spokesman from Ames Construction, the company that operates it.

That kind of a price tag makes big farm and construction machines look inexpensive by comparison. But machine prices typically add up to big money.

"We don't really have any big equipment," said Wes Meyer of the city public service department, comparing garbage trucks and street sweepers to heavy equipment.

Meyer totals the value of the city's machines one or two street-sweepers at a time.

North Platte’s two Pelican street sweepers each cost $122,500 two years ago. A brush and stump grinder that creates compost and can shred shipping pallets cost $100,000 back in 1997.

Four relatively new city garbage trucks are worth about $100,000 each, and the city also has a one-man garbage truck and several older models, plus a small fleet of semi-tractor-trailers to haul trash to the landfill.

A typical semi-tractor and trailer is worth $140,000, Meyer said.

City officials, like the county, keep old equipment in good shape and use it often.

The city has a 1993 snow blower that attaches to a front end loader and blows snow off the streets into a fleet of aging but durable dump trucks. The Wildcat blower cost $52,000 nearly 17 years ago.

The Lincoln County Roads Department uses an old but a good 1977 road grader regularly on roads - a Cat 12G. And the county keeps an even older one - a Cat 12F - ready to plow snow and go to work in emergencies.

The 12G cost $76,000 when it was bought in 1977. The 12F costs was purchased used a year later, in 1978, for $45,000.

Lincoln County road workers use several 1988 road graders nearly every day. Five John Deere 770Bs have about 22,000 hours each on them now. They cost around $82,000 when they were new, road supervisor Jerry Hitchcock said.

All the 770Bs have been thoroughly overhauled and are regularly maintained, Hitchcock said.

That’s just a sampling of some of the machines that keep roads in good shape, build new structures and repair old one, till the soil and harvest the crops.

Lincoln County's big machines include hazardous materials vacuums that work on the rail roads, bulldozer-crawlers with arms that can lift a derailed train locomotive, huge fire trucks, dump trucks, big eight-wheel farm tractors and diagnostic machines at medical centers.

Here's a small sampling:

Fire Department ladder truck

What's big, red, and was made possible by a $663,436 Homeland Security Grant? The North Platte Fire Department's new ladder truck.

The unit, made by Heiman, features a 101-foot extension ladder and has the capacity to hold 500 gallons of water right on the truck. Its total cost was $707,152. The city's share was just under $44,000.

The truck replaces a 30-year-old ladder truck. Assistant Chief Dennis Thompson said the old truck was starting to have frequent mechanical problems. It also lacked an onboard water tank, which slowed response down while the truck was connected to a water source.

Thompson said with the new truck, firefighters can make an initial response with the water in truck, and by the time it is expended, a support vehicle would be at the scene to supply it further.

The plan is to keep the new truck at fire station near G St. between the one-ways, relatively close to North Platte's tallest buildings -- the South Oak Towers and the Hotel Pawnee.

Union Pacific locomotive

Weighing in between 125 and 250 tons in most cases, the standard big machine in Lincoln County is the Union Pacific diesel locomotive.

UP spokesman Mark Davis said the company has a fleet of 8,400 locomotives. The average age on the rails is 15 years, Davis said, though new ones are "purchased when necessary to keep the fleet operating efficiently."

A brand new high-horsepower mainline locomotive costs around $2 million, Davis said.

Many of the latest developments in locomotive technology are focused on lowering emissions and fuel consumption without sacrificing power.

To that end, UP has invested heavily in green technology, Davis said. One of the developments is the Genet locomotive, which cuts emissions by half and fuel consumption by 30 percent, according to the UP website.

Law enforcement standard

To patrol the city, the North Platte Police Department utilizes Chevy Impalas upgraded with a police package.

The cars don't have upgraded engines that are unavailable to civilians, but other aspects of the vehicles are geared for higher speeds, such as suspension and tires.

The big difference between a police cruiser Impala and one purchased off a lot is the electrical system, Assistant Police Chief Jim Agler said.

While a civilian driver may have a GPS unit or a cell phone charger, police cruisers feature computers and radio equipment, along with a siren and lights.

It's far more than a conventional car would be able to handle, Agler said.

The cruiser Impalas come from the factory with upgraded wiring and power sources, along with trays to hold standard police radio equipment.

The cage and shotgun rack do not come pre-installed, Agler said. North Platte's street department puts them in.

MRI

When a new Imaging Center opened in North Platte in February 2009, no expense was spared to bring state-of-the-art diagnostic machines to North Platte.

The center, which is affiliated with Great Plains Regional Medical Center, features a 1.5 Tesla MRI machine that is top-of-the-line, according to Treg Vyzourek, the director of diagnostic imaging.

High-end MRI's like the imaging center's can cost up to $2 million, Vyzourek said.

This one is shorter and has a wider bore than a typical MRI machine, so patients are more comfortable during procedures, Vyzourek said.

Bigger, 3.0 Tesla magnets are starting to become available, but right now they are cost-prohibitive for the improvement they offer, he said.