Heavy Lifting goes on at Port Amherst
By Rick Steelhammer, Staff writer
Port Amherst, just east of Charleston on the Kanawha River, may not be an Antwerp or a Hamburg, but it does occasionally handle international cargo shipments.
This week, the homeport for Madison Coal & Supply’s fleet of towboats and construction barges also served as the loading area for a huge new Belgian-made crane, which will eventually offload limestone at American Electric Power’s Cardinal power plant at Brilliant, Ohio.
The 173-ton crane traveled across the Atlantic on a freighter, which made its way up the St. Lawrence Seaway to Lake...