GE Turbine Slows

Route 20 Traffic

EAST SPRINGFIELD – A Pennsylvania-bound General Electric turbine is slowly making its away across the top of Otsego County this afternoon, causing traffic delays on Route 20.

According to WKTV, the 375,000-pound turbine is on the move from the GE plant in Schenectady to Jessup, Pa., where a power plant is under construction, a 225-mile route.

“It’s quite an entourage,” said Fred Culbert, who snapped photos of the scene as it passed his front yard. “There’s six or seven state police escorting them,  with seven or eight bucket trucks and Verizon trucks making sure they can get under the wires. And the trucks just drive up the middle of the road.”

According to DOT spokesman Jim Piccola, the moving assembly was 345 feet long, 19 feet 6 inches wide, and 18 feet tall, moving between two and four miles per hour. The moving assembly’s weight was 915,000 pounds, and 375,000 pounds of that weight came from the turbine itself.

And it’s just the first of five such loads, according to Trooper Nate Reigel.  The next is expected to embark on the journey next week.  And in February, the moving assembly will return to the GE plant to transport another similar-sized turbine to the same site in Pennsylvania.