- We're standing here at the Waterford Machine Shop actually on the Waterford compound.

Really this machine shop is the hub for all manufacturing, machining, and fabrication for the entire state of New York Canal network.

We're building, replacing, fabricating components and parts for each one of the canal locks and other infrastructures throughout the state.

(upbeat music) Most people don't understand is that the fabrication is done at Canals in-house, and we have the capabilities, we have the machinery, we have the skillset of people to do so from the engineers right down to craftsmen doing the work.

We historically have machined a lot of the rails, and these are the rails that the valves actually ride up and down on.

On 1950s, 1960s ERA equipment, it took a substantial amount of time, roughly about 10 days on each one of those pieces of equipment.

Whereas now with the three axis, state-of-the-art three axis mill, where we cut that time down to about a day, day and a half.

(upbeat music) (machines whirring) The wintertime, it's all hands on deck, full bore, full steam ahead, if you will in the Waterford shop.

We receive valves, sets of valves from each one of their seven other sections across the state where we'll take them in, we'll refurbish those valves, we'll inspect them, make any critical repairs, any structural repairs to the valves, clean them up, paint them, and then send them back out for installation in the locks.

(upbeat music) - So we're at lock 17 in Little Falls, New York, which is the highest lift lock in the canal system.

We're here this winter finishing a winter pump out project where we actually de-water the entire lock and rehab a lot of the working components that are underwater most of the year.

This lock is approaching 110 years old, and a lot of the components that we use here are still original or they're patterned after the original, so we have to re fabricate a lot of these in our maintenance shop over the winter in order to restore them and replace them for the coming navigation season.

One of the biggest challenges with these winter pump outs is just that.

We're working in the winter.

We have a very limited season when the canal is closed for navigation between November and April where we have to do all of this major construction work, and we're doing it in the worst of conditions.

We have an in-house skillset that we have learned and conditioned and developed over many years and the decades that the canal system has been here, and those skills are passed on from one generation of worker to the next.

- This will be my third season.

My first two years were seasonal.

This year I worked the winter pump out, and I just became a Canal Worker I. I'm working here because I am interested in the Erie Canal.

It's the only reason I work here is because I wanted to learn more about it, and I considered it the perfect job.

I like the old canals.

I'm learning about the new canal, or it's 100 years old, but for me, this is the new canal.

I started a group called the Historic Erie Canal, and what I was trying to accomplish was to build like a canal army to help me clean up old structures, you know, up and down the line.

I don't know what it is about it, but I just love old masonry.

That's kind of what got me hooked on this whole thing.

I'm trying to turn people's light on for the canal because the more people that are enthusiastic on the canal, you know, it's, it's gonna be good for this one and the old one.

(upbeat music)