Known As the Big Muskie

The Big Muskie is a model 4250-W Bucyrus-Erie dragline (the only one ever built). With a 220 cubic yard bucket, she is the largest single-bucket digging machine ever created. Here are some of her specifications:

• Weight: 27 million lbs., or 13,500 tons
• Bucket Capacity: 220 cubic yards, 325 tons (12 car garage)
• Height: 222 ft., 6 in.
• Length of the boom: 310 feet
• Length of machine with boom down: 487 ft., 6 in.
• Empty bucket weight: 230 tons
• Width: 151 ft., 6 in., compare to an 8 lane highway!
• Cable diameter: 5 in
• Electrically powered: 13,800 volts
• Mobility: hydraulically driven walking feet

In her working lifetime, the Big Muskie removed over 608,000,000 cubic yards of overburden (twice the earth moved during the construction of the Panama Canal), uncovering over 20,000,000 tons of clean coal. She cost $25 million in 1969.





And the Photos We Got Today as we Visited the Memorial

 

She is awsome...........in 79 I was a greaser on a big Bucyrus Erie dragline in a coal mine..............you could put a D-9 cat in the bucket and turn it around...anyway in its day of birth in 1960 it wwas the largest at the time


just a baby now but far retired

 

that thing is huge. where is it at?

 

Incredible specs....5" cable thats crazy....


What are the missing pics?

 

Missing Pics ??

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGklqtr1...CUMmuskie.html

 

I remember when we got a new chain for the bucket where it attaches to the drag cable.....the links were about 30" tall and about 3" diameter steel.........one of the old buggers there bet me I couldnt lift a link...I lifted one link to my waist and had the second link about half way up but couldnt get it off the ground

 

FIY the bucket is the only thing left its in Noble county Ohio

 

thats pretty impressive, i wonder how much they got for that thing in scrap, and also what kinda motors were in it, im guessing some huge detroits

 

what heppened to the rest? scrap?

 

in the 70s & 80s Big Muskie was the biggest in the world...
the biggest the world now is below...
on cable, i saw this one in use......

Ultimate Earth Mover

This is the largest earth mover in the world..... built by the German company, Krupp, and seen here crossing a federal highway in Germany en route to its destination (an open-pit coal mine). It is cheaper to move the thing like this, than to construct or reassemble onsite.
Specifications:
The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
It weighs over 45,500 tons
Cost $100 million to build
Took 5 years to design and manufacture
5 years to assemble.
Requires 5 people to operate it.
The Bucket Wheel is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets, each of which can hold over 530 cubic feet of material.
A 6-foot man can stand up inside one of the buckets.
It moves on 12 crawlers (each is 12 feet wide, 8' high and 46 feet long).
There are 8 crawlers in front and 4 in back. It has a maximum speed of 1 mile in 3 hours (1/3 mile/hour).
It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters each day. (100,000 large dump trucks at 40yds. each)