[geeks] giant earth moving machinery, etc.

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 13:29:43 (-0700), Gary Nichols wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math &    engineering skills?
>
> Link?  Pictures?  I have to see this.

They're in the book I mentioned:

	Giant Earth-Moving Equipment
	Eric C. Orlemann
	Motorbooks International, 1995
	ISBN 0-7603-0032-1

I believe the photo I mentioned of the author beside a Marion 6360
shovel is of "The Captain" (only one was ever built).  It was built in
1965 for Southwestern Illinois Coal Corp. at their Captain Mine near
Percy.  Arch Mineral Corp. bought The Captain Mine and the 6360 in the
early 1980's, but it suffered a fire in 1991 that would have cost over
$2 million to repair with no guarantee of full success and so it was
scrapped in 1992.  In its lifetime it moved 809.3 million cubic yards of
overburden.

That book has some very amazing photos of all kinds of big diggers.

The only picture of the 6360 I can find online is:

	http://www.stripmine.org/andre_06.htm

Oh, nope there are a bunch more there too:

	http://www.stripmine.org/alms/alms.htm

#13 is like the one in the book.....

All of www.stripmine.org is quite interesting -- tons of pictures!

See also:

	Giant Earthmovers: An Illustrated History
	Keith Haddock (who appeared in the TLC shows)
	MBI Publishing, 1998
	ISBN 0-7603-0369-x

Haddock has another newer book too....

The B-E 3850-B with pictures on this page is somewhat smaller than the 6360.

	http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/2894/

and here's "Big Brutus", the second largest (ever?):

	http://www.bigbrutus.org/
	http://www.ku.edu/~hersite/kcn-1/columbus/brutus.html
	http://othello.localaccess.com/kpagel/brutus.htm
	http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/KSWESbrutus.html
	http://www.windsofkansas.com/mlta.html
	
And the Silver Spade, almost half the capacity of the 6360, back to work
again:

	http://www.stripmine.org/spdeup01.htm

The Saturn V rocket launch vehicle is more or less similar to the "lower
works" motive system of a big stripping shovel (and was also built by
Marion)

Marion Power Shovel was purched by Bucyrus in 1997.  Their current
products are now all under the new name:

	http://www.bucyrus.com/

They don't seem to make any big stripping shovels any more
though... (Haddock says there's no more demand for their ability) but
they do still make some impressive, but much smaller, loading shovels!

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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