 The Big Muskie was a model 4250-W Bucyrus-Erie dragline, the only one of this model ever built. With a 220 cubic yard bucket, at 22 stories high she was the largest single-bucket digging machine ever created. Here are some of her specifications:
 Big Muskie's bucket (pictured at the right) was large enough to hold 12 automobiles. The entire machine weighed more than 150 Boeing 727 jetliners, and the dragline used more electrical power than a city of 100,000 people.This excavator could dig a trench 56 m (185 ft) deep; in her working lifetime, Big Muskie removed over 608,000,000 cubic yards of overburden (twice the earth moved during the construction of the Panama Canal), uncovering 20,000,000 tons of clean coal. She cost a mere $25 million to build in 1969.
On May 20, 1999, American Electric Power's Central Ohio Coal Company announced that the 220 cubic yard bucket of the company's historic Big Muskie dragline would be preserved as a historic monument to the men and women who worked the mines of southeastern Ohio. The bucket will become the centerpiece of a display that will tell visitors about the Big Muskie, surface mining, and reclamation in the area. Demolition of Big Muskie finished in 2000, following the removal of the massive boom in 1999.
... and then there was 'The Captain' ... Deas Plant, a visitor to our page, has pointed out that, while Big Muskie was incredibly large, it actually wasn't the largest! He tells us: "My information has Big Muskie at 14,200 tons. There was a Marion 6360 stripping shovel (similar to the Silver Spade), called 'The Captain' which burnt out some years ago due to a fire in its hydraulic system. This little toy weighed in at 14,800 tons." Following a link provided by Deas, we found some incredible pictures of the Captain provided by Tim T., which show this 22 storey monster at work, and close-up. |
