Not hunting related but purdy cool!!

[HaMeR]

The strip mine talk got me thinking about some public land near me. It is reclaimed strip mine land too. Here is a link to the old gal, The Silver Spade, that dug it all out. She was retired about 2 years ago now & she stopped just short of her goal. This link is very cool & to see the pics in it are unreal. The size of this mammoth machine is truly something in the pics but up close it's almost scary from 100yds away in person. At one time we had the Spade,Big Muskie & the Gem all working within 100 miles of me. Truly awesome machines.

Hope you enjoy. 

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

[HaMeR]

There is a 7 minute video of the Spade crawling across the road in this link plus a couple hours of browsing. 

http://www.google.com/search?q=silver+spade&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Tikaani]

Looked at this last night but was too tired to post.  Very cool piece of equipment, curious as to how many yards the bucket holds, will look that up today.  Thanks for posting, enjoyed the pictures.

John

[FinsnFur]

That is cool. And by the looks of it were not even seeing the entire thing. Looks kinda like there's a little more height to it.
wow

[LORDDAL]

WOW now that right there is one COOL Machine a guy could build a dream home inside that big beast  I have seen people build houses out of missle silos and old ships but me I would want one build out of something like that it has personality it has grit I mean really it has a HUGE Bucket who could ask for any thing more

[iahntr]

Man that's one big piece of equipment there !!
Perty interesting. Thanks for puttin it up.

[HaMeR]

This machine has 200' of boom & a 105cu/yds. The bucket weighs 160 tons & the machine was 220' tall. Each crawler was 34' long & 8' high. Each track pad weighs roughly 2 tons each. The machine itself weighed 14,000,000 <<    MILLION,, pounds. She was a big ol Gal. 

[HaMeR]

Here's a video of the boom being removed once they decided to scrap her out.

[Tikaani]

Thanks for the information.  An amazing piece of equipment.

John

[Bills Custom Calls]

I remember when they scrapped that one there was a whole lot of talk going around

[HaMeR]

You're Welcome John. I bet you could move that snow a lot quicker with one of those huh?? 

Yes there was Bill. The Cadiz Coal Museum wanted to buy it but couldn't raise enough funds to tear it down, move it & rebuild it. Tis a shame. We have some pics of the cab & other things here. I'll have to post them up too.

[msmith]

That thing really is a monster! It was really impressive for the camera to be zoomed in and showing people working on it, the pan out and see that they are just specs. Those shovels are cool. Several years ago, I went coon hunting with a guy up at Cadiz. He was telling me about it then. don't know if it is true, but he said that it didn't have an operator, it had a crew that operated it.

[Bills Custom Calls]

That could very well be

[HaMeR]

It has one control operator per shift plus a crew keeping an eye on things. They switched em out every 12 hours every day of the year. I guess you noticed the guys walking around on top of the track assemblies while it was moving then.    I would have loved to have been up in the basket on top of the boom waving an AMERICAN FLAG as it moved across the road!! 

[Bills Custom Calls]

I would have loved to be sitting in the pilots seat with that much machine at my finger tips who knows what would have got tore up    :roflmao:

[FinsnFur]

Yeah that woulda looked like Tim Taylor, Bill.

[HaMeR]

 :roflmao: :roflmao:

[Bills Custom Calls]

Yeah that woulda looked like Tim Taylor, Bill.

  My Idol    :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: