I saw Big Muskie in action. It WAS moved; I remember as a kid they had to build up dirt on Interstate 70 in Eastern OH so it could move it across the freeway and not damage the road. It was awesome.
Thank you for posting. I remember my Dad driving us over to eastern Ohio to try to get a glimpse of Big Muskie back in the 70s, after seeing a story in the Columbus Dispatch. Brings back great memories.
Lived in Belmont county Ohio and my grand parents in Gurnsey county Ohio during the Big Muskie and the Silver Spade area. Remember seeing the lights from a distance at night. While driving to my grand parents we would stop to watch this Giant. Awsome memories. My dad has alot of video of the Big Muskie on Super 8.
The big muskie bucket still exists. It sits at miner's memorial park in Morgan county, Ohio on the reclaimed land it once dug. Very awesome tourist site along a popular motorcycle road.
I grew up watching the Muskie work on AEP land. Spent my childhood summers camping there from school out to school start. Lots of great memories. After shut down it sat in the area it last worked for several years. It was fenced off and could be walked around if you were up to the 2 mile walk. I knew several good men who worked there and dedicated their lives to providing the power to build a nation. Gratitude is deserved.
Same here my deceased partner was a soft ware developer for AEP that would have been such a great piece to show the young that the US was once a great industrial power sadly no more .
If i'm not mistaken the lasr time i saw the bucket it was sitting along the south side of interstate 70, that was quite a few years ago. But i do remember a time when a few of us were out four wheelin' and came over a ridge and there it sat. No one around. So we took some time out of our trip to get out and explore this beast. It was definitely huge. We had another one that was a little smaller named the GEM of EGYPT. I've got pictures of myself and several of my family members standing in the bucket with about 50 people standing in the background and there was enuff room for a few pickup trucks left. You should have seen the traffic jam the GEM caused when theh took it across interstate 70. It didn't move very fast and they had to put about 10 ft of dirt on the road so it didn't bust the shit out of a 4 lane hiway. Classic entertainment, back in the 70's.
I grew up with all this,i loved in mulberry florida and every mile u went u saw draglines and mines ,i always loved machines,i love cat stuff,and my dad was an oprtr for 45+ yrs,and i live my dad's legend after his passing
Shawn, just to let you know many of us old Dragliners are still at it in Mulberry. At one time we had more Draglines in Florida than any other state as far as remember. I'm an old Marion erector but also worked on Pages and BEs over the years. Gotta love Draglines.
My father and I stopped to see the bucket on our way to WV, it is an amazing sight! Fore warning, its on a back road off of 77S; on your way there you will see a sign at a small local grocery store that reads "Do not feed the bears" dont let it draw your attention inside for some of their "famous 50 cent hot dogs"!!!! We each had two of them and fought over the restroom for the next three days, it ruined our vacation... Have fun!
BTW: These mine jobs have been coming and going in our area for decades. They dig here for a few yrs then leave,then a few yrs later they return to or near the same site. Its like a revolving door. By the way Bucyrus-Erie built these in my town and shipped them around the world for decades until closing our plant in the 80's.
Big Muskie stats for the rest of the world: Height: 222 feet 6 inches (67.82 m) Boom Length: 310 feet (94 m) Bucket Capacity: 220 cubic yards (170 m3), 325 short tons (295 t) Machine Length (boom down): 487 feet 6 inches (148.59 m) Width: 151 feet 6 inches (46.18 m)-comparable to an eight-lane highway
Kinda cute compared to Bagger 293: Height 96m (315ft) Length 225m (738ft) Weight 14200t Bucket capacity 15cubic meters (530cubic feet), it has 18 of those. It can move 240 000cubic meters (8.5million cubic feet) per day, double of Big Muskie
@@gustavmeyrink_2.0 That is impressive, I suspect, however, from the design of the bucket wheel, one does not handle rocky strata very well. The speed of rotation of the wheel and the inherent size restriction of the multiple buckets, make it susceptible to severe damage from larger rocks. The dragline bucket handles relatively large rocks, very well, which made it more practical in most mining areas, in the US. That said, the bucket wheel can really move some dirt, when there are no large rocks.
@@wmden1I stood at the holes the bucket-wheel excavators dig near Cologne and saw them working... The brain needs to constantly reajust the size of both the hole and the excavators. Local residents and environmental activists call it "Mordor" and i have to say the nickname is not hyperbole. Those machines look like little miniatures on the set of an 80s sci fi movie when placed in that 400 m deep, 80+ km² hole in the landscape. It really looks like Mordor.
@@tomitiustritus6672 I would like to see a bucket wheel working, live, and moving along the ground. I only have seen one walking dragline, in real life, and it was so far away I couldn't tell a lot about it, but that it was fairly large. It was only about 1/4 the size/bucket capacity of The Big Muskie, I would guess. I did see 2 of its spare buckets, up close.
She was a big one alright but the 8750 Marion Dragline in the same mine regularly outworked the Muskie. Sad to see her cut up but nobody wanted to invest in the clean up necessary to preserve her. I was onboard the Muskie shortly before she was cut up. I was in the mine doing a repair to the 8750 and she was fenced in. I was fortunate to get a chance to get on her.
@@kawanbrownlee9724 An interesting and little known fact about AEP and big Muskie. When AEP was looking to get the biggest Dragline I am told by old Marion guys, when I worked there, that Marion offered AEP two 100 yard machines for about the same price as the 4250. but AEP wanted the biggest. The big girl never had good availability overall. Also Tubs didn't fare well under her, just too much weight for the time period.
I've been a fan of machinery like this since I was a toddler, especially draglines. Thanks for the history and footage of both machines. There seems to be very little available of The Captain, which was almost as impressive as The Big Muskie.
I’m saddened and surprised they didn’t preserve Big Muskie - it was amazing and THE biggest of all time. It could have been part of some tourist attraction and would have been a great draw.
Sadly I have to agree. It is improbable that a new Dragline will be sold anytime soon. However there are still quite a few that will be moved to be used in a new location. As an old Dragline erector (Marion) I still keep up with every one I ever worked on, they are are bit like kids, they don't go away.
At least the bucket wheel excavators in Germany are still working, allowing you to get an impression of how big such machines really are. They lack the massive housing of The Captain or Big Muskie as well as the more complicated action, but the 288 class excavators are even bigger.
I worked for Marion Power Shovel in the mid seventies. Would love to find out what the hell I welded on. Lots of Giant pieces to the puzzle of a giant dragline. Do remember welding on a 110 cu. inch bucket. Would love to hook up with some of the people I worked there with.
Yep, I went to work for Marion in June 1975, in the midst of that sort of rough strike. I stayed on in the field until the last day when we were handed over to Bucyrus.
RIP those outrageous and gorgeous giants. Would have been a sight to remember for the rest of my days to see one in action, or even after their retirement😢
@Travis Bickle - does that apply to you? In other words, if I were to give you the same "respect", should I note your lack of proper punctuation and syntax?!?
An electric shovel called Big Brutus is on permanent display in the little town of West Mineral in Cherokee County, Kansas. She's the largest electric shovel in the world that's still all in one piece. The only thing that has been removed from inside her, are her massive electric engines. She's 160 feet (49 m) tall & weighs 11 million pounds (4,989,516 kg). Her bucket can hold 150 tons (136 metric tones). Her top speed was only 0.22 MPH (6 meters per minute). I've visited her several times.
"Muskie" was about the same speed but much larger bucket and overall much bigger. We used to go look for it working when we camped on the reclaimed lands it mined.
@@lous5442 That use permit or at least the one I remember we had in the early1970's said "Columbus and southern Ohio electric power company recreational areas" lol lol and as a side note the "Electric company" as we called it then came into existence as " The Columbus Ohio Street Railway Power And Light Co." I can't remember for sure now if the word electric was in there somewhere or not, but I do remember seeing the name in regard to two pieces of railroad equipment at The Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington Ohio, A Streetcar #703 and a maintenance away steeplecab locomotive #2 I operated both as a teenager AND got to see that walking dragline cross the interstate... Didn't it take Friday night and Saturday night both? Resting it in the median during the day as it didn't move fast enough to cover the entire distance in one night? I gotta go look that up now lol. Peace to you fellow Buckeye and time traveler so blessed to have grown up when and where we did!!!
I live right next to where Alcoa mined bauxite. You ever heard of land reclamation? They do it all the time. Had you rather not mine the needed minerals and let the loggers cut the trees? Or rather let the loggers cut the trees, and not bother with the minerals/ores? I suppose you don't heat your house, or drive a car, either... Or in order to save trees, your house is very small, or you live in a tent in the woods? I am all for nature, but there must be balance...
Hi Pamela, I'm a student currently working on a story about the Big Muskie. If possible, I would love to hear more about your experience with your dad operating the dragline. Please feel free to message me if you're interested. I'm also happy to provide my email address if that works better! Thanks so much, Sarah
Big Muskie should never have been scrapped it should have been saved for future generations to see because we will never see another dragline this Big ever be built again.
i’m 26, just discovered big muskie by mistake scrolling through youtube shorts and did what any reasonable man would do, and drop everything to start looking up big muskie videos. i started screaming at my phone when he said Big Muskie was scrapped. 😂😂 that should be in a god damn museum, fuck that its own museum. it’s such an impressive feat of American ingenuity. the sick sonsabitches made IT A WALKING DRAGLINE. they said the biggest dragline isn’t enough, let’s give this bitch legs legs. AND ACTUALLY DID IT.shout out to those men who built and operated that beautiful big beast.
There was a book written once by Alister McClean (sorry if that is spelled incorrectly)I believe; where a victim was staked out so a Dragline could kill him by walking on him. It was set at Syncrude Canada but the author never specified if the Dragline was one of the Marion 8750s or the Bucyrus 2570s.
Now that "Big Muskie" is no more guess it's ok to say that "Athabaska", here in Canada is now the biggest "walker". The Canadian's had an agreement with Washington written years ago that forbade them from calling old Atha the biggest dragline because she had to stomp one track into US territory on her way from Labrador to Alberta when she was moved. You can't apply for Guiness records unless your're American. That 19.5 Km trip took seven years and saw the 1.6km boom reach over 600 meters into American airspace at one point. Actually, we also had to cut the bucket in half, down to 200 cubic meters, so as to comply with American regulations and that was the main reason we never applied for official certification. With "Big Muskie" gone we should be able to put forward a new case.
Actually Big Muskie wasn't the biggest walker. Amax Delta strip in Harco/Galatia/Harrisburg, IL was quite a bit larger then ole muskie. They just recently dismantled her maybe 6-7yrs ago. Sucks though about the guiness book
Eric Heflin Muskie was definitely larger than the 2 3270Ws that were owned by Amax. Big Muskie's internal code was the 4250-w. The 3270s were better and more reliable machines but Muskie was obviously a larger machine. I saw Muskie up close 3 times. It was flipp'ng huge, especially when you are 10 years old.
Eric Heflin The Muskie was bigger in most specs than the 3270s as far as I know. I visited the one during erection at Harrisburg. (1975 I think it was) I was putting up a Marion shovel over near Marion at the time and a friend was working for F&E on the 3270 erection site)
About five years before they cut it up my son and I had a "guided tour" of the strip pits and my son was sitting there in the security person's truck going on and on about big excavators and their specs and the security person was so impressed that a 5 y/o would know that stuff. She asked if we'd like to see the now retired "Muskie" up close and of course the answer was yes. She let us inside the security fence around the machine and allowed us to look inside where the motors, gears and hydraulics had been and also allowed us to look under the body/platform and she even took a picture of us standing in the bucket which was still attached to the boom. I remember it took two shots to get the entire length to stitch together a single crude "pano". I used to camp/hunt/fish there three to four times a year in the 1970s-80s and no trip was complete without at least a few hours of one day spent looking for "Muskie" to see it in action, and then the smaller draglines after "Muskie" was retired.
Sorry... this is not the biggest mobile landmachine ever built or the world has ever seen. The biggest machine weighing about 17,000 tons and is still working in Germany. 270 feets high, 1740 feets long and the name is F60 Förderbrücke. Sorry..;-)
Yeah that might just be, but the overall cost when you consider the materials to build the thing also wrecked the environment... you be proud of that, and I'll keep my opinion
Long gone. I ran into one of the operator's from the captain in South Africa in 1991 or so. He had been contracted to provide operator training to a new mine for SASOL. I was putting in two Marion 8200s there at the time.
1:38 The largest single bucket digging machine. It was at that moment they realized it only had a single bucket. Why did we only build this with one bucket. Why why why. OMG I can't believe it, only one bucket. Why didn't somebody say hey!!! lets put more buckets on it or hey this bucket isn't that big let's make it huge, because it seems so little now.
krrrruptidsoless different material being dug. Bucket wheel excavators dont work here. It has to be drilled, shot, then removed. Bucket wheel excavators couldn't do anything here
I saw Big Muskie in action. It WAS moved; I remember as a kid they had to build up dirt on Interstate 70 in Eastern OH so it could move it across the freeway and not damage the road. It was awesome.
That’s sick asf
I did not realize it ever worked North of I-70. Did you mean another road?
I miss this history channel.
AliENs r tHe HiSTory
So true.
And scripted Alaskan bush morons
@@phaztom313 and Ice Road Truckers. Ice Road Trucking Aliens.
@@ranfan1820 you sound gay
These Machine should have never been cut up, but put on display for the world to see. It's like cutting the great pyramids.
FreeSoul 87 big ol land machines and just massive machines should just be more common what they would do idrk would they be cool as frick YEAH!
Agreed. 💯%. 👍🏻👍🏻🇺🇸
you can still visit the Big Muskie's bucket in Ohio
You cant keep everything
@@nicholasglieco2155 yup, and it's massive
Thank you for posting. I remember my Dad driving us over to eastern Ohio to try to get a glimpse of Big Muskie back in the 70s, after seeing a story in the Columbus Dispatch. Brings back great memories.
Lived in Belmont county Ohio and my grand parents in Gurnsey county Ohio during the Big Muskie and the Silver Spade area. Remember seeing the lights from a distance at night. While driving to my grand parents we would stop to watch this Giant. Awsome memories. My dad has alot of video of the Big Muskie on Super 8.
When the History Channel actually had historical content. Now? Bunch of reality TV bullshit.
R.I.P. HC.
but muh swamp peeples
Yeah what the heck happened? I guess they didn't want to pay researchers.
The big muskie bucket still exists. It sits at miner's memorial park in Morgan county, Ohio on the reclaimed land it once dug. Very awesome tourist site along a popular motorcycle road.
Kool
Just went there last week. It is awesome.
SR78 is still a joy to ride. Takes you all the way to SR536.
When I was little I got to see the Big Muskie in operation.Rhat was one amazing machine.
I grew up watching the Muskie work on AEP land. Spent my childhood summers camping there from school out to school start. Lots of great memories. After shut down it sat in the area it last worked for several years. It was fenced off and could be walked around if you were up to the 2 mile walk. I knew several good men who worked there and dedicated their lives to providing the power to build a nation. Gratitude is deserved.
The bucket is at a small park in SE Ohio. I saw it Sunday.
very sad, that big muskie was scrapped so it did not become a monument to show young people what former generations created
Same here my deceased partner was a soft ware developer for AEP that would have been such a great piece to show the young that the US was once a great industrial power sadly no more .
DefaultString they left the bucket behind as a monument that you can stand in and walk in and get your picture taken in it
It would show that former generations actually built shit. Big shit. Stuff that made a matter. Today's generation will be the end of manufacturing.
If i'm not mistaken the lasr time i saw the bucket it was sitting along the south side of interstate 70, that was quite a few years ago.
But i do remember a time when a few of us were out four wheelin' and came over a ridge and there it sat. No one around. So we took some time out of our trip to get out and explore this beast. It was definitely huge.
We had another one that was a little smaller named the GEM of EGYPT. I've got pictures of myself and several of my family members standing in the bucket with about 50 people standing in the background and there was enuff room for a few pickup trucks left.
You should have seen the traffic jam the GEM caused when theh took it across interstate 70. It didn't move very fast and they had to put about 10 ft of dirt on the road so it didn't bust the shit out of a 4 lane hiway. Classic entertainment, back in the 70's.
Its the CANCEROUS EPA FAULT
I grew up with all this,i loved in mulberry florida and every mile u went u saw draglines and mines ,i always loved machines,i love cat stuff,and my dad was an oprtr for 45+ yrs,and i live my dad's legend after his passing
Shawn, just to let you know many of us old Dragliners are still at it in Mulberry. At one time we had more Draglines in Florida than any other state as far as remember. I'm an old Marion erector but also worked on Pages and BEs over the years. Gotta love Draglines.
My father and I stopped to see the bucket on our way to WV, it is an amazing sight! Fore warning, its on a back road off of 77S; on your way there you will see a sign at a small local grocery store that reads "Do not feed the bears" dont let it draw your attention inside for some of their "famous 50 cent hot dogs"!!!! We each had two of them and fought over the restroom for the next three days, it ruined our vacation... Have fun!
BTW: These mine jobs have been coming and going in our area for decades. They dig here for a few yrs then leave,then a few yrs later they return to or near the same site. Its like a revolving door. By the way Bucyrus-Erie built these in my town and shipped them around the world for decades until closing our plant in the 80's.
Big Muskie stats for the rest of the world:
Height: 222 feet 6 inches (67.82 m)
Boom Length: 310 feet (94 m)
Bucket Capacity: 220 cubic yards (170 m3), 325 short tons (295 t)
Machine Length (boom down): 487 feet 6 inches (148.59 m)
Width: 151 feet 6 inches (46.18 m)-comparable to an eight-lane highway
Kinda cute compared to Bagger 293:
Height 96m (315ft)
Length 225m (738ft)
Weight 14200t
Bucket capacity 15cubic meters (530cubic feet), it has 18 of those.
It can move 240 000cubic meters (8.5million cubic feet) per day, double of Big Muskie
@@gustavmeyrink_2.0 That is impressive, I suspect, however, from the design of the bucket wheel, one does not handle rocky strata very well. The speed of rotation of the wheel and the inherent size restriction of the multiple buckets, make it susceptible to severe damage from larger rocks. The dragline bucket handles relatively large rocks, very well, which made it more practical in most mining areas, in the US. That said, the bucket wheel can really move some dirt, when there are no large rocks.
@@gustavmeyrink_2.0 Bagger 293 only for soft soil, draglines and stripping shovels more universal
@@wmden1I stood at the holes the bucket-wheel excavators dig near Cologne and saw them working... The brain needs to constantly reajust the size of both the hole and the excavators. Local residents and environmental activists call it "Mordor" and i have to say the nickname is not hyperbole. Those machines look like little miniatures on the set of an 80s sci fi movie when placed in that 400 m deep, 80+ km² hole in the landscape. It really looks like Mordor.
@@tomitiustritus6672 I would like to see a bucket wheel working, live, and moving along the ground. I only have seen one walking dragline, in real life, and it was so far away I couldn't tell a lot about it, but that it was fairly large. It was only about 1/4 the size/bucket capacity of The Big Muskie, I would guess. I did see 2 of its spare buckets, up close.
Man this dudes voice takes me straight back to my childhood, he was everywhere on history Channel back then
She was a big one alright but the 8750 Marion Dragline in the same mine regularly outworked the Muskie. Sad to see her cut up but nobody wanted to invest in the clean up necessary to preserve her. I was onboard the Muskie shortly before she was cut up. I was in the mine doing a repair to the 8750 and she was fenced in. I was fortunate to get a chance to get on her.
Cool
@@kawanbrownlee9724 An interesting and little known fact about AEP and big Muskie. When AEP was looking to get the biggest Dragline I am told by old Marion guys, when I worked there, that Marion offered AEP two 100 yard machines for about the same price as the 4250. but AEP wanted the biggest. The big girl never had good availability overall. Also Tubs didn't fare well under her, just too much weight for the time period.
@@MegaDonns didn't know that
@@MegaDonns wished they could have saved the whole thing like they did big brute
I want a walking dragline to step on me
I want to see one crush a car
@SnackbarthI guess it´s a fetish, like getting almost chocked to death while banging...but he is one extreme guy haha
kinky
Why the hell would you want several thousand tons to step on you 🤔
@@theunemployedtrucker same reason I’d love to be run over by a CAT 797F: to get crushed flat as a pancake.
I've been a fan of machinery like this since I was a toddler, especially draglines. Thanks for the history and footage of both machines. There seems to be very little available of The Captain, which was almost as impressive as The Big Muskie.
I’ve stood inside the bucket of the Muskie. Couldn’t imagine standing next to the machine!
I’m saddened and surprised they didn’t preserve Big Muskie - it was amazing and THE biggest of all time. It could have been part of some tourist attraction and would have been a great draw.
The bucket is still left as a attraction
@@christopherroberts2544 I've actually been to the bucket. Its extremely cool
A stripping shovel that size would need a pretty big brass pole.
+badlandskid Like mine! lol!
Silver spade crossing road
there will never be another dragline crane like big muskie
Sadly I have to agree. It is improbable that a new Dragline will be sold anytime soon. However there are still quite a few that will be moved to be used in a new location. As an old Dragline erector (Marion) I still keep up with every one I ever worked on, they are are bit like kids, they don't go away.
@@MegaDonns I agree
At least on Earth.
Old history channel nostalgia. Nothing but WWII and modern marvels
At least the bucket wheel excavators in Germany are still working, allowing you to get an impression of how big such machines really are. They lack the massive housing of The Captain or Big Muskie as well as the more complicated action, but the 288 class excavators are even bigger.
The proper people on youtube I believe explore the bagger
I may have heard of it.
I worked for Marion Power Shovel in the mid seventies. Would love to find out what the hell I welded on. Lots of Giant pieces to the puzzle of a giant dragline. Do remember welding on a 110 cu. inch bucket. Would love to hook up with some of the people I worked there with.
Yep, I went to work for Marion in June 1975, in the midst of that sort of rough strike. I stayed on in the field until the last day when we were handed over to Bucyrus.
RIP those outrageous and gorgeous giants. Would have been a sight to remember for the rest of my days to see one in action, or even after their retirement😢
Clean air act killed the business, then the machine's scrap produced over 9,000 cars. Is that IRONY?
ironic both in the pun sense and pollution sense
fun fact my great grandpa was one of the people that drove this.
And my Granddad was one of the people that built it! O-H-?
Wow that's awesome i bet he most have had lots of fun operating something that size
You might be interested in the conversation surrounding her:
facebook.com/www.HarmarVillageMariettaOhio/
@Travis Bickle
Dear Grammar Police,
NO PURPOSE was served WITH YOUR CORRECTION!
Signed, Be grateful for communication
@Travis Bickle - does that apply to you? In other words, if I were to give you the same "respect", should I note your lack of proper punctuation and syntax?!?
An electric shovel called Big Brutus is on permanent display in the little town of West Mineral in Cherokee County, Kansas. She's the largest electric shovel in the world that's still all in one piece.
The only thing that has been removed from inside her, are her massive electric engines. She's 160 feet (49 m) tall & weighs 11 million pounds (4,989,516 kg).
Her bucket can hold 150 tons (136 metric tones).
Her top speed was only 0.22 MPH (6 meters per minute).
I've visited her several times.
"Muskie" was about the same speed but much larger bucket and overall much bigger. We used to go look for it working when we camped on the reclaimed lands it mined.
@@lous5442 That use permit or at least the one I remember we had in the early1970's said "Columbus and southern Ohio electric power company recreational areas" lol lol and as a side note the "Electric company" as we called it then came into existence as " The Columbus Ohio Street Railway Power And Light Co." I can't remember for sure now if the word electric was in there somewhere or not, but I do remember seeing the name in regard to two pieces of railroad equipment at The Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington Ohio, A Streetcar #703 and a maintenance away steeplecab locomotive #2 I operated both as a teenager AND got to see that walking dragline cross the interstate... Didn't it take Friday night and Saturday night both? Resting it in the median during the day as it didn't move fast enough to cover the entire distance in one night? I gotta go look that up now lol. Peace to you fellow Buckeye and time traveler so blessed to have grown up when and where we did!!!
I remember big muskie from when i was a kid still just as impressive in my 50s!
Would love to see a film showing the entire building of Big Muskie
Can you imagine Big Muskie dropping a bucket load of dirt in the back of a pickup truck? 😂
It would flatten the truck
The truck would vanish, instantly. And no matter how good you are you would never get it running again
Those are some pretty big shoes to fill.
I work about 2 miles form where one of the Muskie buckets now rests.
Such colossal engineering , scrapped
METAL GEAR MUSKIE!!!!!!
DarioPardo looks like some shit snake would scale up.
Marion was superb engineering.
Big Muskie's theme song: "Dragging the Line" by Tommy James.
There is a Park in Ohio where the Big Muskie bucket is. Worth going and seeing. Miners Memorial Park.
What episode was this
That’s really incredible it can walk
I lived close to the Big Musky as a child , Central Ohio Coal Co.
I really wish Big Muskie could have been saved.. the end of this magnificent machine was heartbreaking.😢
On December 8, 2011 the technical college I'm attending gets to tour Bucyrus.
My great uncle helped build this beast! Ausom piece of machinery
I live right next to where Alcoa mined bauxite. You ever heard of land reclamation? They do it all the time. Had you rather not mine the needed minerals and let the loggers cut the trees? Or rather let the loggers cut the trees, and not bother with the minerals/ores? I suppose you don't heat your house, or drive a car, either... Or in order to save trees, your house is very small, or you live in a tent in the woods? I am all for nature, but there must be balance...
My daddy worked here for year's...He operated these walking dragline...
Hi Pamela,
I'm a student currently working on a story about the Big Muskie. If possible, I would love to hear more about your experience with your dad operating the dragline. Please feel free to message me if you're interested. I'm also happy to provide my email address if that works better!
Thanks so much,
Sarah
God big Muskie was still around when I was born
844trainman when I was born they were still dismantling big Muskie
Wow..stay safe out there!!
I live near here the bucket sits on aep property witch they opened up to the public, you can hunt fish camp out there for free, pretty cool
The beat in the video 😎
They have two walking shovels at the mine at Mansfield Louisiana.
What show is this? Modern Marvels?
Did you miss the part about two buses being able to fit in the bucket??
No miss,2:48 mention there;
When t.v. taught us stuff. Now this channel will tell you all about bigfoot, and ancient aliens.
I stood in the bucket of the big muskie. You could fit 4 RV's and 2 cars in that thing.
Nice video
A weapon to surpass Metal Gear!
I saw Big Blue the crane after it toppled at a stadium while lifting the roof. I felt so sad seeing it.
Old school, but a great machine that is outdated
Does anyone, by chance, know the song in the background during this segment?
Did you ever find out? I'd like to know too
Such a behemoth of a machinery.
Too bad it no longer exists.
What episode of modern marvels is this?
Big Muskie should never have been scrapped it should have been saved for future generations to see because we will never see another dragline this Big ever be built again.
There will be much bigger machines built on Mars or the Jovian moons.
R.I.P. Big Muskie
Its too bad that CAT bought out Bucyrus.
Yep a hurt Marion's economy!
I agree Cat should never have been allowed to buy Bucyrus. Terry UK
1 of the buckets from Big Musky is just down the road from where the original mine was camp ground around Reinersville,ohio
Very nice memorial site of muskie. A, must see place, in morgan county , ohio
jeanne ginther yes it is!
www.google.com/maps/place/Big+Muskie's+Bucket/@39.6991002,-81.7313568,42m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x7c499df11fbf29ca!8m2!3d39.6992689!4d-81.731279
I saw some history on the history channel yesterday.
i’m 26, just discovered big muskie by mistake scrolling through youtube shorts and did what any reasonable man would do, and drop everything to start looking up big muskie videos. i started screaming at my phone when he said Big Muskie was scrapped. 😂😂
that should be in a god damn museum, fuck that its own museum. it’s such an impressive feat of American ingenuity. the sick sonsabitches made IT A WALKING DRAGLINE. they said the biggest dragline isn’t enough, let’s give this bitch legs legs. AND ACTUALLY DID IT.shout out to those men who built and operated that beautiful big beast.
There's still plenty of walking drag lines out there have a half a dozen of them Northwest of me
Lets build ten of these and dig down to earths core
sad they're extinct
Nice one
Big Brutus isn't
No just the stripping shovels
It's little compared to earth, why wouldn't they build them bigger. What do you think got them this big.
A weapon to surpass metal gear.
And now, borh Bucyrus and Marion are owned by Caterpillar.
I had a dream where something like this was made into a very large war mechine D:
There was a book written once by Alister McClean (sorry if that is spelled incorrectly)I believe; where a victim was staked out so a Dragline could kill him by walking on him. It was set at Syncrude Canada but the author never specified if the Dragline was one of the Marion 8750s or the Bucyrus 2570s.
Now that "Big Muskie" is no more guess it's ok to say that "Athabaska", here in Canada is now the biggest "walker". The Canadian's had an agreement with Washington written years ago that forbade them from calling old Atha the biggest dragline because she had to stomp one track into US territory on her way from Labrador to Alberta when she was moved. You can't apply for Guiness records unless your're American. That 19.5 Km trip took seven years and saw the 1.6km boom reach over 600 meters into American airspace at one point. Actually, we also had to cut the bucket in half, down to 200 cubic meters, so as to comply with American regulations and that was the main reason we never applied for official certification. With "Big Muskie" gone we should be able to put forward a new case.
Actually Big Muskie wasn't the biggest walker. Amax Delta strip in Harco/Galatia/Harrisburg, IL was quite a bit larger then ole muskie. They just recently dismantled her maybe 6-7yrs ago. Sucks though about the guiness book
Eric Heflin Muskie was definitely larger than the 2 3270Ws that were owned by Amax. Big Muskie's internal code was the 4250-w.
The 3270s were better and more reliable machines but Muskie was obviously a larger machine. I saw Muskie up close 3 times. It was flipp'ng huge, especially when you are 10 years old.
Eric Heflin The Muskie was bigger in most specs than the 3270s as far as I know. I visited the one during erection at Harrisburg. (1975 I think it was) I was putting up a Marion shovel over near Marion at the time and a friend was working for F&E on the 3270 erection site)
About five years before they cut it up my son and I had a "guided tour" of the strip pits and my son was sitting there in the security person's truck going on and on about big excavators and their specs and the security person was so impressed that a 5 y/o would know that stuff. She asked if we'd like to see the now retired "Muskie" up close and of course the answer was yes. She let us inside the security fence around the machine and allowed us to look inside where the motors, gears and hydraulics had been and also allowed us to look under the body/platform and she even took a picture of us standing in the bucket which was still attached to the boom. I remember it took two shots to get the entire length to stitch together a single crude "pano". I used to camp/hunt/fish there three to four times a year in the 1970s-80s and no trip was complete without at least a few hours of one day spent looking for "Muskie" to see it in action, and then the smaller draglines after "Muskie" was retired.
I love big muskie
Hayduke Lives!
Sorry... this is not the biggest mobile landmachine ever built or the world has ever seen. The biggest machine weighing about 17,000 tons and is still working in Germany. 270 feets high, 1740 feets long and the name is F60 Förderbrücke. Sorry..;-)
Nobody said that, he said it was the biggest dragline bucket. F60 Förderbrücke is a different type of machine. Sorry..;-)
Imagine if all that material, effort and money.. were used on something that is actually useful.
Hospitals, schools, water sources, windmills, etc..
You type that whilst ignorant of the fact that materials in your computer or smartphone just might have been dug up by Big Muskie.
Yeah that might just be, but the overall cost when you consider the materials to build the thing also wrecked the environment... you be proud of that, and I'll keep my opinion
Should have never been cut up for scrap. The mine beside me did the same thing to the 8900 dragline
i wish i could get the soundtrack for this video... it is beautifully FUNKY! Perfect for Big Muskie! arthur
I've been digging around for this music too. Can't seem to find it!
The captain was blatant insurance fraud
Bagger 288 owns this cutie
Omg it's a totally different machine !!!!
+James Fagan One is a dragline, the other is a bucket excavator totally different indeed.
Ryan Lowe actually bucket wheel excavators are draglines they use cables to lift and lower the wheel but they aren’t as cool as a walking dragline
u know a woman with the name big brutus?
Big Brutus is a he
Where is the captin now
Georgette Fagan ded
The Captain caught fire in 91 and scrapped a year later.
yes, very ded
Long gone. I ran into one of the operator's from the captain in South Africa in 1991 or so. He had been contracted to provide operator training to a new mine for SASOL. I was putting in two Marion 8200s there at the time.
Ok sir thanks for finally leaving me alone...if you're tht lonely you should find a new way to try n make friends.
iv stood in its bucket before things huge
the owner could move to mexico to work for druglords as body disposal guy
I sat in the bucket
I've shat in a bucket!
The Bucket is in a Park
1:38 The largest single bucket digging machine. It was at that moment they realized it only had a single bucket. Why did we only build this with one bucket. Why why why. OMG I can't believe it, only one bucket. Why didn't somebody say hey!!! lets put more buckets on it or hey this bucket isn't that big let's make it huge, because it seems so little now.
krrrruptidsoless different material being dug. Bucket wheel excavators dont work here. It has to be drilled, shot, then removed. Bucket wheel excavators couldn't do anything here
the similar we have in Lithuania in clint minion Akmene..big monster
I wonder if Big Muskie will be recreated and put on display to show younger generations what was used back in the day
Sadly no
People don’t give a fuck anymore
Sure but which came first? It's called progress, finding alternative ways of doing things better. Now go watch your Bagger 288 videos.
Nah those are lame
Your therapist must get incredibly frustrated.
For the Glory of the Deus Machina!
poor machine R.I.P
Shame these machines couldn't be at least preserved i guess cost outweighs historical interest yet again.
Progress not always for the better!
Couldn't they have called it something else besides a "walking drag line"?? Sounds like a New York parade!
no,because
- its a dragline
- it can only walk