It is a "
walking dragline" with a huge claw used to shift thousands of tonnes of rock, sand and clay to expose the underlying coal seams.
The Ace in the Hole is a 1300W Bucyrus-Erie
walking dragline that Usibelli purchased in 1977.
The Bucyrus Erie 1550-W
walking dragline excavator was dubbed Big Geordie at Radar Opencast site in Widdrington, near Morpeth, where it worked from 1968 until Butterwell Opencast Site nearby was opened a few years later and eventually moved to Stobswood Opencast, where it ended its working days in 1993.
A new P&H model 9020, 5,170 t
walking dragline - which will be one of the largest in Australia - is to join a P&H model 4100 electric mining shovel in overburden digging operations at Bulga Coal Management Ltd's Bulga and Saxonvale opencast coal mines in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.
The Bucyrus-Erie 1300W
walking dragline was named by local school children when it began operations at Poker Flats Mine.
Over the next three months, the 3,000-tonne
walking dragline excavator will be stripped and cut up.
Big Geordie is officially known as a BE 1550W ( a
walking dragline excavator.
It has trucks with a 150-ton capacity and a
walking dragline - the largest land-based machine in Alaska - with a bucket that holds 33 cubic yards of material.
Another new introduction is the P&H 9020
walking dragline, which incorporates improved A-frame and front end geometry, precision gearing, and planetary swing and propel transmissions.
By modern standards, the early equipment was remarkably small - in 1944, over half the excavators in use had buckets of less than 3/4 [yd.sup.3] (or [0.75m.sup.3]) capacity, whereas at Stobswood, the latest large site, overburden is stripped by the P&H 757
walking dragline 'Ace of Spades', Europe's largest
walking dragline with a bucket capacity of 65 [yd.sup.3] ([50m.sup.3]) and coal is dug using two O&K RH 200 hydraulic shovels and an O&K RH 120 C backhoe, with buckets of 20 [M.sup.3] and [13m.sup.3] respectively.