Big Muskie, Big Brutus, The Captain & Silver Spade | An American Story

Hello, the organization that tried to save the silver spade is still going strong where the shovel once worked. I became president of this organization and have continued the efforts to save other large pieces of mining equipment and history. Unfortunately our efforts to preserve the silver spade did not go as we had hoped, our mission was not a complete failure, as we do currently have the full operators cabin and breakroom, bucket, dipper door, hoist cables, boom support cables, power cable, crawler pads, house rollers, the enormous signs that said BE Bucyrus eire at the top of the machine, along with countless other artifacts, all on display at our grounds in Harrison county. I would be happy to open the grounds on a weekend give tours of our ever growing collection and promote our continued efforts to preserve the giants that are left!

I have never had anything to do with mining, of any kind, except a short tour of a lignite mine. I have always loved machinery like this, however. I can't help but tear up, a little, when I watch the boom and a frame of The Big Muskie being blown off and dropping, and similar activities of destruction of mechanical world wonders like these.

i wish there was more videos of the captain

I just moved nextdoor to the daughter of one of the Captain's engineers. He was just showing me pictures of it today. Just amazing

I remember a quote from Modern Marvels "Just like the flesh and blood monsters that came before them these dinosaurs were destin to become extinct" Really makes you think about great machines like them. Nothing lives forever not even great marvels of engineering like these

Just visited the big Brutus museum its a must see awesome !!!

The organization actually secured enough funds to acquire the Silver Spade at scrap value. After the organization secured enough funds to acquire the Silver Spade at value the owner wanted the organization to pay for the cost of reclamation at the resting spot. That was the nail in the coffin towards the efforts to preserve the shovel.

On a Saturday, I think in 1986, I went up inside a 1850B at the River King mine in southern IL. A co worker's Dad worked at the mine and I said I liked heavy equipment. It was amazing. we walked on the coal seam to get to it, went up metal steps haning under it by a chain, then took a tiny eleavator to go see the operator. all they were doing that day was repositioning it. Guys on catwalks underneath coordinating how to move and turn the tracks. A heck of a day.

The #1 reason we most likely won't see machines this large again (at least not anytime soon) is that mining methods have changed. Ad in the fact that the electric power industry is actively switching over to natural gas (less coal being mined), and the smaller equipment makes sense. And that's before you get into the environmental law's that now prohibit that style of mining in the first place. The mining companies still aren't cleaning up the messes they made.

I know everything comes down to money but big muskie should have been saved and put on display because we will never see anything like it ever again, i was gutted when it was scrapped 😢

And to think I was inspired by the size of the '69 BE 30-B I rebuilt/restored a decade ago!! In the days of hydraulics, cable n friction machines are still an awesome look back into past engineering!!!

It's sad that they could not keep the Big Muskie, like they did the Big Brutus.😢😢

I know that the "modern" smaller mining excavators are not intended for excavation of non blasted, hard material (earth with a large amount of rock), but I wonder if the older, giant mining shovels & draglines required hard material to be blasted before the material could be excavated? I've seen videos showing enormous rocks falling from the buckets of these giant shovels & draglines (after a shovel bucket skimmed a mine high wall, or a dragline bucket dragged a mine pit, where the machines had excavated apparently unblasted material), so it would seem that these giant machines could excavate (by design?) unblasted material (although maybe blasting was required for some material conditions).

Bruts is my favourite.

Thats cool 👌

American finest❤

The silver spade was only 6400 tonne not 14000 . It was 14000000 pounds about

poor old girls Edit: phenomenal video, really shows the golden age of America, now we’re just a shell of that, with outsourced parts and cheap shit.

I have fished many strip pits in S IL and my father hauled coal out of a lot of them, he worked for ICRR for 43 yrs starting in 1959, from Freeburg, New Athens, Smithton, Marissa, Sparta, Pinckneyville and many more, on a day off which wasn't often, he'd drive me down to some of the mines, it was cool, like a 1 kid field trip, I got to see the Captain operate at the mine of its namesake, anyway at the Freeburg maintenance shed one day these guy were playing craps on these huge pieces of plywood probably an inch thick, I noticed this one guy and he was in a 3 piece suit dark blue, jacket off, still got vest on rollin the dice, I barely know more about craps now at 57 than I did at 6-7, any way this guy was way out of place like the sesame street thing about one of these things doesn't belong, yeah a guy in a fancy suit on his knees playing craps in a greasy repair shed, anyway after dad and I left he said it didn't matter to the guy if he won or lost, if he won he'd just give back for the guys to split, he was the mine manager for the area mines.

Bucyrus Erie moved it's headquarters from Ohio to South Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1893 and I believe that's where the parts for Big Muskie were fabricated and then shipped by rail to the Muskingham Ohio mine sight. 1:26