Dragline Excavators.

Guess the first dragline that I ever witnessed operating was an old and small dragline that Jimmy Blair operated back in the early fifties. It was simply called the 3W. Mr. Blair was "Ditching" or more aptly put, digging ditches for drainage. He was working in and around the Marion 350 Stripping Shovel. I was fishing and did not pay much attention to the 3W or the 350. I knew Mr. Blair and waved to him and continued to fish. He worked alone most of the time, just keeping that old 3w dragline working and digging ditches. The strip pit and drainage ditches from the old dump pile on No. 19 School Road to the rail tipple was called the "3W Pit" because Jimmy Blair on his old 3W Dragline dug that ditch. Actually, it drained one side of Happy Hollow to the Green River.

In 1952 a large stripping shovel was operating for Twentieth Century Coal company and was stripping on the Echols side of Rochester Road a few miles North of No. 19 School Road. I am not sure who I was with, but we were able to get up close and personal to this Stripper. Then I did not know what kind of Shovel it was nor the operator, just remember it was Twentieth Century Coal Company. The operator allowed two young teenage boys to climb up on this monster of a machine and enter the cab. He may have been bored, as I remember him welcoming us and even slowed to chat. It was at night and he and a "Cat" operator were the only two workers that we saw. We watched in awe as this giant of a bucket was being controlled to scoop up the overburden and then dump it in the spoil side of the shovel. Over and over, the operator would position this bucket on top of the coal seam, ease it into the overburden, pick up a full load of rock and dirt and swing it around 180 degrees and then dump it on top of the spoil. I do believe if we had been a little older, he would have allowed us to operate some of the controls. We must have watched him for an hour or longer. We did watch long enough for him to position the bucket close to and in front of him in order to move the shovel up the sidewall a few feet for another stripping position. To say the least, I went to bed that night thinking about a dream job of being a Shovel Operator.

With my limited knowledge of mining equipment and Strip Mines in general, guess about all that I knew was there was coal in the Ken Mine area and a bunch of miners were working and shipping out a lot of coal. This coal shipment started back in the mid forties and continued until the late nineties, a period of over fifty years. In this area, most of us only knew two companies that made "Strippers", namely Bucyrus-Eire and Marion. If it was a shovel or a dragline, it was either made my Bucyrus-Eire or Marion Power Company. If it was a large coal hauling truck, it was A Dart, but that is another story.

Since that first night on the Twentieth Century Coal Company shovel and watching it operate, I have become interested in shovels and draglines. I also discovered that other companies like Caterpillar and Page make power shovels and draglines. I have done a little work on draglines and have some information following. The Power Shovel information will come at another time. Just click on any of the boxes below to find some dragline information.

See you....
jrd