Page Draglines!
Old Page Draglines.

Most all of us are aware of dragline excavators and of the type of work that can be done with them under the control of a skilled operator. Draglines are used world wide in mining, road building, ditch digging, canal digging, dredging and on and on. They are very versatile. Numerous draglines worked for ten years or so in digging the Panama Canal. If a big pile of dirt, rocks, or what have you needs to be moved, a dragline excavator would be a good choice to be used to get the job done. In this area of the country, coal mining has been "King" and dragline excavators have been used locally in the mining industry for over fifty years. A small start with small draglines and power shovels was the norm, but this morphed into huge machines, machines so big that most had to be built on site. Once built, the machines were so large that they could not economically be transported to other work sites. Thus after their working days were over, they were either cut up for scrap, moved to a storage yard, and in some cases, just buried. The huge dragline at Sinclair Mine, called "Big Hog", in his final days, just dug a big hole and walked to his grave to be covered by another dragline.

After the big mining dragline has worked the pits for ten, twenty, or more years; then what? For the most part, it can not be moved, as a unit, to another location. In most cases the cost would prohibit the dragline from being torn down, the parts shipped to another location, and then reassembled. Most of the time, it goes to a "Graveyard" and/or is cut up for scrap pieces. Several years ago there were two draglines, with their booms facing each other, sitting on top of some reclaimed strip mining land. They were visible from the Western Kentucky Parkway in Muhlenberg County near the bridge crossing the Green River. I remember one of them was refurbished, on site, and shipped downriver on a combination of barges. At that, the ground had to be frozen to make a path to "Walk" the dragline to the barges. That particular dragline was barged from the Green River to the Gulf of Mexico and then transported to Guam or some other small island. Long journey.

Pictured above and below, in this stat are some draglines that have worked for years in various pits and then simply moved to a storage location, a "Dragline Graveyard", if you must. Most of these are old Page Draglines that have been moved to that dragline "Graveyard". Just by looking at the pictures, one would imagine that these old machines would just sat in this graveyard until they are cut up for scrap metal or would eventually rust out completely. Not so in some cases. Some can be and some are restored to work again. But that is another chapter.

Please note: Believe the dragline, the fourth one down from the top is a Page Model 752. It is the only one with the red and green stripes. Pictures were sent to me by a friend. I think that I have the right to use them in a non-profit way.

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Hope all of you enjoy looking and reading. Thanks for checking out the Rockport/Echols site. Hope you will return.

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Wishing you the best in life.

see you.....
jerry