The Silver Spade

The Silver Spade was a giant excavator used for strip mining in Ohio. Built by Bucyrus-Erie the model 1950-B was one of two of this model built, the other being The GEM of Egypt . Erected in 1965 the giant shovel mining excavator was decommissioned in December 2006 by its current owner Consol Energy. Attempts by the Harrison Coal & Reclamation Historical Park to purchase the shovel from Consol for $2.6 millions (dollars) fell short and the shovel was scrapped in February 2007.

Facts & Figures

* Bucket Capacity - 105 cu yd
* Operating Weight - 7,000 tons
* Height - 190 ft to top of boom
* Width - 59 ft
* power - 9000 hp

Dipper arm

The design is unusual as it uses a Knee action crowd, and only these two Bucyrus Erie 1950-B's were fitted with this technolgy. As it was a requirement of the owners,, and had to be lisencesd from the Marion Power Shovel Co.. with Marion being alowed to use B-E's cable crowd system in return.

ee also

* Big Brutus
* The Captain
* Dragline
* Excavator
* Dumper truck
* Power Shovel

References

* [http://www.hcrhp.org/silverspade.htm Information about the Preservation Effort]
* Extreme Mining Machines, by Keith Haddock, Pub by MBI, ISBN0-7603-0918-3

External links

* [http://www.stripmine.org/spdeup01.htm Silver Spade on the Road(date Unknown)] The picture of The Silver Spade on the road was taken in April 2001 when the shovel was being moved across Route 519 in New Athens,Ohio
* [http://www.stripmine.org/r1950b.htm Cable Blasted 2007]