Marion 6360, also known as ''The Captain'', was a giant
power shovel built by the
Marion Power Shovel
Marion Power Shovel Company was an American firm that designed, manufactured and sold steam shovels, power shovels, blast hole drills, excavators, and dragline excavators for use in the construction and mining industries. The company was a maj ...
company. Completed in 1965, it was one of the largest land vehicles ever built,
exceeded only by some
dragline and
bucket-wheel excavators. The shovel originally started work with
Southwestern Illinois Coal Corporation, but the owners were soon bought out by
Arch Coal. Everything remained the same at the mine except for the colors which were changed to red, white, and blue.
The shovel worked well for Arch Coal until September 9, 1991, when a fire broke out in the lower works of the shovel. It was caused by a burst hydraulic line that was spraying the hot fluids on an electrical relay panel. This fire caused a great deal of damage to both the lower works and machine house. Afterwards, engineers from both Arch and Marion Power Shovel surveyed the damage and deemed it too great to repair, and the machine was scrapped one year later in the last pit it dug.
The only Marion shovel that compared (in size and scope) to "The Captain" was the
Marion 5960-M Marion may refer to:
People
*Marion (given name)
* Marion (surname)
*Marion Silva Fernandes, Brazilian footballer known simply as "Marion"
* Marion (singer), Filipino singer-songwriter and pianist Marion Aunor (born 1992)
Places Antarctica
* Ma ...
Power Shovel that worked at Peabody Coal Company's (
Peabody Energy)
River Queen Surface Mine
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
in
Central City, Kentucky. It was named the "Big Digger" and carried a bucket on a boom. It was Marion Power Shovel's second largest machine ever built and the third largest shovel in the world. This "sister shovel" was scrapped in early 1990 in
Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.
Specifics
* Boom Length:
* Bucket Capacity: (double doors)
* Dipper Stick Length:
* Overall Weight: 12,700 tons
* Total Height:
* Crawler Height:
* Crawler Unit Length:
* Individual Crawler Width:
* Individual Track weight: 3.5 tons apiece (42 pads per track total)
* Clearance Under Shovel: to the first level of the Lower Works
* Largest Shovel In The World & Largest Ever Built By Marion--
* Started Service: 1965
* Dismantled: 1992
* Power 15,000 hp
* Build time (site erection) 18 months & 150,000 man hours
See also
*
Bagger 288
*
MAN Takraf RB293
*
Big Muskie
*
The Silver Spade
*
Big Brutus
*
Bucyrus-Erie
*
Bucket-wheel excavator
*
Dragline
*
Excavator
*
Power Shovel
References
External links
*
Stripping shovels
Engineering vehicles
6360
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