by Nick Drew | Thu 17 Sep 2015
Classic American draglines at rest and play
As a direct response to the many emails I have received asking for more material on old draglines, it gives me great pleasure to re-visit this blog post from the old SED365.com period of my blog, which features photos sent into us by our good friend Bob Rocker who lives in Florida.
Bob has thousands of archive photographs taken over the last 40 years and he has selected this batch which shows some of the greats of American dragline production. We start with this Bucyrus-Erie 88-B, which Bob captured working in Coral Springs, Florida over 28 years ago.
These machines were the largest of the construction sized range from Bucyrus-Erie and typically carried a 4 to 6 cubic yard bucket depending on application.
These next shots taken 25 years ago show this Bucyrus-Erie 88-B which was once owned by well known local contractor Jack Hardy. Sadly Jack Hardy was killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of 72, another great plant man with so many tales to tell gone forever.
These shots show the undisputed king of the Lima cable excavator range, the 2400, in action high dumping. Since there launch in 1948 these machines in various upgraded versions, proved so popular that many hundreds of them were sold around the world. This particular model has the markings of the Clark Equipment Company who had bought Lima in 1970.
Finally some shots of an American 9260 dragline which is parked up for maintenance at a silica sand pit to the West of Boynton Beach Florida. This machine was fitted with a 5 cubic yard bucket.
Big thanks to Bob for sending in these amazing old photos of some classic kit.