When I was done with my rock-climbing at the waterfall, Cliff drove us 45 minutes further west to West Mineral, Kansas, to see Big Brutus. We felt like we were in the wilds of Kansas when we saw this sign and turned onto a gravel road.
Our first glimpse of the attraction was when we were a mile or so away.
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| Cliff doesn't look very big now, does he? |
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| Cliff in the driver's seat. Even if this thing were still in working order, its speed was just two tenths of a mile per hour. |
Looking down to see what was going on.
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| Pretty impressive, right? I have lots more pictures, but I imagine this is plenty for a blog entry. Needless to say, this was Cliff's favorite part of our little mini-vacation. He loves machinery. He likes BIG machinery; and he likes knowing how things work; he will stand and stare at some part of a machine, trying to figure out how it worked and how it was made. If you want to know more about Big Brutus, you'll find some facts HERE; just google Big Brutus and you'll probably get more info than you ever wanted to know! |
Does it have rear bagger attachment?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't even have mower blades. :D Worthless piece of machinery.
DeleteIt is amazing and scary at the same time what we can create when a need develops.
ReplyDeleteMy older grandson would LOVE this machine!
ReplyDeleteYes! I'll bet he'd like to sit in the driver's seat, too.
DeleteI love seeing Cliff in the driver’s seat. I’ll bet he could have stayed for hours.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right.
DeleteI think Erin’s family took the kids here.
ReplyDeleteOMG! That is HUGE!
ReplyDeleteIt was undoubtedly worth our trip there.
DeleteThis is Margie..not Anonymous! I saw Big Brutus when I worked sales at the Coffeyville Radio station years ago in the 80's. It was fascinating!
ReplyDeleteCliff looks like he's in heaven!
ReplyDeleteI saw it once, back in the mid-70s when it was just sitting there without the info and gravel. Linda in Kansas
ReplyDeleteHoly cow. I've never even heard of Big Brutus. That is amazingly huge. How on earth do they tranport it???
ReplyDeleteIt was assembled on-site, so it was never transported. Fabrication of Big Brutus was completed in May 1963, after which it was shipped on 150 railroad cars to be assembled in Kansas. It operated until 1974, when it became uneconomical to mine coal at the site. At that time it was considered too big to move and was left in place.
DeleteBig Brutus, while not the largest electric shovel ever built, is the largest electric shovel still in existence.