A few weeks ago, our parents started looking to sell our old trailer that we don’t fit in anymore and get a motorhome. Our mom’s family used to travel all over the place.
A few weeks before that, I remembered the name Big Brutus but didn’t remember what it went to. So I looked it up on Youtube and found a bunch of videos of Big Brutus. After watching a short documentary video of Brutus, I found that Brutus was a Bucyrus Erie is an electric model 1850-B cable shovel. It took 7,200 volts to do one full cycle (scooping dumping and going to scoop again) in under a minute. The largest cable shovels in the world were the electric model 1950-Bs named the Silver Spade and the GEM of Egypt. There were a few smaller cable shovels like the Captain and the Big Muskie, which was a dragline.
The Big Brutus is the last of all of them and has been turned into a museum in Kansas. I wanted to go see it because I like old machines like draglines and cable shovels. I watch a channel on Youtube called Diesel Creek and he has a few draglines and cable shovels and lots of other old things.
Stuff That Jack Built 