The Big Muskie

The Big Muskie was a model 4250-W dragline and was the only one ever built by the Bucyrus-Erie. With a 220-cubic-yard (170 m3) bucket, it was the largest single-bucket digging machine ever created and one of the world's largest mobile earth-moving machines alongside the Ohio-based Marion 6360 stripping shovel called The Captain and the German bucket wheel excavators of the Bagger 288 and Bagger 293 family. The bucket alone could hold two Greyhound buses side by side. It took over 200,000 man hours to construct over a period of about two years and cost $25 million in 1969, the equivalent of $185 million today adjusted for inflation.