Bucyrus-Erie 50-B Steam Shovel - Part 3 of 4 - Sept. 2000

This is the 50-B that is now at Rollag.

Part 3 starts outside, watching an experienced operator at work. It switches to onboard at 20:13, with detailed views of the machinery, and some operation. Some of the kids may recognize themselves.

This is part 3 of 4. Part 4 will be tramming the shovel back to the shop area.

The shovel had been thoroughly overhauled by its previous owner, but then the old operator retired. None of the younger operators wanted to mess with it, so it sat for many years until Belleview Sand & Gravel bought it and brought it back to life.

Controls are more or less to Bucyrus-Erie standard. Swing on the left, pulled or pushed in the direction of swing, crowd in the center. You can see the linkage to the crowd engine on the boom. Hoist is from the ceiling, and is a 4-way lever. Forward is hoist, back lowers the bucket on air compression, ie a Jake Brake. Moving the lever to the side declutches the hoist for fast gravity lowering.

It travels on the hoist. Since compressing air is useless for propulsion, there is a secondary control lever that allows powering in either direction. Steering is done by a ground man levering dog clutches on the sprocket shafts in and out.

Controls appear to be very light, as all levers are just throttles controlling the 3 independent motion engines. Thus it shouldn't be too tiring to run, except for the vibration.

This was an open house, not an HCEA convention, as that was held in Seward, Nebraska in 2000. We were at the great 1994 convention at Belleview, and probably have some Hi-8 video from it.

My recollection is that at the 1994 HCEA convention, this 50-B was a static display near the shop, with the bucket chained in the air. Great to see that they got it going.

This video was shot with a Sony Handycam in Digital 8. This format used 2 hour Hi-8 analog videotapes, running at 2x speed, to produce high quality 1 hour digital video. It was a revolutionary format at the time, and was used extensively by news media for field news gathering, such as in Iraq. A bit of image quality is lost in the MS moviemaker editor, losing some of the striking immediacy of the format. Note that it is interlaced, and sized for broadcast televisions of the time.

This is one of the first videos from a large box full of 75(!) of these 1 hour tapes, that WurliTzer153Duplex is gradually converting via FireWire. These were shot by both of us, with several cameras, and it's interesting to figure out who did what.

There is some cool stuff in there.

#621
Belleview Sand & Gravel,
Petersburg, Ky
September 2000

Sony Handycam Digital 8

20000924d 50 B Part 3