Friday :: 03 July 2009 :: 10:30 PM
175 days to Christmas!
Diesels are the future! Just a few years ago, the word diesel brought up images of slow moving trucks lugging heavy loads up steep hills slowing traffic. Not anymore! Diesels are now breaking into the racing category. My son has a Cummins Diesel pickup that races the quarter mile in the 12s. Next year, Chevrolet is bringing out a Corvette Diesel. Amazing!
Gas motors cannot measure up to the power, speed and fuel economy of a diesel. While gas pickups are hauling trailers and campers around on vacation, sucking up a gallon for every eight to ten miles on the road, diesel pickups haul the same load up the mountainside at seventy miles an hour, consuming only one gallon for every fifteen to twenty miles.
There is absolutely no comparison between a gas and diesel motor!
Big Muskie A Brief Summary
The Big Muskie was a 4250W walking dragline manufactured by Bucyrus-Erie Company at their South Milwaukee plant at a cost of twenty-five million dollars. At twenty-two stories high and an extended boom that was almost 1.5 times the length of a football field, it was the world's largest mobile land machine. The dragline used more electrical power than a city of 100,000 people. It was capable of moving thirty-nine million pounds of earth and rock every hour.
- Weight: 27,000,000 lbs. (13,500 tons) work ready.
- Length: 487' 6" (horizontally extended boom).
- Width: 151' (exterior of walking shoes).
- Height from base: to top of house enclosure - 67' 1"
- Height from base to top of A-frame - 119' 11.25"
- Height from base to top of boom at highest operating angle - 222' 6"
- Maximum digging depth - 185'
- Electrically powered: 13,800 volts
- Bucket Capacity: 220 cubic yards, 350 tons
- Empty bucket weight: 230 tons
- Bucket width: 23'1"
The Big Muskie worked in the Ohio Power Company's Muskingum mine in eastern Ohio from 1969 to 1991. During that time, it removed 608,000,000 cubic yards of overburden -- twice the earth moved during the construction of the Panama Canal. This work uncovered over 20,000,000 tons of clean coal. It was parked on 01 March 1991 due to a depression in the market for coal. By the end of the decade environmental laws demanded the reclamation of the mining areas and the removal of all equipment. In 1999 it was dismantled and the bucket put on permanent display at Miners Memorial Park in Noble County, Ohio.
Random Humor: Another Lawyer Joke
The attorney was cross-examining the witness. Every time she answered she would preface her comments with, "I think . . ."
"Why do you always 'Think' when answering my questions?" the attorney finally asked in exasperation.
"Well," replied the lady, "I am not an attorney, so I have to think before I speak."