Time for their Snap

Today we went to look round the Bucyrus Erie walking Dragline at St Aidans. We were taken on a guided tour of it by Sam one of the volunteers and he told us all about the working of it. I took this photo of the place the miners would sit and have their food, I loved the little stove and could just imagine them brewing up. For those who don't know what it is here's a brief description:-

This is an old Dragline called “Oddball” located at the old St Aidans open cast mine in Swillington on the outskirts of Leeds.

Two Bucyrus Erie 1150B walking draglines were used here when the site was active, they had a top speed of 0.2 miles per hour. Oddball was built in 1948 by the Bucyrus Erie in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the USA. It worked there for 4 years before it was dismantled & shipped to England. It's been dismantled 4 times in the U.K as it worked in Pontyprid, South Wales & Cannock and Staffordshire before it was finally moved to the St Aidans in 1972 where it worked until 1983. It is one of only four remaining drag line excavators still in existence. It weighs 1200 tons and is the size of 60 double decker busses and has a bucket capacity of 20 cubic yards.

It is so called Oddball as with most draglines it was mains powered and ran on a different MHz level than normal British machinery and so certain transformers had to be installed that apparently made various strange noises hence the name Oddball.

The area where the old open cast mine was had been extensively deep mined since the 1800’s before an opencast mine was established there in the 1940’s. The open cast mine was then extended in 1981 and was expected to yield 6 million tones of coal over 10 years. The mine is infamous as in March 1988 mining was brought abruptly to a halt by a catastrophic failure of a 70 m deep excavation wall, which then allowed the River Aire to flow into the site from both upstream and downstream sections of the river. There was still much coal to be mined on the site so it the water was drained out and the river and canal were both re-diverted around the site. The new section of canal that was built was the first significant section of a canal to be built in nearly 100 years nationwide. The work was completed in 1995 and the remaining coal from the mine was removed.

A group called The Friends of the St. Aidens BE 1150 Dragline restored the dragline in 1999 with the help of Beeby Plant Repairs, it walked 49 meters to its final resting place today where it is opened to visitors a few times a year.

The Area is now a country park but the Dragline is still there.