Big Brutus 

My dad took me & my brother to Brutus back in around 1958. It was operating & stopped for a lunch break. Dad talked the operators into a tour. We went up the elevator underneath & up some internal stairs to look over the big room from a higher level with all the cables in operating condition. In the end we stood in the operators room for about 10 min. while he operated the machine. It was much quieter & smoother than you would think. When it turned to pick up & drop load from the shovel it was almost as if the land was moving back & fourth instead of Brutus. Also, when we were in the operators room they had a refrigerator inside the door in the corner for drinks & lunch. What they let us do was probably against the rules but it was a very special memory. If I remember correctly I think there were 3 operators involved. We had to walk about 1/4 mile from the parking area to get to it when the horn went off & OT stopped.

I enjoyed visiting this "beast" about 14 years ago, I wished I'd been able to do it back when visitors could climb "the mast", before the insurance company put a stop to that. Glad this was saved, it's a shame so many great things get scrapped when they're not needed any more.

My dad was from Scammon KS I remember playing on Big Brutus late 70’s and early 80’s when we went to visit. Have a pic somewhere of my uncles Plymouth trail duster backed into the bucket! THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES BIG BRUTUS.... great vid.

That was my great grandpa you were talking to.

a MASSIVE beast on tracks

beautiful machine, thanks for the tour !

Am I the only one that thought he got on his rascal until he moved the scale sized shovel.

Big Brutus a fantastic machine, but the model was fine too.

I’m from Springfield Mo and can’t wait to come see this!!

I am a retired Army 52E (prime power production specialist) and a Navy veteran Sonartech. I love working with electronics/electricity. With the Corps of Engineers we could produce some power and I would really have loved to see this in operation.

They used to hold weddings up at the top of the crane....

We want more!!!!! Great to hear these folks that lived it!!!

Great people for sure ,and a wounderful machine to dig out the overburden , more videos please ,, greetings from Ireland

Visited Brutus in 2004. Well worth the trip.

great video thank you for sharing my Grandmother used to work for bucyrus shovels an accountant i think or something else to do with math

That is my favourite behemoth like machine i would like to visit the behemoth when i go to west mineral, Kansas one day i am from phillipines soooo i need to go to united states before going to Kansas

Should have did the same thing with big muskie 👍👍👍

Can't wait to take my grandkids to see this!

There has been plenty of projects that Brutus could have been kept in service till this day, the one huge problem stopping that though would have been transporting the big fella from job to job.

They had drag lines around my house and me and my father got a job scraping some of the electric cables for them and we just loaded it and hauled it unprepared and made little or 30,000

Impressive

And they complain about cutting trees down. That can be replanted. How long will it take to replace all that coal.

Just think BIG BRUTUS is Tiny to The Captain

Cool, I took a number of photos of Big Brutus for a postcard company back in the middle 80's. It is very deceiving how big this machine is until you put people in the shovel and climb up on its crane.

👍

Little giant is the one in the building

Only a year to build?!

6$ bucks a ton??? What!!!? They were getting beat.

Amazing.......JUST ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!

I can't find out anywhere how many men did it take to operate the machine per shift.

Awesome

The music junked another video 👎🏻💩

It does not seem to be used for many years. Scrap it.