The Silver Spade's last day of operation, April 9, 2006. At this point, she had an hour to live.
She was digging her way out of the hole to be retired, with the possibility of becoming a museum, but it was discovered that the roller circle had broken again.
A year or 2 before this, we were up on the dirt road late at night, talking with a welder who had stopped by, and he got an urgent call to go do some welding on the machine. They had welders on 24 hour call. At the end there was probably more fill metal than base metal.
It was finally decided to cut her up on the spot.
The machine was very quiet from this distance. Generally all you heard was the cooling fans on the cab roof, the crunch of the rocks being dug + dumped, and the double hoist cables slapping together, sounding like 2x4 lumber being stacked.
When you drove by on 519 to see if they were operating, if she was stationary, you'd listen for the cooling fans. If they were running, this was a lunch or maintenance break, stick around.
Note the rocks rolling down the pit wall, each is the size of a truck, weighing many tons.
9 сен 2024