I’m modeling a portion of an iron ore mine on my layout (set in the Missabe range area) and have bought a couple of the Kibri excavator kits (I know they’re not quite right but they look somewhat like the real thing). Anyway, does anyone know what color they would have been painted in the 1950s? I have a couple of books on the Missabe range and they show the excavators in a two-tone scheme (one dark, one light). However, the photos are all black and white so I can’t tell what the colors are. Any guesses?
Thanks,
Brad
Hi Brad
Would these machines be Draglines? Excavators are Hydrolic and would be very early for the 1950s. Most of the big mines bought draglines that were assembled, used, and scrapped in the same hole in the ground. The same can be said for the stripping shovels. Most would have been painted by the mine owners discrestion. I was lucky to see the Musky swing its giant bucket as a teen. WOW what a vibration from the ground as it dug that heeping 120 yards of rock and dirt. Too bad that machine fell to the scrappers torch. Before it died it was red and dirty white.
You could try to google Marion shovel or Bucirus erie or even Lima for some color shots of early shovels and draglines.
Pete
Good suggestion. I searched for images on Bucyrus Erie and it seems like a lot of their shovels were painted yellow on the top half and dark red on the bottom half.
You can probably select any 2 or 3 colors that catch your eye as long as one is rust.
Side note- years back there was a joke that all school teachers had 2 tone cars-red/rust, white/rust, blue/rust.
You want to use what’s called a rope shovel. USS painted theirs in the 1950s in the Mesabe Range in a two-tone scheme that I think used the same colors as the mineral-red and ocher-yellow locomotive scheme they favored then in the mines. At least, it looks identical in a black-and-white photo.
For those who are machine geeks like me, here’s more information. Those who aren’t can quit reading here.
Large machines used in mass excavation are draglines, rope shovels, front shovels, bucket-wheel excavators, and in the past stripping shovels.
Draglines cast the bucket out and drag it back toward the machine house. Draglines are almost exclusively used to remove overburden because of the way they are configured. They cannot effectively load into trucks or railcars. They dig beneath the level of the machine. Draglines are not used much in metal mining because usually the overburden is too consolidated and too hard for them to economically dig – they’re a soft-rock and gravel machine. I don’t think draglines were ever used in the Mesabi Range except some small ones to remove topsoil. All I’ve seen on mine tours and in photos is rope shovels.
Rope shovels are very common in metal mining and coal mining, so called because they use wire rope (or in layman’s terms cable) to lift the bucket and boom. Their direct predecessor was the steam shovel; by the 1920s virtually all new machines were gasoline or electric powered and the term steam shovel became obsolete. By 1920 big rope shovels were generaly electrically driven, full-rotation, and mounted on caterpillar tracks, and that was as far as the form needed to evolve. The big manufactures were Bucyrus-Erie, P&H, and Marion. There are only two makers of rope shovels in the world now, P&H and Bucyrus, both located virtually across the street from each other in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Rope shovels dig up from the l
Hi RWM
Dont forget Caterpilar. They still make a mass excavator/ front shovel. O&K I believe makes the largest with a 30 yard bucket.
Pete
I think you’re thinking of the Cat 5000-series like the 5110B, 5130B, and 5230B, which appeared around 1990. The 5230B was a 360-ton machine, not in the class of the ultra-large machines but 4 times the size of Cat’s largest excavator. Cat discontinued the line in 2004. These weren’t some of Cat’s better machines, the market is small, and the Hitachi and Komatsu machines are excellent. You can use a CAT 385CL excavator, which is a 95-ton machine, as a mass excavator but the stick isn’t set up for it like a front shovel. O&K/Terex is the same thing now and I think Demag is gone from the business.
As always, corrections and additions are welcome.
RWM