vanblair

By vanblair

Meet Oddball

Second hand when first imported into the UK, this was one of a batch of 3 "walking draglines" used in open casting at three sites before ending up in Allerton Bywater.
British Coal had determined that the could strip coal within 30 meters of the river (70 meters deep)
Unfortunately they were wrong: when 120m from the river, water began to (at first) seep through the top coal seam, then undermine the steel piling before finally sweeping it away as the river bank collapsed.
The river flowed in both directions to fill the hole, for three days as 4000000000 gallons of water filled the pit.
Nobody was hurt and all the equipment was recovered and used later to extract more coal after the river was moved and the pit pumped out.
Oddball now serves as a memorial to those who served in opencast pits in the uk.
Oh, she's called Oddball because all the other imported draglines were modified befor delivery for 240v operation, but this one wasn't!

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