2011 Coal Mining NDT – Blackwater Qld

Non-Destructive Testing in Queensland Coalmines.

A dragline excavator is a heavy-duty excavator used in civil engineering and surface mining. It was invented in 1904, and presented an immediate challenge to the steam shovel and its diesel and electric powered descendant, the power shovel. Much more efficient than even the largest of the latter, it enjoyed a heyday in extreme size for most of the 20th century, first becoming challenged by more efficient rotary excavators in the 1950s, then superseded by them on the upper end from the 1970s on.

Dragline Forty-One (DRE41) is a large 8200 Marion machine that was relocated from the U.S.A. for use at the BMACO Blackwater Mine open cut pit near the township of Blackwater in Central Queensland . It is the second machine of its size to be introduced to the Blackwater pits. This is the second time this machine had been relocated. Originally moved once in the U.S.A., it has for the second time been cut up and this time shipped across the Pacific Ocean to the port of Mackay for transport across the range to Blackwater. Electrically the machine is virtually brand new.