BIG GEORDIE – walking dragline
Project involved:
- With a build cost of 2.3m pounds Big Geordie, also known as BE 1550W – a walking dragline excavator, was once Western Europes biggest muck shifter.
- Big Geordie arrived in Northumberland in 1969 where its huge shovel rapidly gouged away surface earth to expose seams of coal below. Visitors from all over the world came to see Big Geordie in all its prime and even featured on BBC’s Jim’ll Fix it.
- The huge industrial excavator had dominated the Northumberland skyline for generations but with no interest from other mining companies the decision was made to dismantle it for scrap and spares.
- The contract of Big Geordie was awarded to us from which we dismantled the huge 3,000 tonne machine saving any still functional parts and mechanisms, that later went on to be sold around the world to numerous companies still using dragline methods today. All other parts of the machine were kept for scrap and recycled.
- Big Geordie worked on some of the UK’s biggest opencast mining sites including Widdrington, Butterwell and finally Stobswood from 1969 to 1993.
- Geordie was powered by electricity and weighed 3,000 tonnes. With its jib fully extended straight up it reached a height of almost 260 feet.
- The dragline excavator had a bucket big enough for three cars to park inside or gouge out 100 tonnes of earth with one bite and backed up against one of the goals at Wembley Stadium, Big Geordie could have thrown its excavator bucket into the penalty box at the other end of the pitch.
- It moved at a speed of two metres a minute on giant pontoon feet that lifted the body of the machine off the ground before lowering it a few feet ahead.
- This was only1 of 7 similar projects of dismantling draglines that G O’Brien and sons have undertaken in the last 37 years.
