Almost impossible to believe.

CigarStone

CigarStone

For once, knowledge is making me poor!
Joined
Mar 7, 2007
Messages
12,387
Location
Northeast, Ohio
First Name
Jeff
About thirty years ago I did a great deal of rabbit hunting in western Pa. To keep the dogs safe from road traffic, and to find places where others didn't go, we would find secluded places and often come across things that were almost unbelievable.

That part of Pa. was heavily mined for coal and the huge drag line machines were often left in the woods because it was too expensive to move them. This isn't one of the actual machines but it represents the size and to give you an idea of how big these things were, the bucket hanging from the end of the drag line below is represented by the picture below it. The housing of the drag line was often bigger than any house I had ever seen. That is my son standing in the bucket.

Drag line.JPG

Drag line bucket.jpg
 
Grew up in a coal mining town, the drag lines are one of many massive pieces of equipment, it's really amazing to see in person. Crazy they just leave them in the woods there!
 
They would often have to build their own road to get the machine to the mining site because it was too big and too slow to use the existing rural roads. Or, the machine would be built on site.

After years of mining, it was just too expensive to build another road to move the machine out, or disassemble them.

Years later they came back and reclaimed the machines and resurfaced the areas to eliminate the dangerous Cliffs, pits, and lakes.
 
CigarStone said:
They would often have to build their own road to get the machine to the mining site because it was too big and too slow to use the existing rural roads. Or, the machine would be built on site.

After years of mining, it was just too expensive to build another road to move the machine out, or disassemble them.

Years later they came back and reclaimed the machines and resurfaced the areas to eliminate the dangerous Cliffs, pits, and lakes.
Click to expand...
That was going to be my question -- did they build them on-site. Apparently that was the case, at least partially. I've read that they do this with those massive dump trucks, as well.
 
We'd come across stuff like this every so often while riding our quads. But nothing to that scale. Mostly old dozers or tractors. Do you remember where this was in Western PA? It might be close to me!
 
I grew up near East Brady. These were a little north around West Freedom or Parker.
 
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