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friday, january 26, 2001
features
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8A
This dipper was used to dig up rocks and dirt, called overburden, to expose the coal beds beneath the surface.
The teeth on the front side of the dipper dug 90 cubic yards of overburden, enough to fill three railroad cars.
digging machine
Left: Big Brutus, the second-largest electric steam shovel in the world, sites in a field about two miles west of West Mineral. Brutus is 16 stories tall, about one and a half times as tall as Fraser Hall. The machines in the background are regular-sized steam shuttles that you might see at construction sites today. Visitors are allowed to climb to the top of Big Brutus' boom, weather permitting, to get a glimpse of what it's like at the top.
second-largest electric shovel ever built stands as a monument to coal mining in southeast Kansas
story and photos by jason walker kansan news editor
Inside Brutus' cavernous innards, these massive motors operated the cables that turned his dipper into a powerful digging machine.
umongous.
Make no mistake, Big Brutus is one big electric shovel.
That's the only way to describe Big Brutus. OK, there are others. Massive. Gargantuan. Monolithic.
Located near West Mineral, Brutus is one of those roadside attractions that is impossible to resist. After all, as Betty Becker, a West Mineral resident and 10-year employee at the Brutus visitor center, said, the big shovel is quite an attraction.
"You just don't go down the street and see one around every corner," she said.
Brutus is the second-largest electric shovel in the world. A symbol of southeast Kansas' mining heritage, Brutus weighs in at a stout 11 million pounds and stands 16 stories tall. And for local residents, the shovel is simply referred to as "he."
"Big Brutus is almost human to a lot of people," said Janet Britt, a West Mineral resident who has worked at the museum since its beginning 15 years ago. "When they talk about him, it's like he's real. We call him 'he' all the time."
While driving down the country road leading to West Mineral, "he" clearly stands out on the horizon. He seems incredibly out of place, stuck in the middle of a field near a town of about 100 residents in a sparsely populated area of the state. But he has good reason to be here.
Brutus, the only model 1650B shovel ever built, was commissioned by the Pittsburgh & Midway Coal Mining Company of Pittsburg and was constructed from June 1962 to May 1963 by a crew of 52 men of the Bucyrus Erie Company of Milwaukee. It took 150 railroad cars to transport all the components of the shovel, and construction costs topped $6.5 million.
In the late 1800s, coal mining progressed from mining in shafts to strip mining. European immigrants came to the area to work at the mines, mainly from the Balkan countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
r&M used Brutus not to dig the coal but to remove the dirt and rocks, called overburden, covering the coal seams.
Brutus' dipier has a capacity of 90 cubic yards. In one fell scoop of Brutus' might, 150 tons of overburden can be removed,
Brutus moved at a clip of 0.22 miles per hour, powered by four sets of 'crawlers,' or tracks. Each pair of crawlers was powered by a 250 horsepower motor, and each crawler track is 5 feet 6 inches wide and weighs more than 2,000 pounds.
enough to fill three railroad cars. It took four 31/2-inch cables to raise the bucket, powered by eight 500-horsepower motors.
The power to operate Brutus came from a plant power inside his core that provided 15,000 horsepower under peak loads, the equivalent to power used by a town of 15,000.
"It was costing more to wash the coal they were mining than they could sell it for," Becker said. "Plus pollution laws were getting scriter. After they shut him down, he just sat there for 11 years out in the field."
Brutus steamrolled along until April 1974, when he became too inefficient to operate. His last electric bill was $27,000, and that was just for the last month.
After Brutus did his dirty work, 120-ton trucks were called in to remove the coal.
The company retired Brutus right where he sat, and he still sits there today. But for years after his retirement, locals became curious about the big fellow.
They climbed and visited him, until Brit and other locals decided to do something about it. They started Big Brutus Inc., paving the way for tens of thousands of people to visit the monolithic apparatus.
"People used to climb over the fence to see him." Becker said.
"Pittsburg & Midway donated him, but he was all dirty," Becker said. "We just started out with a card table and a cigar box in 1985 and progressed to a little metal building and into what we have today."
Brutus was so dirty that P&M donated $100,000 for restoration work. Instantly, dozens of volunteers and locals spent countless hours cleaning and fixing up the old boy.
On July 13, 1985, then-Kansas governor John Carlin and the president of P&M, Richard M. Holsten, dedicated the shovel as "Big Brutus, a museum and memorial dedicated to the rich coal mining history in southeast Kansas."
In September of 1987, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated Brutus a Regional Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, only the 10th machine so dubbed since 1971.
Today, Big Brutus and his museum continue to grow rapidly. The visitors' center houses a museum and gift shop, and an expansion is coming this spring. Becker said the museum, built in 1899, owed its existence to Brutus's popularity
"We're a nonprofit organization," she said. "All the money taken in goes right back into upkeep and expansion of Brutus."
"It's something they'll only see once," Britt said. "There's not too many like him left. Usually people come back and say, 'Oh, yeah, it was definitely worth it.'"
All the effort into Brutus' salvation has paid off. Thousands of people visit Brutus each year, and Britt said in 2000, people from all 50 states and more than 30 foreign countries visited little West Mineral to get a glimpse of the monster.
Britt said some visitors came as skeptics but left as believers.
"Sometimes you'll see them pause at the top of the hill when they get down beside him," she said. "You know they're getting struck by the size."
Besides visitors from all around the world, Brutus attracts school groups, car and motorcycle clubs and hordes of local fans.
"Most visitors are repeat visitors," Becker said. "Word of mouth is our best source. People will come back after four or five years and tell us what has changed since their last visit."
After visiting the big guy, it's easy to see why he impresses so many people. After all, Britt said, he's one of a kind.
3-Hour 2-Hour and 4-Hour walks by things. Walker can be contacted at
vraeter is a news editor for the Kansan. He is 6-feet-5 inches tall and is impressed by big
"I've been looking at him all my life and I'm still impressed," she said.
mings. Walker can be contacted at
featurus@kansan.com or 848-4810.
Big Brutus
— Edited by Melinda Weaver
Second-largest electric shovel in the world
for more photos, visit www.kansan.com and click on the features tab
SHOWER IN THE WORLD
Built: From June 1962 to May 1963
Cost: $6.5 million
Cost: $6.5 million
Height: 16 stories (160 feet)
Weight: 11 million pounds
Maximum speed:.22 miles per hour
Dipper capacity: 90 cubic yards, enough to fill three railroad cars
Operation period: Ran 24 hours per day for 11 years
Ceased to operate: April 1974
Big Brutus is 16 stories tall — the equivalent height of about 26 6-foot tall humans stacked on top of one another. It's one and a half times the height of Fraser Hall. When visiting Brutus, weather permitting, people can climb to the top of the arm, also known as the boom, which is about 160 feet above the ground.
How to get to Big Brutus from Lawrence:
Go south on Iowa Street all the way out of town on
the way out of tow U.S. Highway 59
Follow 59 for about 50 miles until it runs into U.S. 169
Continue on 169 about 50 miles to U.S.400
Take 400 east about 30 miles to Road 50 South
Turn right, drive 4 miles into the town of West Mineral
the town of West Mineral
Follow the signs through
West Mineral to Dirt Puttin
Follow the signs through West Mineral to Big Brutus
Approximate distance round-trip: 312 miles
Tip: pack lightly — some of the crawl spaces are small
.