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“It could have been a brake shoe sticking, overheated shaft bearing, or electrical fault, just to name a few.

“That kind of smell could have come from a variety of sources,” Miller said. At about 7 p.m., he noticed a burning smell, stopped the machine, and went with oiler, Fred Kruger, to find where the smell was coming from. Gene Miller was the operator of the 6360 on the fateful afternoon shift of September 9, 1991. The 6360 Captain shovel had a four-man crew consisting of operator, oiler, welder, and a ground man who looked after the trailing cable and operated a wheel loader to clear stray rocks around the machine. The Captain mine ran a three-shift operation with the afternoon shift running from 4 p.m. Of course, not all these motors ran with maximum power at the same time, but the machine consumed enough electricity to serve a town of 30,000 people. A total of 16 propel motors, one at each end of each crawler unit were rated at a total of 3,200 hp. diameter supported the machine on the crawler assemblies.Įlectrical equipment on board included eight hoist motors rated at 16,000 hp, eight swing motors provided 10,000 hp, and four crowd motors added another 4,000 hp.

At each corner of the lower frame, a giant vertical hydraulic cylinder 16 ft 9 in. Each shoe weighed 3.25 tons and, with eight crawlers, 336 were needed in total. Individual crawler assemblies measured 45 ft long, 16 ft high, and were fitted with 42 10-ft-wide shoes. Like most stripping shovels, the 6360 was mounted on eight crawler units assembled in pairs at each corner of the lower frame. It held 180 yd­ 3 or 300 tons of rock and earth, and was the only shovel ever built with two dipper doors. The 6360 shovel’s dipper measured 18 ft 6 in. The Captain’s 215-ft boom rose more than 200 ft above ground, undercarriage width was 88 ft, and maximum dumping height was 153 ft. Its operating weight, estimated to be some 15,000 tons, was more than double the weight of the Silver Spade (Bucyrus-Erie 1950-B, last operating stripping shovel at 105-yd 3 capacity, weighing 7,200 tons). The gigantic shovel’s dimensions and specifications are hard to comprehend. In 1969, Southwestern was purchased by Arch Mineral Corp., which later became Arch Coal. It doesn’t sound like much today, but it was said the Captain shovel cost $25 million in 1965, and went to work the same year Caesars Palace opened in Las Vegas, also at a cost of $25 million. (Bill) Mullins, president of Southwestern, named the machine and the mine after his father. Mullins, known as Captain Mullins, a leader in surface coal mining technology in the early 20 th century. (Photo: Keith Haddock)Ī masterpiece of American engineering, the Captain was commissioned on October 15, 1965. It had two dipper doors, each weighing 15 tons.

At 180 yd 3, the Captain shovel wielded the biggest dipper ever mounted on a shovel.