moving in mines
Prairie Mines’ Marion M8200 dragline weighs in at a whopping 8.5 million pounds.
Genesee mine’s dragline relocation project by Dan Zlotnikov he logistics of moving mining equipment can be staggeringly complicated. No matter how much engineering ingenuity you have at your disposal, some things just can’t be folded for easy transportation. The colossal world of mining — where oversized machinery is commonplace — is full of such challenges. Nevertheless, the heavy machinery does make it to its destination, and the work continues apace. But there’s large, and then there’s 8.5 million pounds’worth of large. This happened to be the weight of the dragline Prairie Mines and Royalties, Ltd. needed to move at its Genesee mine site. A dragline is a machine used for stripping the overburden from coal. “People can’t really comprehend what 8.5 million pounds means,” said Genesee mine’s engineering manager Ken Martens. There’s simply nothing a person encounters in daily life that’s this massive. For comparison’s sake, Martens offered the example of a Boeing 747 jet, which clocks in at a measly 380,000 pounds. You’d need about 22 of them (or 607 school busses) to equal the weight of the dragline.
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The planning The original decision to move the dragline was made years back and was part of the mine’s 10-year plan, explained Martens. The original excavation site, mined since 1988, was being depleted, which meant moving operations from the east side of the highway to the west side, to enable excavation on the new seams. “We have lots of experience moving heavy equipment,” said Martens, so the technical challenges of the move were part of standard operations. But the process was slowed by the presence of a 13-inch, high-pressure gas pipeline. Buried 1.5 metres underground, it parallelled a highway that served as a major artery for the local community and industry. Walking the dragline across the highway required precautionary measures in place to protect the road, the public, and the power and gas lines. “We went to ATCO Gas, who owned the pipeline and the right of way, and asked if we could have the gas shut off for the duration of the move,”recalled Martens. ”But we were told that the pipeline was supplying not just our power plant but
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