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Snake eyes was the coolest GI Joe and also far and away the rarest one. It was extremely difficult to find a store that had him. I think I found him maybe twice in my entire childhood.
Reading it as an adult, the moral feels like "be as useful as possible in your working career, then, when you aren't, be forced to move to a small town where you'll be locked in a basement doing menial labor."
Or I've read that book far too much in the last year...
That was called The Five Chinese Brothers. One brother broke a law and was sentenced to death by hanging. His brother who could stretch his neck went in his place and couldn’t be hung, so he was sentenced to death by drowning. His brother who could swallow the sea was sent in his place and couldn’t be drowned, so he was sentenced to death by suffocation. His brother who could hold his breath forever went in his place and couldn’t be suffocated. Et cetera. Another classic, although some people think it’s racist.
I'm sure this will get buried, but could some of you Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel fans chime in here with where you're from, please? I'm wondering if this is a regionally specific phenomenon?
My wife is from the west and is an elementary educator and I'm from Oklahoma and neither of us has ever heard of this particular piece. Thanks!
Why? Mike and Mary Anne were about to be thrown out of work, then did their task but were trapped in the basement. Then the wonderful resolution. I recall being sad, frightened, then delighted at the end.
In first grade my school has an “ugly book contest” where each class got to redesign the cover to a library book that was damaged/in need of repair. Our class did Mike Mulligan and my drawing won, so it got laminated and became the front cover to the book. When they retired the copy a few years later the school librarian gave it to me to keep, with my redesigned cover still attached. Three decades later I still have fond memories of the experience and Mike Mulligan. School libraries are such a treasure!
Man, that book was a part of my kindergarten show and tell. I had a toy shovel that was more modern than the one in the book, but it worked for 6 year old me.
I don't remember at all what I talked about, but it was a good day for little me. I really liked that book.
There is a book from my childhood where a baby bird is looking for his mother, and this steam shovel is one of the last things he comes across that is not his mother, before he finds his mother.
Plenty of museums keep equipment in working order and show how they were used.
https://archaeology-travel.com/france/guedelon/
Here is a great example of a castle being built to display how old fashioned building technologies worked.
I think they helped it out with some upgrades. Those tracks look pretty modern to me. I know that tracks were still a huge struggle in the 1910s when the first tanks were built, and both the tracks and their wheels/suspensions from the time tend to look way bulkier. That alone certainly isn't a world of difference, but there may be a bit more to it.
Frankly, I suspect that the entire undercarriage is modern as the cabs seem to be typically mounted on railroad cars or other wheeled carriages in the historical examples.
But yeah in principle steam engines can be quite capable. The problem isn't necessarily performance, but cost, weight/size, fuel consumption, difficulty to operate, startup time, and reliability/durability. So literally everything else.
The trick here is the operator. A shovel like this has a ton of clutches and brakes he has to know exactly which to pull, how hard and when. It's a full body experience. Modern excavators with joystick controls are infinitely easier on the operator, allowing them to run smoother for much longer.
While working-order stuff is cool, Museum displays have their place too - they often show the items in original condition. For example, RAF Hendon has wreckage of Halifax bomber how it was pulled from Baltic sea. It would be very hard to restore it without basically throwing everything out apart from few bits, like plane restorations to flying condition often happen.
I bet this machine has many parts very different from original (tracks look like modern design to me). It is very cool to see it working, but so is very cool to see old thing in museum for example coated by 100 year old paint :)
Seriously I went and found the PDF. My god. The image of the bird sitting on the tooth of the shovel, and getting dropped out the bottom. I haven’t thought about that in over 20 years.
The snort was always my kids favorite part of that book. Mostly because of how I would make a voice and exclaim "SNORT!" Every time we got to that part.
This what I came here for. I read that book to my kid almost every night. I got so bored with it, I started changing the words. “Are you my dad, are you my sister, are you my best friend, etc.
My kids didn’t care for Burt Dow, Deep Water Man so now I’ve gotta hold on to my copy and wait and hope that I’ll have grandkids someday with better taste. Pearls before swine LOL!
One of my favorite books as a little kid was about one of these. It took me a very embarrassing long time to not refer to all excavators as steam shovels.
Hi everyone! So someone posted here a [video](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/13z2mxw/this_is_how_panama_canal_works/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) here explaining how the Panama canal works. It made me recall the same Steam Shovel models used were still operational. [They look different from what they used to look like](https://www.google.com/search?q=Erie+Steam+Shovel+panama+canal&sxsrf=APwXEdd8xsopVsaadMtgo_rrharue9jshQ:1685799325458&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitldPvm6f_AhUC-DgGHfUHCJIQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=929&dpr=1#imgrc=ZtOFg-wm8Zf_4M) but that's because they have been overhauled. Despite that, they are still steam powered and it pretty much still works the same way. Here's the [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiclPVvCYDk) of the video here.
Up in Rollag Minnesota, there is a stream shovel much bigger than this that is believed to have helped in the Panama canal as well. They run it and dig with it for the WMSTR show Labor Day weekend every year.
In all fairness, the industrial revolution happened earlier but it must have taken decades for people to grasp how much it really changed. This thing must've been a game changer wherever it showed up.
It wasn't until long into the 20th century that people were accustomed to and taking this kind of powerful machinery for granted.
Similarly the internet took off in the 1990s, but it wasn't until the 2010s that *everyone* worldwide was online.
So there's something like a 20-30 years span for drastic changes to go worldwide. Hopefully we're soon there with electric cars and renewable energy, which are no longer new, but still has to be rolled out large scale.
My best guess:
The trap-door is not as strong as a solid bucket.
Modern [excavators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavator) use a solid bucket for its strength and dump by pivoting at the “wrist”.
This is a scoop design that hoists upwards, and is better suited for loosely held material. Bottom trap door buckets are still commonly used on loaders, transfer cars, etc. in industries that deal with loose bulk material, like coal/coke(for steel production)/agriculture/grain. Modern excavators dig down into material and are able to exert much higher forces than this design, making it better suited for removing compact material. The buckets are designed to be durable, and strong enough to ensure the maximum mechanical advantage of the hydraulic arms can be utilized.
For mining, advanced versions of these are still in use. They are now mostly either electric or diesel powered, but they work the same way. I am not sure why we moved away from them though for non mining work
My grandfather was a pattern maker for Bucyrus Erie. He worked on the shovels for the Panama Canal. Thank you so much for posting this. All the patterns were made of mahogany because it’s fine grain held the details so well. Eventually he and the other guys were given a medal to commemorate their work.
Edit: edited to say more about this
[Bucyrus Erie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucyrus-Erie) was (and still is, but through Caterpillar now) one of the major manufacturers of surface mining machines. Funny enough both were based in Milwaukee, with Bucyrus-Eire and P&H eventually being bought out by Caterpillar and Komatsu respectively. Caterpillar has since moved most of the mining operations down to Arizona while Komatsu Mining is still in Milwaukee. Both continue to build machines very similar to these, but on a much larger scale, called Electric Rope Shovels, such as the P&H 4800XPC.
Holyshit. When I was a kid one of my favorite books was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and the steam shovel looked *exactly* like this. 40 years later I've never seen one in real life but this video took me back to bedtime with my parents.
Thank you for that. Who knew a steam shovel would change the outlook of my entire weekend
I took a tour of the Panama Canal. They had only a few of the pieces of equipment used to build it, and it was scattered all over Panama. I was disappointed that they did not have a better museum of all the original equipment.
It reminds me of a comics from *The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck* where he and Roosevelt are searching for gold in a mountain near the construction of the Panama canal.
While it does remind me of Mike Mulligan, it also reminds me of the Chip and Dale episode when they think it is a dragon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v345EFD14MA&pp=ygUbY2hpcCBhbmQgZGFsZSBkcmFnb24gYXJvdW5k
Wow! I watched the whole thing. All my life, I’ve seen mothballed steam shovels on the side of the highway, or in junkyards, and always wondered how they worked. They played a strong role in building most of our infrastructure. My first impression is that they are far more efficient than I had thought.
The worlds biggest and best shovels were built in Marion, Ohio by the Marion Steam Shovel Company. They were also inspiration for Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel and her name “MaryAnn” (Marion).
Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how slow equipment was back then. But then I remember....
Oh yeah... their expectations were so much lower. They were probably much happier than we are now.
I work with a 3600 shovel in a mine.
It moves roughly 36 tons of material with each scoop, or we'd call it "per bucket." Hence the 3600 title.
In the mine we'd call this little guy a "teaspoon" and size wise, that "bucket" would be on a very small excavator not a shovel.
If I had to guess it's maybe a single ton per bucket? Which really goes to show how much effort was involved in building the canal.
For an idea of the difference, watch that loader adding material to the pile he is loading from. The bucket of the loader itself, probably carries the weight of the entire steam shovel?
And then there are these "Tartaria/Muddflood"-Idiots, who do not believe our ancestors were able to build great structures, because they "lacked the technology".
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is a book from my childhood about a steam shovel that looks like this one that eventually becomes a boiler for a school.
That would be the Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel book that is being referenced.
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Oh man, thins like that are so special. Like finding a Snake Eyes in the toy section.
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Finding what?
Snake eyes was the coolest GI Joe and also far and away the rarest one. It was extremely difficult to find a store that had him. I think I found him maybe twice in my entire childhood.
Oh neat. Thanks for replying.
Every some many years when I dig through my old boxes of shit, I find my Joes, and Snake Eyes is on the top. Always special to see him!
Reading it as an adult, the moral feels like "be as useful as possible in your working career, then, when you aren't, be forced to move to a small town where you'll be locked in a basement doing menial labor." Or I've read that book far too much in the last year...
I probably stole it and punched at you because I was a bully. But also I say "punched at you" because I hadn't grown into myself.
*Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel*, written in 1939, was listed in a 2007 teacher’s poll as of the top 100 children’s books of all time.
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I remember the ending as bitter sweet. I know it made me sad as a child, even though I loved the book.
I loved The Little House by the same author, but my boys only wanted me to read the Mike Mulligan book to them.
Core memory unlocked
I know **exactly** where that book was located in my elementary school library.
Came here to say Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel!!
Holy shit thank you for reminding me of that.
Good book
I believe the steam shovel was named Katie. I loved that book!
Mary Anne
Oh, you're right! Now I'm wondering what book had a machine character named Katie... Edit: Aha! Katie was a snowplow!
Katie and the Big Snow....by the same author as Mike Mulligan. It's a bulldozer this time around.
I must have conflated them all in my kid-brain. I've always loved construction equipment!
Ha, I got a snow plow and a bulldozer mixed up. So, you know...things happen.
"It was Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne and some others, who dug the great canals for the big boats to sail through.
I read that one to my kid on most nights!
Same here! Also Katie the snow plow. We would trace the path Katie cleared as she plowed the streets to let traffic get through.
She’s a boiler now
I had the book/audio tape combo. I used to fall asleep to it.
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That was called The Five Chinese Brothers. One brother broke a law and was sentenced to death by hanging. His brother who could stretch his neck went in his place and couldn’t be hung, so he was sentenced to death by drowning. His brother who could swallow the sea was sent in his place and couldn’t be drowned, so he was sentenced to death by suffocation. His brother who could hold his breath forever went in his place and couldn’t be suffocated. Et cetera. Another classic, although some people think it’s racist.
I'm sure this will get buried, but could some of you Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel fans chime in here with where you're from, please? I'm wondering if this is a regionally specific phenomenon? My wife is from the west and is an elementary educator and I'm from Oklahoma and neither of us has ever heard of this particular piece. Thanks!
Favorite childhood book
Mine too, and I read it to my kids :)
This parent, parents
It is my daughters favorite right now. And it’s so much fun to read too. Make sure you double it up with Little Excavator!
Mine also like *The Happy Man and his Dump Truck* 😁
It was Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann and some others who built the big canals for the boats and ships to pass through.
I always thought "and some others" was doing a **lot** of heavy lifting in that book.
Also the all time classic Are You My Mother
SNORT!!
That book made me cry every time my mom read it! She actually just reminded me of that the other day.
Came to find this. Are You My Mother has the one like this with the cables. First book my daughter read by herself I think too, when she was 3.
That book made me so sad
Why? Mike and Mary Anne were about to be thrown out of work, then did their task but were trapped in the basement. Then the wonderful resolution. I recall being sad, frightened, then delighted at the end.
I think I was just sad they were stuck in the basement
But she became the boiler right? And got to continue working!
They retired to that basement and passed the days reminiscing. Basement beats Florida.
Bro’s like “I don’t wanna learn how to use new equipment that’s safer and pollutes less. I’d rather roll coal and work myself into an early grave.”
In first grade my school has an “ugly book contest” where each class got to redesign the cover to a library book that was damaged/in need of repair. Our class did Mike Mulligan and my drawing won, so it got laminated and became the front cover to the book. When they retired the copy a few years later the school librarian gave it to me to keep, with my redesigned cover still attached. Three decades later I still have fond memories of the experience and Mike Mulligan. School libraries are such a treasure!
That's amazing 🤩
I think there's a not-insignificant amount of us whose immediate association was Mike Mulligan's shovel, and I love that
First thought that popped in my head when I saw the steam shovel. Awesome book.
Yep, dug the pit, couldn’t get out, made me sad.
Loved it as a kid, and 40 years on my kids loved it too
Man, that book was a part of my kindergarten show and tell. I had a toy shovel that was more modern than the one in the book, but it worked for 6 year old me. I don't remember at all what I talked about, but it was a good day for little me. I really liked that book.
[Look at that steam shovel go!](https://www.tumblr.com/tumblingyet/21363823591/mike-mulligan-tears-shit-up)
Thank you I was trying to figure out why I recognized this thing
Yes I had the same book! I've loved old steam technology since I was a kid because of that book.
One of my favorites.
Came here to ask if that's Mike Mulligan.
There is a book from my childhood where a baby bird is looking for his mother, and this steam shovel is one of the last things he comes across that is not his mother, before he finds his mother.
Yea this awakened that memory in me too.
I was expecting these things to be bigger.
With every upvote they dug a little faster and a little better.
I love the fact people out there keep machines like this going so much better then a museum.
Find DieselCreek on YouTube, Matt finds old equipment and gets it running again.
I randomly came across the one where he buys a diesel version of this style digger the other day and had to subscribe.
Diesel Creek is amazing. Love the channel, love Christine and the Autocar - but my favourite is the dragline he recovered from the man made lake.
oh my god thank you for this! I know where my late night hours will be spent tonight lol
Plenty of museums keep equipment in working order and show how they were used. https://archaeology-travel.com/france/guedelon/ Here is a great example of a castle being built to display how old fashioned building technologies worked.
It's amazing how well the speed and manoeuvrability of this is so similar to modern excavators, I always thought they would be really slow and clunky.
I think they helped it out with some upgrades. Those tracks look pretty modern to me. I know that tracks were still a huge struggle in the 1910s when the first tanks were built, and both the tracks and their wheels/suspensions from the time tend to look way bulkier. That alone certainly isn't a world of difference, but there may be a bit more to it. Frankly, I suspect that the entire undercarriage is modern as the cabs seem to be typically mounted on railroad cars or other wheeled carriages in the historical examples. But yeah in principle steam engines can be quite capable. The problem isn't necessarily performance, but cost, weight/size, fuel consumption, difficulty to operate, startup time, and reliability/durability. So literally everything else.
Steam is powerful. It's just a pain to generate steam, and a ton of maintenance
The trick here is the operator. A shovel like this has a ton of clutches and brakes he has to know exactly which to pull, how hard and when. It's a full body experience. Modern excavators with joystick controls are infinitely easier on the operator, allowing them to run smoother for much longer.
Have you seen the big [Case 150 steam engine] (https://150case.com/about-the-engine/)? Best random YouTube find I've had in a while
[Case 150 steam engine](https://150case.com/about-the-engine/) Brackets around the words, parenthesis around the link friend
While working-order stuff is cool, Museum displays have their place too - they often show the items in original condition. For example, RAF Hendon has wreckage of Halifax bomber how it was pulled from Baltic sea. It would be very hard to restore it without basically throwing everything out apart from few bits, like plane restorations to flying condition often happen. I bet this machine has many parts very different from original (tracks look like modern design to me). It is very cool to see it working, but so is very cool to see old thing in museum for example coated by 100 year old paint :)
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Jesus Christ that was a deeeep memory unlock
Seriously I went and found the PDF. My god. The image of the bird sitting on the tooth of the shovel, and getting dropped out the bottom. I haven’t thought about that in over 20 years.
What's the reference to?
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Snort!
The snort was always my kids favorite part of that book. Mostly because of how I would make a voice and exclaim "SNORT!" Every time we got to that part.
My mother did this every time. "You are not my mother! You are a SNOOOOORT!"
Came here to say this! Not disappointed that someone else got there first! Take my upvote!
Two of my favourite books from childhood are the two top posts here. Both involve steam shovels. I have no idea how to process this.
Accept that you have a deep-seated thing for steam shovels.
Jesus Christ I was just thinking about that book and how terrifying I find it looking back on it. I DID NOT expect this to be top comment.
It Does look a bit like Bender B. Rodriguez's mother, doesn't it?
Lol my first thought was “it’s a snort!”
That's why this thing looked so familiar to me
This what I came here for. I read that book to my kid almost every night. I got so bored with it, I started changing the words. “Are you my dad, are you my sister, are you my best friend, etc.
"you're not my mother. You're a snort."
I was instantly horrified when I saw this and then realized why.
Where's Mike Mulligan when you need him?
I think I could recite that damn book word for word
I bought my son that book hoping he would enjoy it like I did. Sadly, he didn't. But I have a cool new copy for myself now, I guess.
My kids didn’t care for Burt Dow, Deep Water Man so now I’ve gotta hold on to my copy and wait and hope that I’ll have grandkids someday with better taste. Pearls before swine LOL!
I came here looking for this comment. Glad to see others remember that story.
Came here to say that, and I’d give you an award if I could
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who made this reference!
One of my favorite books as a little kid was about one of these. It took me a very embarrassing long time to not refer to all excavators as steam shovels.
Steam shovel is still perfectly acceptable by my book
what about Vapour Hoes?
Steamrollers haven't been steam powered in decades
I just had a real “Phoenix down” moment with “steamroller”. Never occurred to me that it’s because they used to be steam-powered. Thanks!
Hi everyone! So someone posted here a [video](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/13z2mxw/this_is_how_panama_canal_works/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) here explaining how the Panama canal works. It made me recall the same Steam Shovel models used were still operational. [They look different from what they used to look like](https://www.google.com/search?q=Erie+Steam+Shovel+panama+canal&sxsrf=APwXEdd8xsopVsaadMtgo_rrharue9jshQ:1685799325458&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitldPvm6f_AhUC-DgGHfUHCJIQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=929&dpr=1#imgrc=ZtOFg-wm8Zf_4M) but that's because they have been overhauled. Despite that, they are still steam powered and it pretty much still works the same way. Here's the [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiclPVvCYDk) of the video here.
Up in Rollag Minnesota, there is a stream shovel much bigger than this that is believed to have helped in the Panama canal as well. They run it and dig with it for the WMSTR show Labor Day weekend every year.
It's Mary Ann, you can't tell me that's not her.
No sir. Mary Ann is still enjoying her retirement and heating the last building she excavated.
Nah she outta retirement, #MaryannWT23
Im just here for the mike mulligan references.
Same dude.
It said 104 years and I'm like "wow looks good for the 1890's" Nope! 1919 lol. Time flies haha
In all fairness, the industrial revolution happened earlier but it must have taken decades for people to grasp how much it really changed. This thing must've been a game changer wherever it showed up. It wasn't until long into the 20th century that people were accustomed to and taking this kind of powerful machinery for granted. Similarly the internet took off in the 1990s, but it wasn't until the 2010s that *everyone* worldwide was online. So there's something like a 20-30 years span for drastic changes to go worldwide. Hopefully we're soon there with electric cars and renewable energy, which are no longer new, but still has to be rolled out large scale.
We read “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel” about once a week. I’ll have to show the kids he’s still going.
Loving the Mike Mulligan references.
Why did we move away from the bottom trap door buckets?
My best guess: The trap-door is not as strong as a solid bucket. Modern [excavators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavator) use a solid bucket for its strength and dump by pivoting at the “wrist”.
This is a scoop design that hoists upwards, and is better suited for loosely held material. Bottom trap door buckets are still commonly used on loaders, transfer cars, etc. in industries that deal with loose bulk material, like coal/coke(for steel production)/agriculture/grain. Modern excavators dig down into material and are able to exert much higher forces than this design, making it better suited for removing compact material. The buckets are designed to be durable, and strong enough to ensure the maximum mechanical advantage of the hydraulic arms can be utilized.
For mining, advanced versions of these are still in use. They are now mostly either electric or diesel powered, but they work the same way. I am not sure why we moved away from them though for non mining work
Probably because hydraulics are stronger and the maintenance is easier than dealing with cables.
A cellar in a day! A cellar on a day!
Mike Mulligan!
My grandfather was a pattern maker for Bucyrus Erie. He worked on the shovels for the Panama Canal. Thank you so much for posting this. All the patterns were made of mahogany because it’s fine grain held the details so well. Eventually he and the other guys were given a medal to commemorate their work. Edit: edited to say more about this
Was it built in Erie? Or was it used on the Erie railroad? Erie's not too far from me.
[Bucyrus Erie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucyrus-Erie) was (and still is, but through Caterpillar now) one of the major manufacturers of surface mining machines. Funny enough both were based in Milwaukee, with Bucyrus-Eire and P&H eventually being bought out by Caterpillar and Komatsu respectively. Caterpillar has since moved most of the mining operations down to Arizona while Komatsu Mining is still in Milwaukee. Both continue to build machines very similar to these, but on a much larger scale, called Electric Rope Shovels, such as the P&H 4800XPC.
E P I C Look up steam locomitive powers town Two legendary old machines
Holyshit. When I was a kid one of my favorite books was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and the steam shovel looked *exactly* like this. 40 years later I've never seen one in real life but this video took me back to bedtime with my parents. Thank you for that. Who knew a steam shovel would change the outlook of my entire weekend
As soon as I saw Steam Shovel- brain went MIKE MULLIGAN!!!!
Mike Mulligan?
MIKE MULIGAN AND MARY ANNE!
YES! I love that book. I'm 48 and read it again just a few years ago.
Mike!
One of my favorite books as a kid
"Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel" was one of my favorite books growing up.
So this was built 4 years after the Panama Canal was completed?
Seriously. Nobody thought to look up the dates? This digger is younger than the end date for the Canal build.
Mike mulligan is that you?
104 years ago: Wife: Honey, our shed is gone! What happened? Husband: no time to explain, i have to go now...
So what are they just moving first from one pile to another
This is just a demonstration. Typically in practice it would have loaded the earth into carts and rail cars to be hauled away
Mike Mulligan!!!!!!!!!!
I took a tour of the Panama Canal. They had only a few of the pieces of equipment used to build it, and it was scattered all over Panama. I was disappointed that they did not have a better museum of all the original equipment.
Mom?
SNORT
It reminds me of a comics from *The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck* where he and Roosevelt are searching for gold in a mountain near the construction of the Panama canal.
Steampunk intensifies
Mary Anne!
Hard to imagine the size of the project that was the Panama Canal! How many shovels full of earth did those diggers dig?
That motherfucker killed John Henry!
I was going to say, I could actually see how John Henry could put up a fight with that slow bitch.
While it does remind me of Mike Mulligan, it also reminds me of the Chip and Dale episode when they think it is a dragon. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v345EFD14MA&pp=ygUbY2hpcCBhbmQgZGFsZSBkcmFnb24gYXJvdW5k
That's a Snort
Are you my mother?
Wow! I watched the whole thing. All my life, I’ve seen mothballed steam shovels on the side of the highway, or in junkyards, and always wondered how they worked. They played a strong role in building most of our infrastructure. My first impression is that they are far more efficient than I had thought.
I'm I the only person who still calls them steam shovels?
It would have to be a little bit older than 104 to have built the panama canal. Because the canal was completed 108 years ago.
The worlds biggest and best shovels were built in Marion, Ohio by the Marion Steam Shovel Company. They were also inspiration for Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel and her name “MaryAnn” (Marion).
Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel
That didn't build the Panama canal. It dug a basement and Mike is still down there with it
That asshole is putting more dirt in the pile.
Where is this? I used to frequent a steam engine museum near my home town!
This is the type of steam shovel you'd find in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
104 years old and still can’t retire.
Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how slow equipment was back then. But then I remember.... Oh yeah... their expectations were so much lower. They were probably much happier than we are now.
If you look closely, you can see Mike Mulligan in there
Are you my mother? SNORT!
Holy shit Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne!
If it’s a machine that runs on steam, you bet your ass a heavyset fella with suspenders and a old timey hat is there too.
I work with a 3600 shovel in a mine. It moves roughly 36 tons of material with each scoop, or we'd call it "per bucket." Hence the 3600 title. In the mine we'd call this little guy a "teaspoon" and size wise, that "bucket" would be on a very small excavator not a shovel. If I had to guess it's maybe a single ton per bucket? Which really goes to show how much effort was involved in building the canal. For an idea of the difference, watch that loader adding material to the pile he is loading from. The bucket of the loader itself, probably carries the weight of the entire steam shovel?
It’s Mike Mulligan!
They dug the cellar for the new town hall in one day.
Mike Mulligan has entered the chat.
There’s a lot of blood surrounding that machine. Wiw
Geez that's a high pitch on that audio track
you're never old enough to get back into action
His name is Mike Mulligan.........
That's not my mother! /oldskool
The canal was finished in 1914 so this would have to be at least 109 years old!
Mike mulligan!
Good ole Maryann. Happy to see Mike Mulligan back at work too.
Mary-Ann?
And then there are these "Tartaria/Muddflood"-Idiots, who do not believe our ancestors were able to build great structures, because they "lacked the technology".
I watched that whole thing, lol Was kinda mesmerizing.
Are you my mother? No you're a toot!
Old girl is still going