After leaving Big Brutus, we continued westbound on small country roads and eventually arrived in Wichita, Kansas. We knew that a large part of the aviation community that was such a big part of our lives originated in Wichita at several of the civilian aircraft manufacturers.
Cessna, Beech, and Stearman are all airplane manufacturers that had their beginnings in Wichita.
We went to visit the Kansas Aviation Museum in search of some of that history. There were numerous displays depicting the evolution of aviation and we enjoyed our visit.
The Museum is located at the old airport terminal building which also housed the old control tower.
It was a beautiful building that fit your mental image of what old time airline passengers must have experienced at the beginning or end of their first airplane ride. This internet photo shows what it looked like.
Inside were many interesting displays.
They had a beautifully restored Stearman. They found it in a scrap yard.
After bringing it to their restoration hangar, they cleaned and straightened the airframe.
The next step was to find and overhaul an engine.
The final product looked like it just rolled off the assembly line back in 1931.
The control tower at the top of the building gave a great view back to the original Stearman factory, and all around the airport including the static museum displays.
Static Display
When we left Wichita, we headed to Dodge City. When we got there, we realized we were too late in the season and most of the shops were closed.
We walked around and Suzie met Wyatt Earp.
She also saw James Arness who was here because the old TV show Gunsmoke was filmed here.
From Dodge City, we headed on to Grand Junction, Colorado. The drive through the Rockies was beautiful. We lucked out and had dry roadways but a beautiful dusting of snow.
The trip through Colorado was beautiful and put us into Grand Junction in anticipation of going back to the Yampa Spa.
We hope you get a chance to get out there and see some of our great country and we will keep you posted on our travels.
Tom & Suzie
After we left New Orleans, we started working our way in a northwesterly direction, trying to only drive on roads we had never been on before.
We were generally headed toward Wichita, Kansas to see their air museum, but didn't have any type of a formal route planned.
As we drove, Suzie kept checking Roadside America for interesting things to see. Then, out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, on a little 2-lane highway, she said, "Turn left at the next street".
I did and we wound our way deeper into the local farm country. After a few miles, we drove through the very small town of West Mineral, Kansas and as we popped out of the other side of town, we could see "BRUTUS".
What is Brutus? Brutus is a HUGE Bucyrus-Erie coal mining shovel out in the middle of nowhere.
But wait, why is coal mining equipment in Kansas?
There is lots of coal in Kansas and a lot of other places we don't usually associate with coal.
It turned out that coal used to be a big deal here, and Brutus is a BIG reminder of this.
How BIG?
Pretty big. The little blue dot at the rear of the right rear track is Suzie !!!
This bucket would hold 90 cubic yards . . . enough to fill 3 train cars.
We were able to take a self guided tour of Brutus. Each stop along the tour had a sign explaining what we were seeing.
We thought that was pretty big until we went through the museum after we climbed all over Brutus.
In the museum, we saw a picture from a really big shovel called Big Muskie. Big Muskie isn't with us anymore and was destroyed after it reached the end of its useful life.
Its bucket would lift 220 cubic yards at one time. It must have been something to see and here is a picture of its bucket.
Even though Brutus isn't as big as Big Muskie was, it was still something to see.
Everything about it was HUGE.
This is inside the big machinery room where the motors and generators were located that operated all of the equipment. Behind me you can see the 2 giant winches that were used to raise and lower the boom. They were driven by eight 500 horsepower DC motors that turned the 2 large spools that stored the 800' of 3" cable that raised and lowered the bucket. The cable weighs about 25 pounds per foot.
This shovel was all electric and received its power from the local electrical power grid. 7,200 volts came into the shovel on long extension cords that reached down into the pit to power the shovel.
The shovel had 2 huge 3,500 horsepower electric alternating current motors that operated 2 huge generators that produced direct current electricity which then powered all of the drive motors of the shovel.
The shovel started digging in 1962 and worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 11 years until it was no longer cost effective to mine coal here.
The shovel didn't actually mine the coal. Instead, it removed the top soil which they called overburden. By digging down from 20 to 75 feet, the coal seam would be exposed and then smaller equipment would break up and remove the coal.
Then the hole would be filled back in and the shovel would move on. It traveled at about .22 MPH and over its life dug down to hundreds of miles of coal seams.
There was a 3 man crew that operated the shovel.
An oiler had to oil and grease the machine constantly and that must have been quite a job, considering the size and all of the moving parts.
The ground man worked in the lower section of the machine near the tracks. He was responsible for moving the machine forward and backward as directed by the shovel operator as the excavation moved along the coal seam.
The third crewman was the shovel operator.
In this picture, where Suzie is sitting in the shovel operator's seat, you can see an unfilled portion of the old excavation that was left unfilled so that it could be used for recreation. Now, miles and miles of waterway are all that remain of the mining operation and these lakes are stocked with fish for local fishermen to enjoy.
The machine was just huge. There were 2 sets of tracks on each corner of the machine.
Each one of the track pads weighs 2,200 and there are over 35 pads on each track and the track assembly is over 6' tall.
The machine cost $6.5 million dollars in 1962 and took 11 months to assemble after all of the pieces were brought into the area on 150 train cars.
We enjoyed climbing all over Brutus and then spent quite a bit of time in the museum where we saw a movie about Brutus and the effort that went into saving him from the scrap heap. They also had some great displays on how the mines were operated and the equipment that was used to extract the coal.
Brutus was a great little side trip and is the reason we are taking the back roads in the first place.
Who knew we would find something like this in the middle of nowhere in Kansas.
We will keep looking for more Gems like this and we will keep you posted,
Tom & Suzie
