Ol' Tobe II

This rusted hulk of machinery onced strip mined coal from the hills of Walker County in West Alabama. I couldn't believe the size of this thing. A distant cousin-in-law once removed narrates this bit.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• strip
• mining
• coal
• tobe
• II
• two
• drummond
• cedrum
• walker
• county
• mineral
• west
• alabama
• stripmine
• stripmining
• reclaimed
• land

[GrayEagle48]

Thank you for the video, I used to live in Jasper it was a pleasant reminder of those days in the early 70's. I used to go out to townley a good bit too. I will be watching more of your videos.

[pc801212]

I would like to get this video if someone could tell me how to down load it. My father worked around this machine. Also my fathers best friend ran this machine for a while. Wendall Bagley was his friends name. I have been putting together pictures and video I can find of all of the mines and equipment from the 50s-70s to give to my father as a memory of his past.

[cfaulc]

I went out today to take pictures of all of the Drummond Co. draglines from cedrum to flat top to mill creek and lastly knob creek. UNFORTUNATLY, Ol Tobe II has been torn down and moved to columbia south america and the shovel sitting in this vid with it is being disassembled as I type this. Also the BE1300 at the Flat Top Mine has been torn down and shipped to columbia. The BE1570 @ Mill Creek is still standing and the twin BE1300's @ Knob Creek are still there.

[AviationPhotogBNA]

BTW, the 2570W is a massive dragline. It's Bucyrus Erie's largest model still for sale now. It's a great machine and is very popular. If you want to talk about big machines, take a look at the stripping shovels my family worked on in Western KY for Peabody Coal. 21 stories tall with booms of 215 ft. long. Buckets with 125 cubic yards and so on. These were they true MONSTERS of coal mining. Today, it's just draglines. But cool video! Thanks for sharing!!

[AviationPhotogBNA]

@gfriedline

You have to keep in mind that one truckload of Eastern "Dirty" Coal burns hotter in a power plant than four truckloads of Western "Clean" Coal. The coal in the Eastern and Midwestern US Coalfields may be dirty, but pound for pound, it's the best burning coal in the world. Ask any utility and they'll tell you they have to "boost" the Powder River Coal so that they can get more BTU's out of it, unlike Western Kentucky or Southern Indiana Coal.

[panicspreadwide]

born and raised in walker county...mom and dad worked for drummond for about 25 years in the offices. dad went back and forth from colombia to alabama when they moved operations there...nice to see videos like this

[gfriedline]

I suppose you could say that in southern states all of the coal mines employee only small numbers of mine personell, while PA would employee thousands of miners at one site. That may be possible. But I doubt it.

[gfriedline]

I am slightly perplexed by your statement that "ten times more coal mines [exist] in the south". If that were true, either the south would employee more mine personell, would produce equal or more tonnage than say a north-eastern or mid-western state. The problem is, niether of those are true. In fact, Pennsylvania alone employs more miners than that of all southern states (excluding texas) combined. Ten times the number of mines, really?

[gfriedline]

And simply living in PA, OH, or WV does not lead to the assumption that only one's own commonwealth or state is the only in the US to produce coal.. Being from the Northeast, I am astonished that 36- inches of coal here is amazing compared to the 50+ feet of coal in the western US.

[Scott19seventy5]

Actually there are ten times more coal mines in the south, but coal can be found in lots of places all over the globe. There is no stereotypical coal country. Only people who think they only mine coal in their area.