Norwich Park Dragline Recovery

When we last saw Norwich Park's dragline, it was looking a lot like this. A bench failure had the dragline nearly sitting on its boom.
The plan was to bury two dragline buckets, which were then attached to a stabilising frame. Tension was then applied to the frame to pull the dragline back level, while the dirt was excavated out from underneath the dragline.
Burying the two dragline buckets.
Attachment of the stabilising frame.

Excavation of the dirt underneath the tub.



Remote-control dozers. Safe, but poor aircon.


Upright!


Repairs to the boom.

Repairs to the house.

In all, an excellent performance from the BMA team to successfully right the dragline and get it back to work. Congratulations on a job well done.

Norwich Park bench failure

These photos are only a few weeks old. The dragline here from the Norwich Park mine in Queensland has had its bench fail underneath it. Sometimes benches will fail slowly, but this one happened only over the course of a few seconds. The operator only had just enough time to jump off the dragline before it fell to its current position, and it's lucky the bench didn't collapse further. Amazingly, there was no significant damage to the dragline.






[ Edit 9/12/2008: Picture of dragline operator removed by request. I didn't realise until I saw the comments below that he wasn't wearing his PPE (I was a bit distracted by the dragline). I have no wish to embarrass him, so I've removed the pictures. ]