S800 Bucketwheel R.I.P

[Andrew Darné]

The MAMMOTH has fallen...

Yesterday saw the toppling of the S800 bucketwheel's bridge. Scrap contarctor SA Metal began the demolition of the now defunct stripping machine that served CDM and later Namdeb for many years removing millions of tons of sandy overburden to expose the diamond bearing gravels below.
As akward and topheavy as this monster appeared, it took some serious cutting and tugging to get the structure to the ground.

Have pictures on the camera at work, will post these tomorrow.

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Gee Andrew wernt you suppose to fall with it?

[Andrew Darné]

Piece by piece the giant is torn down and taken apart to be sold for scrap.

Here are the first of the pics.

[Andrew Darné]

More...

[Alfred Boehme]

Nice Pics Andrew, need to pass these onto Charly Blakemore I'm sure it would bring a tear to he's eyes.

[Michael Alexander]

Thanks for the snaps Andy, indeed a historical moment....

[Andrew Darné]

Will try and keep up to date with the pics as they cut it up.

[toonfandangl]

As a boilermaker its sad to see these icons bite the dust.................................I don't think this one was born while I was there.........................................

[georg ruf jr.]

Yes, very sad.
@ Frank Must've been about 75 or 76.

[toonfandangl]

Thanks George!........... we left Oranjemund  back end of 71 there were some great artisans worked in the fitting and boiler shop I can see most of their faces but not their names, and I think sadly a lot of the skills they had in them days have been taken over by machines today, I suppose that's progress for you.

[Bertie Horak]

I went scratching through my stuff, found these photos of the monster - it was an OPS school tour into the mine.  Agree with Georg, must have been around '76 when I took the photo's as a 10-year-old.  The size of it was mind-boggling!

[Clint Ebstein]

I spend lots of hours working on the S800 and S400-Pity

[Alfred Boehme]

I went scratching through my stuff, found these photos of the monster - it was an OPS school tour into the mine.  Agree with Georg, must have been around '76 when I took the photo's as a 10-year-old.  The size of it was mind-boggling!

HI Bertie the photo's you have posted was the first bridge designed for the S400 Wheel, the photo's Andrew posted are of the upgraded Bridge to convey overburden  for the S800 Wheel and spreader, they should of chromed the wheel and put it at the entrance to town like they've done at Kathu

When they have removed the complete structure there's going to be a big hole at 50G area where it was parked for many years.

[Andrew Darné]

2 weeks later (and a breal in operations) and this is what's left of the monster. These guys don't take shots from steelwork...

Pic 012 = What's left of the bridge, just the end at the spreader.
pic 013 = The team of machines that are doing the demolishing.

The yellow machines left to right: Left is a mechanical shear that cuts steel sections into small pieces about 1 meter in length. similar machines have been in Discovery Channel's Extreme Machines
Centre is a mechanical grab that picks up the pieces and loads them into the long white semi-trailer for despatch to a collection point.
Right is a tyre loader (front-end loader) that loads the smaller pieces gathered by hand and loads them onto heaps or onto the truck.
Far right next to the loader, manual labour for all kinds of peripheral tasks and the gas cutting of the bigger sections that the shears cannot get it's jaws around, as can be seen in pic 010 where the structure of the spreader is being cut up with gas torches.

[Michael Alexander]

Thanks Andy, Sad stuff indeed....