Christmas comes once a year, and so does the chance to see Big Kate, a massive walking dragline in Warrick County. After the surface mining relic’s first public tour in 2025, the Museum of the Coal Industry in Lynnville, Indiana, offered “A Second Date with Big Kate” on July 25. I was one of about 200 people who accepted the invitation.
About Big Kate
The Bucyrus-Erie 2570 has a 310-foot boom, a 100-cubic-yard bucket, and a 4.5-ton lifting capacity. Old Ben Coal Company bought the excavator in 1970 for $37 million and had the parts shipped by train from Wisconsin to Gibson County for assembly.
Operators used the 5,500-ton machine to remove soil, rock, and vegetation at the Somerville Mine in Gibson County. Black Beauty Coal purchased the excavator in 2001, and then Peabody Energy bought the company in 2003. Because of market changes and costly repairs, Big Kate retired in 2023 and rests a few miles from the museum at an inactive mining site…