DALLAS – Pioneering a new technique for transporting some of North America's largest earthmovers, Luminant recently relocated four draglines using a state-of-the-art 1,000-wheel vehicle. The mega machines were moved over 30 miles in total to new mining areas across East and Central Texas this past spring and summer.
Nearly 60 self-propelled modular transporters, trailers powered by up to nine 600-horsepower engines, were used to move the draglines – the smallest weighing six million pounds and the two largest weighing 13 million pounds each. This engineering achievement was no small feat, according to Steve Kopenitz, Luminant senior vice president of mining.
- Luminant’s D-32 dragline recently completed an eight-mile trek to the new Liberty Mine in Rusk County.
"It usually takes several years to disassemble and rebuild a single dragline, or months of planning and preparation to ‘walk' them to new mining sites. With our longest move spanning 15 miles, we needed to find a way to safely, efficiently and cost-effectively transport the draglines,” Kopenitz said. "Thanks to the ingenuity of our employees, we shortened the relocation process to just a few weeks per dragline using the interconnected trailers. The success of this industry-changing method represents our employees' commitment to innovation and to safely and reliably powering Texas.”
The largest of these draglines is roughly the size of a small high school gym, with a boom up to 330 feet long – about the length of a football field – and weighing as much as 200 train cars. As critical components of a mine, the draglines help remove the overburden, or the rock and soil above the lignite, and eventually return the soil through significant post-mining reclamation efforts.
"Projects like this require extensive preparations and careful attention to details. Our team coordinated logistics for everything from crossing pipelines and closing and crossing county roads to building new roadways and lowering and disconnecting power lines,” said Brad Gadt, Luminant heavy equipment relocations manager. "With literally thousands of moving parts to manage, including the machine size, transport distance, scheduling and weather changes, our employees consistently kept their focus on safety from start to finish.”
The draglines were relocated with the help of Mammoet USA South, Inc., a global leader in engineering and implementing solutions for the transportation of large structures and equipment. Go behind the scenes in the latest Eye on Luminant video to see what went into moving Luminant's D-32 dragline, one of the largest mining machines in the nation. Also, learn more about the dragline moves on our POV blog.
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About Luminant
Luminant, a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings Corp., is a competitive power generation business, including mining, wholesale marketing and trading, and development operations. Luminant has more than 15,400 megawatts of generation in Texas, including 2,300 MW fueled by nuclear power and 8,000 MW fueled by coal. The company is also one of the largest purchasers of wind-generated electricity in the United States. EFH is a Dallas-based energy holding company that has a portfolio of competitive and regulated energy subsidiaries, primarily in Texas. Visit www.luminant.com or www.energyfutureholdings.com for additional information.
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Caroline Atkins
214-875-8302
Caroline.Atkins@luminant.com