Steam shovel ready for new retirement home — ITD Headquarters

Like many who feel the effects of age, the Bucyrus-Erie B-3 soon will move from its home of more than 40 years to a new retirement home in the northern shadows of ITD’s Headquarters.

It will be welcomed with open arms and a warm reception when it arrives from its present home near the URS building at Broadway and Park Center Boulevard.

The Bucyrus-Erie B-3 steam shovel is part of a vanishing breed of workhorses that helped shape industrialized America. Details of its parentage remain somewhat obscure; it probably was born during the post-Depression era. It was delivered to Morrison-Knudsen in 1931 at a cost of $9,350.

ITD adopted the historic steam shovel from URS, an international engineering company that succeeded Boise-based Morrison-Knudsen and Washington Group International. Retired transportation board chairman Darrell Manning and a former M-K project manager/engineer worked with URS to secure the donation.

The B-3 is one of many steam-driven excavators built by Bucyrus International, Inc. of Milwaukee, Wis. The company specialized in production of material removal and handling products used in the mining industry – both above and underground.

Bucyrus perhaps is best known for producing equipment that excavated the Panama Canal. The company has assumed a number of identities the past 135 years, and became part of Catepillar July 8, 2011.

The B-3 destined for permanent display at ITD, began life as a coal-fired, single-shaft steam shovel that runs on tracks similar to those on military tanks. It probably was used in railroad and irrigation canal construction and maintenance in southwestern Idaho, says C.W. Smilie Anderson, a longtime M-K engineer.

Anderson, 81, retired in 1991 after a 36-year career with M-K. He began with the company after graduating from high school in Eagle, started on the ground level (literally) and worked his way to vice president of international marketing.

None of his contemporaries – a large group of retired M-K employees who assemble regularly for luncheons – remember seeing the B-3 in operation. The steam shovel has been displayed at the URS building since before 1972.

Equipment operators sat in a wooden box, known as a “house,” that closely resembles a wooden railroad caboose. The bucket at the opposite end of the long arm is capable of taking bites of seven-eights of a yard. The original equipment was modified to run on compressed air when it was assigned to excavation in tunnels to avoid accumulations of exhaust fumes.

When it was modified, the wooden "house" was shortened, as were the two working arms, said URS's Dave Butzier. It was restored at M-K's Boise shops in 1982.

ITD constructed a special 30-foot by 40-foot concrete pad to support the shovel’s 64,700-pound working weight. The pad will be lighted and surrounded by a protective railing.

Published 2-10-2012