Marion 8750: changing out a propel gear case, in situ.
A walking dragline doesn’t come to the workshop. The workshop goes to it.
A Marion 8750 is a walking dragline — one of the largest machines working in the Bowen Basin’s coal pits, and one of the most expensive to have standing still. When a propel gear case needs replacing, there is no practical way to bring the machine home. The job has to be done in situ, on the pit floor, and it has to be done right the first time.
That is exactly the kind of work ABC Heavy Engineering’s field division exists for. ABC crews have carried out propel gear case change-outs on the Marion 8750, along with walking arm refurbishment on the same class of machine — work our LinkedIn followers will recognise, built on what we’d describe the way our own people do: decades of experience on dragline component repairs, with knowledge and understanding that is unparalleled in the Bowen Basin.
The workshop’s half of the job
The constraint on a job like this is the machine itself. Dragline components are measured in metres and tonnes, and a gear case is no exception. The replacement unit is overhauled in our Paget workshop to OEM specification before it ever leaves the floor: every component cleaned, stripped, assessed, measured and recorded before repair, replacement or refurbishment. Our fitting department works with jacking presses of up to 600 tonnes, and behind it sit the rest of the seven departments in the same building — a CNC floor borer with 13 metres of travel for workpieces to 150 tonnes, internal and external gear cutting to 5.5 metres in diameter, specialised welding, induction hardening and industrial painting. Detailed QA packages are provided with the completed work, so the records travel with the component.
Getting it to the pit
Getting the gear case to the pit is its own discipline. ABC’s 24/7 transport division runs low loaders to 50 tonnes, prime movers with flat and drop-deck trailers, and Franna cranes — the machinery of moving heavy engineering to where it is needed, on mine-site schedules.
On the pit floor
On site, the change-out follows the same logic as the workshop: assess, measure, record, then execute. ABC field crews work draglines, face shovels and excavators across the Bowen Basin on shutdowns, breakdowns and planned maintenance — the same teams that delivered a six-week ROM shutdown at BMA Peak Downs as principal contractor and five years of monthly maintenance at Coppabella without a lost-time injury. In-situ heavy work is not an exception for this crew; it is the standing schedule.
“Assess, measure, record, then execute.”
The outcome is the one that matters on any dragline job: the propel gear case changed out where the machine stood, backed by a workshop that repairs all in house, 24/7, fifteen minutes from the Port of Mackay in Paget.
If you have a dragline, shovel or excavator that can’t come to you — call 07 4952 3444. The line is the same one we answer at 2am.
[Directors] Confirm which site/client names may be published alongside this story (Q9) · no published scope, date or duration figures exist for this job — the article deliberately avoids them.
