Hi Duszy. Been in the dirt business for over 35 years. Draglines are my favorite machine. If there is any specific questions I can help you with, please don't hesitate to ask. At any rate, no, it is not necessary to drain anything to work with a dragline. The bucket has holes in it for the liquid to drain off. As you drag the bucket to you, the material you are dredging up pushes 90% of the water out of the bucket and balance is drained when you raise it up. The size of the holes in the bucket vary. The small hole buckets are used in very light muddy areas. Bigger holes are used in heavy clay soil, etc where the material itself won't go out in the holes. So it depends on what type of material you have there. There are several tricks to the trade for sure including how you string your hoist rope and drag rope on your drums in order to get them to last a long time......and......how you use the drag rope to make it last 1000 hours plus, etc. Lots of little tricks. But draglines are by far the nicest machines still today. They will outperform excavators in terms of reach, cycle times and yardage. Anyway, if there is anything I can help you with let me know. We just sold our Manitowoc 4600, a 35B. We also had a linkbelt 88, 98 and 108 all of which were draglines. Take care.
Dusty
