The local water supply co here in Adelaide, Australia had these machines for trenching work, and could be used as a crane or fitted with a special hook for lowering-removing shoring planks! They were extensively used here for final cleaning up of trenches. Leads me to another question, what was the continous chain bucket excavator used, had a belt device running thru to deposit soil either side of the machine as needed. The operator sat on a metal seat on the side of the machine and Meccanno did plans for a model of one. Spent a lot of time googling these types of machines and no results. As a kid I spent hours crawling over these machines, was wondering if any one has any pictures or info on them???
http://www.cleveland-trencher.com/9600-s.htm this type of trencher was common here in the 60's and 70's, one city even required it to be used.. but now they are very few in use..if any.... as the hoe has taken over it role in digging..
Thanks for that, we had a similar machine here for small jobs, the machine I recall the most was quite large and each bucket was on a chain type system, depth of trench at a guess was about 15-20ft. If I can find the Meccano model of it I will post it here.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oy...v=onepage&q=cleveland ladder trencher&f=false there are some ladder trenchers in this story , also pics
Thanks Heavylift, it seems from my memory that the one pictured on pg 189-and 191 seem to be the machine I asked about in regards to the 2nd question. If not the same, its very similar in style with the belt that can run left or right. Cheers for your help, meccano did a similar machine many years ago that resembled what im on about!