Production Years:- 1958 to 1967 Gainsborough Loading Shovel Engine:- Leyland AUE 680/20 6 cylinder diesel. Output:- 145hp Designed by Daimler for the M.O.D. and manufactured at Britannia Works. sorry if I disturb you, does anyone know this earth moving vehicle? thanks Gainsborough shovel built for the MOD It's designed to do everything,
Designed to do everything but nothing well? Looks like you sit pretty low compared to other loaders. What were they doing with the wheels? Looks like they were trying to set a record for the most bolts on a wheel assembly. The hyd. lines look ready to get ripped off and/or damaged. Only 150 built, maybe Daimler should stick to designing cars.
M.O.D. is Ministry Of Defense, right?
I think it's an old British military vehicle, I don't know anything else otherwise I wouldn't have allowed myself to disturb you, I was informed by a fan of old earthmoving machines. thanks for your opinions.
It looks OK for the time period that it was produced. I'm guessing from the photos that the front wheels steered instead of the rears. I'm looking at the clearance between the front wheels and the frame. It doesn't appear to have final drives looking the the flanges on the ends of the axles. The machine is reminiscent of the early Michigan loaders.
I would imagine the ride would be a little rough, and potentially be like a rocking horse at speed. But then it was designed in the 1950's. I wonder what the brakes were like.
Might’ve only had them on the back axle. Bucket would have been the fronts.
thanks for your comments and comments. it is clear that this is a military vehicle suitable for the needs of the time and conceived with the technical knowledge of the time with the obvious construction gaps, perhaps it has the mechanical transmission like a tractor, I would not know how to give technical characteristics http://hmvf.co.uk/topic/33289-re-plant-photos/page/2/ http://hmvf.co.uk/topic/34975-michigan-175/page/3/ http://www.sundial-media.com/?p=4804 http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11631 British built Marshall Gainsborough wheeled earthmover tractor which first entered service in the early 1950s. This interesting model has a armoured cab fitted so could have destined for Northern Ireland in the early days of the troubles or possibly used as a trials and experimental job cheers Les http://hmvf.co.uk/topic/34975-michigan-175/ http://hmvf.co.uk/topic/34975-michigan-175/
The boom has some resemblance to Clark Michigan loaders with the 4 plate boom. Interesting there's still some around with only 150 made. https://www.purplewave.com/auction/141231/item/I4090
thanks for the clarification, I think but it is only a supposition that at that time the first earth moving machines were derived from agricultural machines, therefore very rudimentary, not very functional, slow awkward in maneuvers, not very powerful and with little performance, if they had mechanical transmission then the tractor or a truck. I'm wrong? hydraulics have made the earth moving machines faster and more agile and with a better performance also for the benefit of the operator who operates them. at that time, maneuvering an earth moving machine was like doing tax with a rowing machine, stressful and tiring. better new technologies and modern innovations without a doubt. http://www.sundial-media.com/?p=4804
Hi don’t know whether this thread is still being watched but only just discovered this site.. I was an Army apprentice POM Plant Operator Mechanic in the Royal Engineers at Chepstow 69-71, then Chattenden (near Chatham) our, main trading area at the time. We has the Gainsborough, per the comment it pitched when driving.. it had a pre-select gearbox as one of its distinctive features, so much different to operate, and a tiny bucket for the size of the machine, I recall they mostly had a dozer blade fitted, fitting the massive boom to swap to a bucket was difficult, I don’t remember what we used to’crane’ it..never saw one after training, but as always the new equipment was working with the squadrons.. and I just remembered, I saw a photo of one with the RAF airfield construction squadrons from the 60s, so I would be confident that the Army inherited them with the Airfields role, late 60s. our main machines were the Michigan 75. DS dual steer which seemed to be indestructible. Very similar to a Bray..through the 70’s our main machines were the Allis Chalmers 645 which again were very reliable, I was in an ‘airfields’ squadron, we had the Michigan 275 a big beast for the big jobs. Our small loaders were the Muir Hill A5000, with,2,4 and crab steering.. we had to swap buckets to forks on these, pins were too tight,. Very difficult and slow to swap unless you got very lucky.
These are RAF photos, remembering again, we had the Blaw Knox mechanical grader, I remember an hydraulic or steering pump exploded came through the cab floor injuring the operator.. we also had an Aveling Austin smaller 4 wheel grader that had handle bars rather than a steering wheel, fully hydraulic, which was simple compared to the BK.. also in the pics, I think the dozer may have been a Fowler Chalkenger 33, mk4 (amazing the xxx you remember) that we must also have inherited too. The Michy 75 non DS. and back to the Gainsborough, had a CCU per photo, I think it was expected to pull a Vickers Onions scraper ..
Just noticed the photos are 1954..
Hope I haven’t just turned up and posted a load of rubbish that nobody is interested in.apologies..
Pics. and stories to go with them are always welcome, especially when they involve rare machines.
Great photos and interesting story, Ian - thanks for posting, many of us are interested in "junky old machines" as my wife would say! That Gainsborough looks like something designed by an Army officer with very little machinery or earthmoving experience, it's amazing the oddball products produced by U.K. manufacturers. Did you have any Aveling-Barford machines? They seemed to turn up regularly in odd places. So much of the U.K.-built stuff was unreliable, and placed no emphasis on driveability and operator layout.
The wheels with a zillion bolts look like Rolls Royce had a hand in it. Joe H
Not at all, pictures and history are always welcome and we are happy to see these things preserved.
Yes Ozdozer we did have Aveling barford dump trucks.. apologies for the poor quality.. a photo of a poor quality photo I took.. know what you mean about reliability but these trucks were really robust, we used them in this configuration all the time with our gear on a tilt trailer, sorry I can’t remember the make.. on the back a Muir Hill A5000 as mentioned previously, usually had a cab on and usually fitted with a backhoe which added weight to the back..also had winches fitted but I don’t remember ever seeing one used.. The trucks max speed was about 45mph, occasionally there would be a governor problem, then you may get near 50 mph.the trucks were also fitted with high sides for our role in RRR rapid runway repair..full of aggregate, you had to tip reasonably slowly, not easy for young soldiers.. will find other pics of these and other military plant and trucks..
vickers vigor - Google Search Has this unusual beast when training.. independent suspension, Rolls Royce engine (which were in many military vehicles from the 50s.. Also has a ‘crash box’ so in theory you could change gears on the move..never saw one after training, I suspect it was another inheritance from the RAF airfield squadrons.. 5001,5002,5003 which turned into our Army 51/52/53 squadrons.,
And in the Gainsborough you had an extra seat..why??
training. AKA never do this! " if you don't know what Lever A does, Lever Be"
Oh dear, the less-than-fantastic and totally unreliable Vickers Vigor! A NZ friend did lots of repair work on them and hated them with a passion! Apparently, a large proportion of their problems related back to using mild steel fasteners instead of some decent high-tensile fasteners! The Vickers Vigor was pretty impressive when they were running, their over-the-ground speed was fabulous, and great for towing scrapers. But that high speed translated into short undercarriage life! The old RR diesel engine ("oil engine" in the quaint RR parlance) wasn't too bad an engine - but it had too many engine castings in contact with coolant, made out of a cheap and nasty aluminium alloy. If you failed to keep right on top of your cooling system maintenance, then that alloy corroded dreadfully! I've actually got a running RR C6NFL (6 cyl, 180HP, N/A) engine in my yard, it is marked as being out of a Leyland truck, and it was set up as a running training aid at a local tech school. A bloke in Qld bought it, and got me to pick it up and store it for him. That was over 10 years ago, and he never paid me for picking it up, and he never paid me for any storage, so I guess I own it now? I gather he's a bit of an erratic idiot, but perhaps one day he'll pop up again and pay me, and collect it? Rolls-Royce C range engines - Wikiwand The Rolls-Royce C range was a series of in-line 4, 6 and 8 cylinder diesel engines used in small locomotives, railcars, construction vehicles, and marine and si... www.wikiwand.com
Allis Chalmers 645.. urban clearance 1978..these were our most used piece of equipment.. drove everywhere, never trailered, too heavy for the tilt trailer..you can just see the back of an Aveling Barford dump truck..
Allis Chalmers 645 with armoured cab, we had them but didn’t use them.. minimal visibility..photo from the net
Muir Hill A5000 same.. the earlier photo would have been one of these with the armoured cab left in the yard.
I’m fairly sure this is a Bray.. very similar to the Michigan 75.. but the squared off cab which could be held open with wing nuts.. but when you went in hard to a stockpile, the cab would shoot forward so your arms has betted be out of the way.
Ian, I think your last photo is an Allis-Chalmers TL-14, rather than a Bray. It looks bitterly cold there.
Here's a FB video of a Vickers Vigor working. That old RR engine is sure pumping some fuel out the exhaust! No lack of power though, look at those tracks spin! But if the operator keeps up those rough gearchanges for a few more hours, he'll soon be pulling the transmission out, though!! Gently, gently, was treatment those Vigor transmissions required! Vickers Vigor dozer | Tank tracks on a dozer with a Rolls Royce engine. Meet the Vickers Vigor. Seen here working at 2022's Link Club event | By Awesome Earthmovers | Facebook Tank tracks on a dozer with a Rolls Royce engine. Meet the Vickers Vigor. Seen here working at 2022's Link Club event www.facebook.com
It looks like the AC triangle on the back and maybe TL something above it.
yes that Vickers looks good.. as I was told when I arrived in Australia in 82, applying for my first job,when I asked about looking after the machines I was told..”the bosses just like to see lots of black smoke coming from the exhaust”.. well that was the gist anyway.. and this was a bad day a few days later, driving a 980 with no brakes..which was ‘common practice’. the reason being that this machine worked about a meter deep in muddy/sandy water, in the blazing sun you couldn’t see the red light showing The hand/park/maxi brake was still on so it didn’t take long to wear the brakes out, so they weren’t often renewed.. ‘snowy’ was the dozer op stood next to the loader..
Apologies for my earlier post of what I thought was a Bray, here’s a confirmed sighting.
Muir Hill A5000.. Please..if I am posting these in the wrong place, content is not appropriate, please feel free to move or delete, and apologies for so much I am obviously going through pic’s that have hardly been looked at in years and of little interest to most..
A few of Allis Chalmers 645.. (and Aveling Barford dump truck.)all fitted with a 4in1 bucket.. often used with a chain moving stuff around..as you would understand doing the work of 10 men in a couple of minutes..we prided ourselves on picking up as much as possible leaving..manpower to do as little as possible.. generally..
Avery Barford dump trucks.. with high sides (hungry boards in Australia).. which per comment earlier we had obviously to increase capacity, especially doing Rapid Runway Repair..looking at them now must almost have doubled the load.. in the other pic..on the last truck we carried spare wheels chained to the cab protector , lifted off with an Allis..
I know a fella who knew a fellow that was in south west Queensland who had a couple or three of the Vickers Vigor machines, would have been used to pull Mulga country. Apparently they were near impossible to run cool and he ended up installing two extra radiators so they could be used. He also had a baby Vickers as well in a state of disrepair.
@Ian coombs I ran a 980 like that. the one brake pedal did nothing and the other made it go faster down the hill when it disconnected the transmission. Not happy times! Your pictures are quite welcome and this is as good a thread as any.
Ian - That 980 mishap looks like a W.A. Goldfields tailings dam?
he did say it ran in muddy sandy water, so that tracks along well. We pushed the slurry pond from the crusher down and probably shortened the life of many things. Seals, brakes etc.
Ive led a sheltered life.. I thought the big bulbous front to the Vickers was an Army thing..until I looked at the net photos.. can understand why there was never going to be enough air flow to cool one in Oz. The loader was on a mineral sand minesite at Eneabba about 300km North of Perth.. lucky I went right instead of into the dam.. on that site they were known as 'slimes dams' which you are probably familiar with Ozdozer.. I drove over the side rather than klll 3 guys in a Ute (pickup)..
Yikes that was you that took that ride! It's about as close to rolled as possible.
This was my usual machine for the 6 months I was there...sorry I don't have any photos of the machine only.. you all probably recognise it as a 633C.. I had left to British Army a year earlier & emigrated, & all I anted to do was drive scrapers.. 12 hour shifts, with a 10 minute (smoko) break after 3 hrs..20 minutes for Lunch (crib) and another break after about 9 hours.. I was doing a last night shift before days off, when I saw a glow through the engine bay..not the turbo, a fire.. I stopped put the fire out with the extinguisher you can see at the front. when I came back after my days off I asked the 'dirt boss' whether the extinguished had been refilled.. 'what you used a whole extinguisher on that'.. that machine had no brakes either, it was the only one in the fleet with no hydraulic retarder so obviously the brakes did'nt last long, it had a lazy left ram so once it was loading up it dug deeper.. so no level cuts..
Yes I was very white, I actually didnt want to stand up in case it tipped..silly..and no ROPs..
Thanks..
Eneabba mineral sand.. we actually had an op' who commuted from Kalgoorlie though ..
Back to the Army..1979 Petawawa, 2 hours west of Ottowa. An International TD (tracked dozer?) 15 on loan from the Canadian Army, we were building a road through a training area. also a TD20 with a cable blade, alas it didn't take long for impatient operators who were used to hydraulics to 'stuff it'.. and the fitters didnt really have experience with fixing.. winches CCUs..
That scraper sounds like a real jewel, no retarder, digs like a plow. You lucky sod!! The brakeless 980 had mismatched tires so the pit floor looked a bit like a farmer's field. Why it did not burn up the diff I never knew. Luckily I only had to use it when the 988 was laid up.
Thanks Ian! This is a great thread with great pics. and the stories behind them.
T Thanks Dave..and you all, apologies for not seeing where predictive text has changed my words.. and that this seems more about me than machines.. and that I didn’t realise I was supposed to have a Thanks Dave..and you all, apologies for not seeing where predictive text has changed my words.. and that this seems more about me than machines.. and that I didn’t realise I was supposed to have a pseudonym.. I should be POM the POM.. The embarrassing truth is I just jumped on and operated, I rarely had to be involved in helping mechanics or fitters.. when I came to Australia working mostly in an air conditioned cab while the mechanics were working in 5 or 35 degree plus heat I’m happy with my choices.. at 70 I still don’t really understand how I drove around in a scraper for a 12 hour shift, dumping dirt in a bin to feed a processor, could give me job satisfaction.. maybe it’s just the boys and toys thing.. I know that having a clean level pit was good and better to drive on, and filling the bowl faster and fuller made me feel good and I think I just answered my own question, you get job satisfaction where you can.
We tell our stories here and yours has been fun. You got to the operating by way of the military, a whole bunch of us got to operating my way of being farmer lads. My dad said that you needed a job that you were competent at, and that people appreciated your work. Most of the time that's enough.
What we put up with, but the cost of tyres I always find staggering.. the 980 in the photo was the better machine on that site, the older 988 had very worn pivot pins, like riding a donkey.. the guy who started with me had only operated scrapers but this day for the first time was to drive the dump truck, we drove off to a stockpile of old ‘oversized’.. I put a bucket load of dirt in the truck, to my amazement he drove away.. he never came back!! Fired for turning up with only one bucket of dirt in the skip..or the whole shift of 5 ops who got fired because when one of the owners turned up he didn’t like how messy the biggest pit looked, considering it was maybe 30+ cuts wide so obviously not wrecked by one crew.. thankfully the owner was talked out of it my a kiwi day boss he liked.. so he fired a guy because he parked up a dump truck with the wheels straight instead of on a full lock.. you just waited for the day you’d get ‘the ass’ yourself..
Thanks for the compliment, we were both typing at the same time.. I just enjoyed what I was doing when I look back on it ,the money was good after the Army pay mainly through working long hours on shifts and unusually for the time, 1982 the shift system was good, 4x12hr days, 2 days off then 4x12 hr nights, then 4 days off..then fired.. then 33 years working in an alumina refinery with only the odd hour or so pushing dirt into hoppers again unloading the trains bringing the ore in..
It would be nice if the boss could get fired sometimes. There are good reasons to have managers so the boss stays out of everybody's way. Some bosses/owners have no business being on the shop floor or the jobsite. Let your foreman and site leads take care of things.
T Thanks Dave..and you all, apologies for not seeing where predictive text has changed my words.. and that this seems more about me than machines.. and that I didn’t realise I was supposed to have a pseudonym.. I should be POM the POM.. The embarrassing truth is I just jumped on and operated, I rarely had to be involved in helping mechanics or fitters.. when I came to Australia working mostly in an air conditioned cab while the mechanics were working in 5 or 35 degree plus heat I’m happy with my choices.. at 70 I still don’t really understand how I drove around in a scraper for a 12 hour shift, dumping dirt in a bin to feed a processor, could give me job satisfaction.. maybe it’s just the boys and toys thing.. I know that having a clean level pit was good and better to drive on, and filling the bowl faster and fuller made me feel good and I think I just answered my own question, you get job satisfaction where you can. The guy will probably turn up and blame you for not contacting him.. sounds like a rare gem..through you I now know about Dardanup Heritage centre..the turning for which I have driven by many times,. I have been to the Serpentine tractor and machinery museum, is there anywhere else with gear you can touch.. I just drove the Gunbarrel highway with a mate and saw Len Beadels grader,
T Thanks Dave..and you all, apologies for not seeing where predictive text has changed my words.. and that this seems more about me than machines.. and that I didn’t realise I was supposed to have a pseudonym.. I should be POM the POM.. The embarrassing truth is I just jumped on and operated, I rarely had to be involved in helping mechanics or fitters.. when I came to Australia working mostly in an air conditioned cab while the mechanics were working in 5 or 35 degree plus heat I’m happy with my choices.. at 70 I still don’t really understand how I drove around in a scraper for a 12 hour shift, dumping dirt in a bin to feed a processor, could give me job satisfaction.. maybe it’s just the boys and toys thing.. I know that having a clean level pit was good and better to drive on, and filling the bowl faster and fuller made me feel good and I think I just answered my own question, you get job satisfaction where you can. and you know what a farmers field looks like!,
And you lucky man to be Canadian.. a beautiful country and lovely people, I’m not just saying that, and Western Australia where I am is the same.. I had thought of trying to emigrate there but having been for a few months it’s just too cold for too long.. but you certainly make the most of the fine weather.. I remember arriving in May and seeing ski-doos outside peoples houses.. seemed weird for a while, and a helicopter just sat next to someone’s house.. loved it..
s
To clue up the guys who have no idea about the Gunbarrel Hwy road construction, the links below give some basic details. The grader is located at Giles in Central Western Australia. It's a Cat 12 S8T - it was built under licence to Cat by Steelweld, an Australian steel fabrication company, and they were often simply referred to as a "Steelweld" grader - even though they were identical to any U.S.-built 8T model Cat grader. All Steelweld/Cat products had an "S" placed in front of the serial number ID. Gunbarrel Highway - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org Gunbarrel Road Construction Party - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org Len Beadell (pronounced "Bid-ell") wrote about 7 books, with nearly all of them having "Bush" in the title. They're entertaining reads, and the working conditions the Gunbarrel Construction Party endured were testing of both man and machine. Len Beadell was a former Australian Army Surveyor and the party worked with the Dept of Defence in the construction work, and often used Army equipment as well. They built a few airstrips as well as the Defence Dept roads for the British atomic testing. Len Beadell books: Len Beadell Books | Beadell Publications www.lenbeadell.com.au What did they all do? | Beadell Publications www.lenbeadell.com.au Information about Giles: GILES | Western Australia | www.wanowandthen.com Giles - Remote weather station and community on the Great Central Road. Home to the historic Gunbarrel Road Construction Party grader and gateway to the Outback Way. www.wanowandthen.com
I thought you would have the full story, it will be good to read it, thanks..
Those links make eye opening reading, and a real eye opener of what distances are involved in Australia, where else in the World could 6000km of road be created that most people have never heard of..
Those were some nice pictures,back in those days you had to actually carry a camera.Now everyone has one in their pocket.
Thanks for the compliment on the photos.. all are either photos of photos or slides!! remember them . because I wasn't usually close to a town, and it was cheaper I used to just do slides, put the film in an envelope & have it sent to my home address..unfortunatly after 40 years they have deteriorated & probably lost more quality being digitised. Seeing this was new & a one off for me..a Gradall? telescopic boom, a bucket that rotated & bucket 'crowd' only..I think its main use was to tidy up ditches at the roadside..I am prepared to be corrected on all this, I know I had a 'play' with it but thats all, I dont think we actually used it ..when I went looking for this photo I thought it must have had stabilises but I didn't remember any..the other gear we had on hire rather than Army loans.
My memory hasn't been all good up to now but I think?? these were Ingersol Rand, air tracking drill rigs..I was glad I wans't on that crew, drilling hundreds of holes.. Petawawa training area, near Pembroke West of Ottowa.
With the multiple holes we were all involved in laying the explosives..again I may be wrong.. I think it was a DuPont product (I have the hat) Tovex water gel, we tied a knot in the detonating cord, which apparently acts like a detonator, slid on the first 'sausage' of explosive & lowered it down the hole, then we just kept dropping sausages in until the hole was full, times many holes. I remember we uses tonnes, what I am sure of is that you..(do not stand on any of the delay detonators.. they may explode, detonating the whole kaboodle..) that go between the row of charges to give a ripple explosion.. I'm not a blaster so some terms may not be absolutely correct. the last photo is after the first blast on that outcrop of rock. and again apologies this isn't really heavy equipment but its part of the story of the best earthmoving job I ever worked on.
there was a fleet of trucks contracted to the job for months.. the contractor who organised all the trucks, I think they were mostly individual owners.. was called Herbie Burger..Herbie drove the most beat up Mack of course to keep it on the road, his wife also drove one, which would have been unheard of in UK at that time..1979, and you would know but I remember hearing at the time the water truck cost the most to hire.. now for all us Brits who are usually called, Smith (derived from blacksmith etc,) myself Coombs (from Coombe another name for vallley), and the explosive & plant hire contractor Steve Bodger, those names were different.. the loader is a 745 Fiat Allis.
What I have always found weird, at least about the British Army is we are late starters. we have to clean uo, go to breakfast, then go on parade about 0800.. Canadian contractors like to start at a sensible time, so 3/4 guys stayed in this cabin and idi actually bath in the bucket, yeas they are all wearing pants, most soldiers than were homophobic, if for no other reason than you got thrown out if you were gay.. this is just a fact and is not intended to be offensive..
That Gradall has to be a pretty early model. Great pics.!!! Oh it's spelled Ottawa. Our nation's capital. Apparently it's a really beautiful city. I know a guy who was in the military years ago and spent a bunch of time at Petawawa. He was a driver and did some peace keeping in Cyprus.
Obviously I have always taken photographs and much as I have hated having a phone, I now love having a camera in my pocket all the time, and its instant, and you don't pay for processing, and in my case I can send a photo to my sister the other side of the world in UK, seconds after I've taken it.. but yes all those other people with phones are annoying..
I honestly just loved it Dave, apart from the cold..Only the Brit Marines love the cold. Usually everywhere you go in the Army people are not happy to see you & that was pre.. 90's when all the global wars kicked off.. obviously we mainly saw Canadian military, but some of the contractors took us out as we didn't have cars.. and Herbie had a party at his place & showed us all his guns, which was great.. If I'd stayed in my next posting was supposed to be Cyprus.. My wife still writes to a 'pen pal' she had when she was a teenager, I think he's in Saskatchewan..
Can’t believe I spelt Ottawa incorrectly..apologies ..
No problem. LoL
Great pictures again, Ian. You have a treasure chest there. I am especially moved by the air-trac drill and compressor and all the drilling shots. Shortly after I was born my father worked for a logging company division that built the forest service roads so they could get the logs. Dad took me up there when I was a toddler, and he would point out equipment in our travels in later years. He was the powder man and driller. He and our neighbor worked by themselves in the mountains of Washington and the pictures took me back.
this was the start before any blasting, you can see the first outcrop of rock in the background. So at last pictures of dozers. D8, TD15 and the D7 I think..
Then I will post every photo of those drill rigs..and your reply has made my day, honestly, because before I sat down a few minutes ago, I thought anyone looking at what I have posted would ask..why do I want to read all this crap...& I also realised that I've go all these photos, that my wife isn't interested in, my daughters aren't really interested in and a granddaughter, who may be if I told her I had them, which I will now I've thought about it I'll tell her, her partner is an Aussie but he was brought up way North of Ottawa..and what plane is that skyking??
Quite the opposite, the more pics. and stories the better. Great to see pics. of machines and the jobs they've done especially with less common and rare machines. I never realized the scope of work the military did. Was it all for military use or was some for normal infrastructure?
I think this is all the drilling photos I've got digitised.
That is a Thunder Mustang, a 3/4 scale replica of the P-51. I took that at my local airport at a fly in. I have some other pictures. It is a fantastic project with a bespoke 12 cylinder Falconer engine so it sounds right too. Here is one that was imported to New Zealand. This video does a good job of explaining it.
this was my service crew.. just to clarify, we come from a cold island with not enough sun..so as soon as its warm, in the Army its shirts off & we 'panic tan'.. My boss sent me to Canada a month early as a punishment. A few weeks earlier a Land Rover had pulled up behind me in my 'Allis' in our yard, we didn't have audible reversing warning, I reversed then drove forward ripping the front off the Rover, oops. ..but brilliant for me because with my best mate/rival we got to go everywhere choosing all the machines and equipment we wanted.. I don't remember choosing the Gradall.. and basically doing what we wanted, an unknown luxury in the forces as you would understand. my other punishment was to run the service crew..until the sergeant arrived to take it over. but again brilliant, we serviced everything before or after work hours. we didn't do parades, we worked on weekends and took days off through the week. I jumped on the machines at the weekends..
It was all just military use on the training area.. and the military don't do much work like this, that was why it was so good for us..there was some agreement between the British/Canadian governments for us to do military training in Canada, there was, is?? a massive tank training area in the east.. I think probably we paid for half? the cost of the job, but I dont know.. I only operated a dozer one other time in my 9 years, thats why this job was so special to me. I think like us a different Engineer Squadron went over every year until the job was finished. I have no idea where the road was actually going to,
Not many V12 anything’s in the world, other than in some Jaguars.. was the Falconer made specifically for the Thunder Mustang?.. where is the kit made, I think they said only 12 are flying.. there was a Spitfire replic at the last fly in I went to but I didn’t see it fly..
I think the Falconer was made, and then the plane was dreamed up around it. There are thunder mustangs flying with turbines, which is just wrong.
I know what you mean to be true, a machine has to sound correct. I always thought the sound of a Merlin in a Spitfire or Hurricane couldn’t be beaten, then I went to a’Flying Legends’ show at Duxford in UK, and heard a Hellcat or Wildcat and a B17, those radials are something else..
A bit late in the day but as an ex-Ambling Ba$tard employee those 6-wheel dump trucks in Ian's earlier photos were the 690 model. The model was originally built by AEC in Southall just outside London as the "AEC 690" but when British Lelyand in their wisdom decided to concentrate all the off-road equipment under the A-B umbrella production was moved up to the A-B factory in Grantham and they were badged as Barfords, despite the fact that Barford had nothing whatsoever to do with the original design. They were a familiar sight around the plant during my apprenticship. IIRC they were still built in those days with an AEC engine, not a Leyland, but I may be wrong in that.
My dad flew in a Halifax bomber with big 4 radial engines. They were Bristol Hercules with 1615 HP each. Earlier Halifax's had Rolls Royce Merlins but apparently the Bristol Hercules had better performance for what the plane was designed for. He was the tailgunner but he never mentioned how loud they were. He wore some kind of headphones or something to communicate with the pilot or other crew so they could have muffled some of the sound. A tailgunners main purpose is to warn of other aircraft in the vicinity. His crew had a rule of not letting any other aircraft follow directly behind them. My dad would notify the pilot to change course if another plane was behind them. Tragically he was the only survivor when they got hit by shrapnel and he thinks the bombs were still on board. He was blown out where the tail wheel comes up. His emergency hatch was stuck and he said he had a sore elbow for a year after from trying to get it open.
When did the first 690 made Nige, I had always though it looked like a very old design, and you’ve probably answered the question of why they were reliable when British Leyland are infamous for poor build quality,,sounds like they didn’t have a hand in it other than the Leyland re-name/badge,,did quality drop when they moved to Grantham?.
I don’t think I ever saw a ‘civvy’ Barford..but obviously McAlpines Fusiliers had them.. presume the red one you photographed relatively recently at a show?.
Must have ran out of money to paint the box.
Your dad must have had a hell of a life..it must have been beyond terrifying in those bombers, together but alone, cramped into a tiny space, and from a lot of what you read and hear about combat flying, often attacked from behind logically, not being able to get out, surviving being shot down. Do you know where your dad was stationed Dave? Are there any Halifax bombers still flying or even one somewhere that you can ‘crawl through’? I will be googling in a moment.,
All the major contractors in the UK (Wimpey, McAlpine, Tarmac, Budge, Dowsett, etc) had loads of them. Early 70s we were turning them out by the boat load. I just sucked the photo from the interweb. Barfords "standard" house colour was that orange, often referred to as Aveling Barford Orange . If you wanted a Barford machine painted any other colour (including MOD dark green) it was extra. I guess they were decades ahead of their time when it came to "high viz"..... I think it dated from the early 60's. The original AEC design may have been older than that. My knowledge of them only started when production moved to Grantham.
Yorkshire's Handley Page Halifax bomber is an Elvington delight The Yorkshire Air Museum hosts a special nightshoot photography event where their Handley Page Halifax bomber Friday the 13th was the star of the show. uk.corgi.co.uk you’ve probably already looked at this Halifax link..
My dad was with the 408 RCAF squadron stationed in Linton-on-ouse(sp). There are a couple Halifax bombers on display but none flying. One was pulled out of a lake. I'm not sure how to find it, maybe in a 408 aircraft search, but there is a pic. of the plane my dad flew 4 sorties in. It is lettered EQ C. C for "Chesty" and obviously has a girl painted on it along with a dog. It was being repaired and my dad's crew never felt as safe in the replacement and unfortunately that's what they got shot down in over Munster Germany which had the highest concentration of troops in all of Germany. EQ C came from another squadron (426 I think) and the dog was their mascot. I think it's name was Petey. It had flown a full set of 40 missions that were marked on the side. The 4 my dad flew in are marked under those. The 408 still operates as a tactical helicopter squadron but was the 1st RCAF squadron to have an official name? or designation. It was the Goose squadron and their motto was "For Freedom". The 408 is in the same city I'm in and has a museum. I went to an aviation museum and they had a lot of stuff from the 408 museum on display. In a large glass case with several items was a model of C Chesty. I was blown away when I saw it. Sometime in the late 80's I was in a really good hobby store that had a lot of books on planes and squadrons of WW II. I absolutely had to buy 2 books. One was of the 408 squadron and my dad's name was listed in the back as missing in action. The other one was on the Halifax Bomber and very detailed of all the different variations and lots of good pics. It showed the nose art of C Chesty in colour and also had a pic. of her under a big tree. Wow, I remembered my dad saying it was parked under a big tree. I'm so glad I found these books and could show them to my dad. It was like a define intervention that I found these books. My dad was shot down 2 month's before his 20th birthday and had a back belly button. He broke his back and a piece of the machined turret ring was pulled out his back. He was shot down on Mar. 25, 1945. Americans took over the hospital and he was given a purple heart but it was taken away when they discovered he was Canadian. He got a Canadian gold bar pin which is the equivelant sort of. My dad said the Americans would give a purple heart if someone cut their finger. LoL My dad would have been 100 this year. My grandma kept a scrap book of his telegrams regarding missing in action and then found and injuries worse than expected. There was also part of a letter my dad wrote to my grandparents. My dad thought the bombs were still on board and a pair of burning boots passed him on the way down when he parachuted to the ground. He said the boots could have been his because he wasn't wearing any when he landed. He passed out when the parachute opened and when he came to was worried about landing on a picket fence. He missed the fence but a German farmer hit him in the face with the back of a shovel. It didn't hurt compared to his back. He had to hobble along and got a ride on a fire truck to the German hospital. Remembrance Day was always a very important day for him. Being he would have been 100 this year I was thinking of talking to the organizers and maybe the 408 squadron about having a special celebration (for lack of a better word) for him at next year's Rememberance Day event. Most (young) people today have no idea what people went through during WW II. I think my dad's story would really enlighten people. Does this sound like a good idea?
Double post system was acting up
Who's Who In An RAF Bomber Crew A Bomber Command aircrew operated as a team. Each member was mutually dependent on the others and each had a vital part to play in ensuring that the aircraft reached its target, dropped its bombs and safely returned to base. These are the key roles and responsibilities of a heavy bomber crew... www.iwm.org.uk Halifax crew..you may have looked at this too.. I have found a flying one yet..
Yes I think it’s a very good idea.. and sorry I went googling while you were posting..or I’d have seen this..
I haven't seen that before so thanks! I remember my dad coming back from a mission and seeing the Americans going out on day raid flying in perfect formation. My dad's crew thought it was pretty dumb to fly in formation because it would make for easy targets for the Germans. The book on Halifax bombers said C Chesty survived the war and was sold for scrap in 1949. Damn, it would have been great to save it for a museum. The Lancaster usually gets all the accolades but the Halifax had longer range. One thing my dad liked better about the Halifax is it had an electric turret instead of hyd. like the Lancaster. In the Lancaster the gunner had to keep moving the turret to prevent the hyd. oil from freezing. No problem you didn't see my last post right away. The system was acting up and it wouldn't post for about 5 minutes. I was worried I was going to lose it. I wouldn't have typed it again.
Yes I think you should encourage them to commemorate him, his contribution and his story..that would be brilliant. I’m sure they will be over the moon to hear the accounts you have just posted and all the other anecdotes and memories he has passed on to you..and especially your extended family probably.. My dad was in the Royal Engineers joining as a boy apprentice in 1938..he was in North Africa 1942/3 then Italy ..he told me many stories when I was a teenager, then I joined up for 12 years and never lived near Plymouth again, then emigrated..so I never had the second and third telling of stories that help you remember., he never told my sister much, my mum was never interested and my brother in law had no interest in military things, yet my dad probably told him more than he told anyone..so yes his story needs to be heard far and wide..and getting those books was brilliant, I certainly believe those coincidences aren’t entirely coincidences..
I’m beyond glad you did.. just googled I had heard of Linton on Ouse ..now I know , only lived about 10 miles away during my last posting and until I emigrated
My dad was offered a big position in the military after the war but he declined. He lied about his age to enlist and figured his did his part in the war effort. My grandpa moved to Canada to fight for then in WW 1 and received a Meritorious service award which apparently wasn't common. I have a German pistol my grandpa got in WW 1. He has an interesting story too. He was scheduled to be on the Titanic but couldn't make it and came on the next ship. He lived to 95!
I know this may sound a bit weird, but you could get someone to do a copy of the’nose art’ of your dads aircraft and donate it, just an idea.. my daughter took me for a night out with a few others to try some art with a graffiti artist, they are good and wherever you are there will be something on fb, if you’re like me your kids will have to find it..lol..
You should write a book yourself, you can do it and publish it on line very easily I believe..
I found an article with a pic. of my dads plane. It's in a book I should look for. I should also make a trip to Nanton Alberta where they have a Halifax on static display. My dad had lots of funny stories regarding his time in the war effort. The 2nd link is another plane my dad remembered that was part of his flying group stationed at Linton-on-ouse. Handley Page Halifaxes revered in Canada Above: a wartime colour photograph of a late mark of Halifax. [Photo: BCMC] 28th January 2015 (Updated 1 February 2015) | Nanton, Alberta. Often overlooked by historians and those who appreciate … militaryaviationchronicles.com WT Live // Camouflage by Wuax #warthunder #live_wt #workshop Handley Page Halifax B.VII PN230/EQ-V ‘Vicky The Vicious Virgin’ RAF No.408 ‘Goose’ Squadron No.6 (RCAF) Group Linton-on-Ouse 1945 4k DDS with dmg model etc live.warthunder.com
It would be hard and I don't have all the details. Definitely some funny stories though like my dad purposely missing the target when training to be an air gunner so he wouldn't get sent back to peel potatoes. He was a target shooter in his early teens before he joined the war effort. He took a few shots in gunnery training and they said you don't need this and they sent him to the kitchen to peel potatoes! He transferred to the Air Force because he didn't want to be a sniper. In training to be an air gunner he hit the target so easily they thought they were towing it too close. They lengthened it and the same result. The person in charge of the training said something must be wrong so he went up with my dad. My dad hit the target a few times and got worried so he angled the turret down to shoot off the rest of his rounds. He didn't want to peel potatoes again. After the war he was one of only 3 "masters" in Canada for target shooting. He was the youngest by over 10 years. He won the championship in Alberta so many times in the 50's they just gave him the trophy. Sadly it got broken by my brother and me when we were little kids. My dad quit shooting because it wasn't fun anymore. Everybody just wanted to beat him like he was a bad guy for being so good or something. He made his own gun stock from a blank. It is pretty heavy for a 22 cal. rifle. He sold the Winchester target rifle from it after he quit shooting. He competed in the states and I think even went to the UK as part of team Canada. I asked him once how accurate he was, could he shoot someone between the eyes? At 100 yds. left or right of center! Basically a perfect shot was hitting a target a little bigger than a dime at 100 yds. Sadly never got to see him shoot. He did win a lot of stuffed animals for my sister when the fair came to town. He was deaf in his right ear. It happened suddenly when he was taking a shower. He's pretty sure it was from shooting. When he he parachuted out of the plane he always wondered what the popping were that he heard. He went para-sailing on a trip to Thailand and landed perfectly on the spot. After roughly 45 years he knew what the popping was. They were shooting at him!
You have already written a whole lot here..there’s a book for sure..or post on other sites looking for fellow aviators.. there are hundreds of stories out there and how would we have known anything about your dad unless you had posted this today..sincerely thanks..
Imagine that full size on their hangar wall.. they’d love it..especially with your dads story..
It's a small world Ian. Darling Wife and I were in country in 2022 and visited York and Settle on one of our side trips. Not far at all from your last posting and Dave's father's aerodrome.
I bought a low-km 2012 Camry locally in 2014 for SWMBO. The car was a deceased estate sell-off. When I started talking to the seller, he was the son of the guy that bought it new - at age 88! The old guy lived to 91, but hardly drove the car in the last 12 mths of his life, as he was obviously going downhill in that period. The old guy had been a WW2 veteran, and a tail gunner in a Halifax! His son told me he did 40 missions over Europe in the Halifax, as a tail gunner, and he came home without a scratch! He must have had a dozen protective angel guardians! I looked up the RAAF entry course the old guy took in 1942, and 16 of the 40 guys on his RAAF course never made it - a death rate of 40%! Training crashes took the lives of a lot of WW2 aviators. I read these guys stories, where they were ordinary people doing ordinary jobs like farming or office work - and they joined up, learnt to fly, fought for their lives and endured dreadful fighting conditions - then when the War ended, they simply went back to their jobs, and many never ever sat in an aircraft, ever again!
Thanks for posting that! It's my screen saver on the computer. It's always been noted as being a 408 plane in everything I could find but I sent an e-mail to someone who was in the 426 squadron, who was a historian or something, because I saw it listed as being a 426 plane. He informed me that it was originally a 426 plane and the dog Petey was their mascot. There were other 408 planes that also came from the 426 squadron. Finding pics. of my dad's plane and a detailed book on Halifax's complete with the serial number as well as a book on his squadron with his name in it was better than winning the lottery!!!
There were many who lied about their age to join the war effort and no one ever questioned it, it was so common. After one sortie my dad looked up and there was a big hole in the perspex(sp) above him. He said it's a little hairy sitting in the tail when the plane takes off and in training when they did a barrel role. I don't remember him mentioning lots of crashes during training but his training may have been later and they made it safer. My dad liked to fly and was close to getting his pilots license but couldn't complete it because he started a business. He didn't like jets as much because they didn't rely on the wings and air flow to keep the plane in the air. They just soared. A joke he told was: 2 buzzards are sitting on a power line the first time they see a military jet go by 1 says to the other, look how fast that thing goes... You'd go fast too with 2 burning a$$holes!
Yes it’s a beautiful part of the world, unless you’re taking off in a Halifax.. I come from the SW but I really like the Yorkshire people, though they can be a bit ‘direct’, which a lot of people don’t like.. and York like all popular tourist towns/cities are a nightmare for locals in the holiday season..and Settle beautiful..but Yorkshire in winter..cold.. but I was thinking to you and Dave in Canada.. you’d probably just think it was a bit chilly..
Sounds like a great character your dad Dave..
I don't think he had any enemies. He sold commercial turf equipment for over 40 years and most of customers were more friends than customers. That's part of the reason he was still working at 73 when he passed away unexpectedly. He had a better than 75% market share and didn't have to do deliveries but did some. He could go and see all his friends. He set some worldwide sales records which is quite amazing being in Alberta. California has more golf courses than all of Canada. One highlight was meeting Arnold Palmer on a boat at a Toro convention.
SW is one of many places I have yet to see. Our friends are in Nantwitch near Manchester, and we venture out from there. We retire next year and will likely visit them often.
Those stories are amazing, yes you could write a book..join a writers group near you there will be someone who can help you out..
As you know the British weather is totally unpredictable, when I visit I usually go in either April, May, September or October..that way you are just out of the tourist season, so less busy, maybe? some accommodation is slightly cheaper.. yes the weather is going to be a couple of degrees colder but no less predictable..and spring and autumn is just nicer with plants just starting to bloom or the trees changing colour as you know from where you live...apologies if you already do this.. I don’t know Manchester way at all, I expect you have already spent time around the dales having been to Settle, and probably the Lake District.. The SW depends on whether you prefer the coast or moors, but easy to do both as not big distances as you know..
The rusty one is ‘garden art’ near me.. I just hate seeing it deteriorate.. it was his dads then they couldn’t get it going..I’m not a diesel mechanic as you know or I would offer to fix it for free.. any ideas please..
Saw this whilst looking for my other pics of the dozers.. a stick on garage door mural..
Did you build the graders we had too or were they built somewhere else?.
All the main product lines, road rollers (both steel wheel and rubber-tyred compactor), motor graders, and dump trucks were all built at Grantham. The smaller equipment such as 1-ton site dumpers were built at a subsiduary plant at Belton, Lincs - strangely enough known as "Barfords of Belton"........ Pretty much everything was engineering on site. The Plate Shop produced all the metal fabrications, there was a gigantic Machine Shop that included Heat Treatment, etc, etc. The only things that were bought in were castings (although Barfords did have a Pattern Shop and produced all their own patterns), engines and powershift transmissions. Even the manual transmissions for the beast below (6-speed crash box) were assembled in-house using parts manufactured in the Machine Shop. the 35-ton payload SN truck was powered either by a straight-eight turbocharged C8TFL Roller mated up to the aforesaid crash box, or a 12V71N Jimmy matched to a 5960 Aliison powershift. Interesting story about the SN - again before my time. In the early 1960s Egypt was looking to finance the building of the "new" Aswan High Dam. Initally the US, UK, & USSR were all interested in providing funding but the other two countries dropped out when the Russins offered long-term funding at 2% interest. The result was that initially all the equipment was Russian, the problem was that it kept breaking down....... At this point staying on the construction schedule became more important than any loss of political face for President Nasser. Enter the West. A fleet of Lima shovels out of the US and rented Barford SN35 trucks supplied via Barford's "A-B Hire" division moved close to 75% of the muck that built the dam. The SNs are probably still buried under it somewhere........
Really interesting to hear your recollections, I came across some photos of AEC 690's in amongst my late Dad's things recently. From what I've read, the AEC 690 was built from 1964 to 1980 under a variety of different names – including Aveling-Barford AB690 and AB760, Scammell 690, Thornycroft Bush Tractor and Leyland LD55. The engine was an AEC 690, bigger brother of the AEC 505.
This is the plant layout from slightly (ahem...) before my time...... http://beamishtransportonline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/AvelingBarfordWhatwemakecatalogueOpt.pdf
I should have mentioned that the original design for the 690 was done by Thornycroft before responsibility for it moved to AEC.
Interesting to see this shot, too: do you know whether the Allis-Chalmers 645 loaders were built at their British factory at Essendine?
Interesting that the boxes were built from T1 steel. They must have had some engineers familiar with metallurgy and the proper filler metals for welding different materials like T1.
That’s some factory, especially as everything was made there.. not much outsourcing there , wondering when components will arrive.. We had the 99H grader but ass an Aveling Austin.. the ‘calf dozer’ looks like an early Skid steer..
Right through its life the 99H was badged as an Aveling-Austin because it was made under licence from Austin-Western in the US.
What I remember of the buildings at Houghton Works, Grantham, as I knew them in the early 1970s. My base was in the Engineering offices which I think were built in the latre 1960s.
They had their own apprentice training, did they like to hire long term or lifetime employee's similar like they do in Japan? They had a pretty huge plant. Did they get bought out or just fade away?
When I was there it was quite common to find more than one generation of a family working for the company, usually in different parts of the plant. Also people with 30 & 40 years of service were quite common back then. A-B was the largest employer in the town by a long way. The year I joined the company the apprentice intake (of all trades) was probably around 40. The collapse of British Leyland in the late 1970s was Barford's death knell. A shame really because their products weren't bad at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aveling-Barford
Barford's exports, especially road rollers, went pretty well everywhere. Check out Page 23 of the attached catalogue. Exported to more than 100 countries - http://beamishtransportonline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Aveling-Barfordopt.pdf
I'll have to go to the computer. The links won't download on my phone. I'm not sure if it was mentioned but are the buildings still there?
From Google Maps what was the Engineering Office building, Assembly Shop, & Machine Shop appear to be still there. Everything else has gone.
Nige, what was the date of that Aveling Barford brochure? It looks to be around the late 1950's/early 1960's, but I couldn't find a date anywhere on it. I owned four Aveling Barford items of equipment in the early 1980's. I bought a new TS500 "shovel" (front end loader) in 1983, it was 2 years old and the dealer couldn't shift it off his lot, as A-B by then, were effectively gutted as a company. Parts were almost non-existent, service was non-existent, and no-one wanted to get stuck with an "orphan" for commercial work. It didn't matter to me at that point, because I had gone from agricultural earthmoving into gold mining, and working my own gold mine and re-treating gold tailings. So I wasn't under any "commercial contracting" pressure. The TS500 performed quite admirably for the work I bought it for - constructing plastic-sheeting-lined leach vats for gold re-treatment. It was essentially only stockpile work. In the mid-80's I went into mining contracting, initially building leach vats for many other individuals and companies - and at that point, I needed some dump trucks, so I bought 2 x RD-30 dump trucks and 1 x RD-40 dump truck. They were used, a local contractor had bought them, but had decided to get rid of them, as parts were too difficult to acquire. I STR I paid around $30K and $35K each for them - pretty cheap dump trucks at the time. They performed reasonably well, and I excavated several small open pit gold mines with them (in conjunction with other partners) - but when I went into full-time mining contracting, they had to go, as the big companies only wanted late model, low hour equipment that looked good on their sites. So they got traded on good used, low hour Komatsu HD-465 dump trucks, and eventually I owned 19 of the Komatsu's. These were very good trucks. I'll dig out some photos when I get a chance.
I would say early 1950s, but I don't know for definite.
That SN-35 truck looks much like a Euclid R-35. Any idea if it was license built or just a coincidence?
Ripped this off the net:
Definitely a lot of similarities.
Coincidence I think. AFAIK there was no licence deal like there was with the Austin-Western graders. The only way I can estimate it is by the "KRR 111" registration plate on the roller on Page 2. The last two letters "RR" indicate that the number was issued by Nottinghamshire County Council. I was born in Derbyshire which was next door.. My great uncle bought a new car in 1952 with the registration number "PRR 265", so "KRR 111" must have been earlier than that, K coming before P in the alphabet and all that. How much earlier I have no idea, maybe a year or so. So my best estimate is that KRR 111 was probably first registered some time in 1951, and as the roller appears to be pretty new maybe the photo was taken not long after it was delivered to the customer, probably a local or county council. On page 22 there are a number of plates that all come from not a million miles away from Grantham. Starting from the top left and going clockwise. LNN 609 is Nottinghamshire, DGS 185 is from Perth, Scotland, DTL 136 is from Lincolnshire, PRA 561 is Derbyshire, OCT 565 is Lincolnshire, PKT 915 is Kent, KWR 35 is Yorkshire, & KNX 57 is Warwickshire. Of all those, only the ones from Scotland & Kent are a fair step from the factory.
I’ve ordered mine.. I suppose you could paint it red..
Apologies again that this isn’t equipment.. not trying to be your new best friend Dave.. you have maybe already seen this.. this museum is about 20 miles from your dads airfield, your dad’s story is very interesting so I went cooking..did you say you’ve got a colour photo of the nose art??
I wasn't aware of that museum quality restoration. I'll probably never get the chance but would love to tour that Halifax. It would be much easier to walk down the fuselage(sp) than when the plane is prepared for a mission. The rear gunner has the most ammunition and it runs the almost the full length of the plane. Each of the 4 guns is 1200 rounds a minute but you only fire them for short bursts or you'd burn out the barrels. Thanks so much for posting that! My screen saver is a colour pic. of the one I posted. I found it on the internet years ago but couldn't find it again. There's a colour pic. in the Halifax book too but I'm not sure where it is at the moment.
haha looking..
Upload that screensaver here.
Good idea.. I joined the Canadian Bomber command museum fb site..(as Ian Broad, ok weird) I have asked if there is anyone writing a book..
There have already been a few replies of stories and books and photos, one from an ex Chesty navigators .. son of course..
My dad was a tail gunner. I was mistaken about my screensaver being in colour. I think because it was just a bigger pic. it showed up better. I'll see if I can find the books. They might have a colour pic.
This was one of the replies ..including a copy of the nose art…
That's a very good re-creation. His dad was maybe a fill in on a couple missions when the plane was in the 426 squadron that did 40 missions. I don't remember my dad ever mentioning anyone filling in for his crew. My dad had heard maybe the bomb aimer got out when he did but never heard anything more so never said anything about it. In the letter he wrote to my grandpa he didn't want to give false hope that another of the crew survived. That makes sense and seemed pretty smart to me to for a 19 year old who barely survived. Very cool someone else has ties to Chesty. I'm curious if the 40 missions were bombing runs or not? The lower 4 my dad was in show bombs. I'm not sure if the markings above mean bombing runs or something else. I know they would do fake missions to draw the Germans away from the real missions. It was also common to drop thousands of pieces of tin foil to screw with the German radar.
Here's the book I have on the Halifax. The listing has some really good preview pages including the type and serial number and another pic. of Chesty. This type of Halifax were restricted to only 3 squadrons. The 2nd link is the book I have on the 408 with my dads name in the back. Looking on the net there are even Canadian Bomber Command Museum records of the bombing missions and the dates. Too hard to read though. The middle link you have to scroll down a page or 2. The 3rd and forth pics. of Chesty are earlier with only 30 missions and just the dog on the nose. The last pic. must have been the mascot that inspired the original nose art. The last link lists casualties and the date. I'm not sure the names of all of my dad's crew but I think Cofield was the pilot, Mar. 25, 1945. It's pretty cool there's still lots of info and pics. from the war and after. HALIFAX IN ACTION AIRCRAFT NUMBER 66 SQUADRON SIGNAL PUBLICATIONS AIRFORCE | eBay Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HALIFAX IN ACTION AIRCRAFT NUMBER 66 SQUADRON SIGNAL PUBLICATIONS AIRFORCE at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products! www.ebay.ca 408 Squadron History - Canadian Airforce Hardback Book WWII 1984 | eBay UK A good copy but in a poor dustcover with a tear on the front. Internally the book is fairly neat and tidy except for a slight bump on one edge. The dustcover is also price clipped. Please see photos. www.ebay.co.uk Bomber Command Museum of Canada Nose Art Search https://bombercommandmuseumarchives.ca/casualties_canadianairmen_date.pdf
This D7 arrived quite early , I think it took a week for the low loader to travel from the west of Canada to us.. I wish I had taken a photo the day it arrived.. the blade & tracks were so shiny they actually looked chromed..as it was an Army machine I assume it was on display somewhere prior to arriving with us..is it at all possible that it was pushing any kind of material that would 'polish' like that??
the last blast.. much better than the first with much smaller rock..easlily pushed..
Sometimes topsoil will polish it pretty well. Almost like how a tumbler polishes rock or rifle brass
1979..What is surprising especially thinking about it now..your Canadian Army plant operators all wore safety boots, it was the first time we had worn hard hats in the open air, I think, and looking at the photos, most equipment had ROPs fitted, as a British plant op’, we’d never heard of all this safety ‘stuff’ let alone seen it..
Pushing material with a very large percentage of sand will polish the blade and tracks to a mirror finish.
I had thought that, but never seen it, even with the smorgasbord of sand at Eneabba, including pushing the rutile? concentrate, so I just assumed it was Army BS that polished it, so I’m really pleased to hear that you have seen it for real..
I like old things including Willy Jeeps.. I saw one from the US Navy Seabees, which then had me looking at all the gear they had, and the Australian RAAF airfield squadrons..sorry for the military fixation.. I wouldn’t guess at what these are..all I can say is that, trying to load one of those towed scrapers without a dozer pushing you was impossible in Uk CLAY, then trying to push it out again, and or spread it, certainly didn’t work well during our training.
Would the small excavator be an RB?
This was the set up I was talking about, but obviously not wet clay.. these should be D6 D just came into my head.. the only scrapers I have ever known about is the Vickers Onions.. this was the only picture I happened upon, from my time, although I was never there..it’s the town from the nursery story, the Pied Piper, the Germans spell it Hameln..
Firstly I saw the loader, thinking it was WW2 .. then I saw it was Vietnam, then the other interesting thing to me, in the caption was it was at camp Bearcat..there is an Aussie USA connection, one of the helicopter squadrons (maybe the only one) was a combined US Army and Australian Navy unit designated EMU (experimental military unit) also an Australian flightless bird as you may know. I also love old helicopters, just glad I wasn’t in one in the 60/70s..
@OzDozer was helping a fellow here with an old grader and It could very well have been in the Marshalls when my dad was there in WWII . I tend to spin off into the military easily too. His favorite plane was the F4-U Corsair, he said they were quite a welcome site at Iwo Jima, getting right in there to support the Marines.
I have always like aircraft I only’discovered’ the Corsair maybe 3/4 years ago, I’m pretty sure I’m correct in saying there was an aircraft museum Cavanaugh? That had a 2 seat trainer that you could go for a flight in..expensive, but a dream, then they stopped doing them., I think I’m right in saying the Australian Fleet Air Arm had them., .Was your dad a Marine?. Iwo Jima and Okinawa from the documentaries were horrendous,
Yes, he was in the 4th Marine Division, which landed on: Roi-Namur (Kwajalein) Saipan Tinian Iwo Jima This link has good pertinent information. They suffered over 27% casualties at Saipan 9098 casualties on Iwo Jima, nearly half the division. http://www.vietnamproject.ttu.edu/dd786/fourth.html Dad suffered shell shock on Iwo and broke down. His body was able, but he was broken in mind. He went back to the battlefront as a stretcher bearer and he and a partner spent the rest of the battle carrying the wounded back to the field hospitals, back to the beach. He would never speak of it to us. They did not treat PTSD back then, so either you ended yourself or suffered in silence, or in his case he crawled into the bottle. I pried what I could from aunts and uncles that he spoke to before he stepped into the bottle fully. Apparently he and his mate would have to make those life and death decisions. If the corpsman sent them back with a gravely wounded man and he deteriorated beyond hope, they would set him aside and go back for a man who had a chance at survival. I was fortunate to get past the armor and know him when he got sober for the last few years.
They used to get drunk just to get drunk on their free time sometimes. Didn't matter how serious or even if you weren't going to make it, if you were lying in a hospital bed the 1st thing they did was put a cigarette in your mouth. I think it was a way of saying you're going to be OK.
Both of your dads stories are astounding.. and as you’ve said there was a massive reality that you may not make it.. I googled Bomber Commands statistics, I actually don’t want to use the real wording, I knew it was bad but not that bad.. I don’t know whether Winston Churchill had anything to say about Bomber Command.. and fighting on the Islands , the old newsreels are graphic, and I think gave the Marines the reputation they have today...Truthfully I don’t think it’s my place to comment..
I read if a crew made over 5 missions they were above average. I think the average age was 19 or 20 years old and the boys who signed up wanted to. Nobody batted an eye when they lied about their age to join the effort. My dad did but it was more the norm than the exception. He lost his best friend but never found out where. He wasn't in the same squadron.
I had not seen this one yet, the official history of the 4th Marines . It is 111 pages but it reads right along. There are some stories dad told of life on the transport ships that are now getting better context for me. 4Th Marine Division in World War II
I bought my dad a big book on the history of the RCAF. It mentioned a thousand bomber raid and my dad remembered being a part of it. That's a lot bombs! A Halifax had a 13,000lb. bomb load and a Lancaster even more. The foil strips they dropped to mess with German radar was called window.
I was looking on the BCMC fb site, a Buzz Hope who must have been some senior officer has posted a big write up about a 500+ plane mission..and a link.. there are loads of names etc..
From the bits I’ve read it looks like you Canadians have done really well at keeping records of everything!!! Just an aside, I went to get some Molson Canadian, only to find we can’t get it in Australia any more.. I suppose I just wasn’t drinking enough of it.,
I know it’s not the same but even watching the movies ‘The Thin Red Line ‘, and the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, it’s?? I spent ages wondering what word., maybe unnerving..
It was something they had to do and they knew they might not come back but had to do it anyway. Yeah, they were scared but they put that aside because they had a job to do. It wasn't that uncommon that crew members would soil themselves but nobody ever said anything about it. It had to be scary as hell. I think that's why most vets didn't talk about it much. You had to be there.
Further to what you said earlier, my dad had a breakdown in 1948 I think it was, I’ll have to look at his service record again.. he was hospitalised for 3 months though he never said anything about it as such. He told me about where he’d been but not much detail, only the odd story. I just didn’t listen enough.
Had I known back when my dad was still around, I'd have asked a lot more about his experiences. I heard most of the funny stories but not as much about the missions he went on.
^That is how it was with my dad. One story: His transport ship had a bent shaft or something that slowed them up, and caused extra days at sea. They zig-zagged across the Pacific to help somewhat with submarine attacks, so it got agonizingly slow. Fresh water ran low, too low for showers. They would see a little squall cloud dumping rain and then they would gather with soap at the AA gun tubs, like this one on the bow of the Haskell class APA. They waited under the tub drains and hoped and wagered that they would zag right under a shower. Sometimes they did, and took turns under the drain soaping up and rinsing off. Story 2: Along with fear and dread, there was a whole lot of boredom and boys would be boys. They would take the foil wrapper from a cigarette pack, and carefully form it over a quarter. it would take the imprint of the coin readily. Then you work the sides to get the grooves right, and very carefully cut it off at the bottom edge with your fingernail. Now you blew it off the quarter with a puff of breath, and several more to get it upright on the deck. The perpetrators would nonchalantly hang around and wait for a victim to grab what was a lot of money, only to have it crumple up. That was a lot of work for a gag but nothing else to do. Here is a cool picture of the aft deck of a Haskell class. The gunnery crew looking sharp around the 5" deck gun, the bugler up on that round cover. I wonder if he just sounded a command? You can pan around this picture and see several stories.
Some interesting posts put up here, my poor old Dad was in the 101st Bomb Group flying in B24's as Flight Engineer, this involved manning the upper gun turret when under attack, this seemed to happen very often as he had Shrapnel wounds twice, then at some time the Liberator was set on fire with my Dad getting 35 % burns to his body, lucky for him they soon had him fixed up and back on duty only to get into a Battle of Hell Fire resulting in Shell Shock or as they called it Battle Psychosis after punching an Officer that was a total Tool when they managed to land, he was given 6 weeks rest and put back in the Plane, I still have all his books on the Twin Wasp engine etc also his War Disability Pension book giving him a few coins for managing to carry on with lumps of metal in him and the skin burnt off his body, those B24's were soft skinned planes and really gave no protection to the men inside, I do have some first rate photos of my Dad in and working on the 24's he had the full 6 years in the RAF.
Thanks for sharing. TC tractors.
Kind of funny since it was after the fact but my dad told a story about someone he new (I think went to school with). He was also listed in the back of the book I got on the 408 squadron. He was the only one listed as MIA for a specific date. The plane was hit with flack and the pilot said prepare to jump. The guy panicked and jumped out "prematurely". The pilot managed to get the plane and all the rest of the crew back to base. Everytime my dad ran into him after the end of the war he had to give him some ribbing about it. My dad also had a friend who was one of a group of 25 engineers hired by NASA after the cancelation of the Avro Arrow to work on putting a man on the moon.
You may have seen this Dave, I missed it when I found this site before, you can see a 360 virtual tour of the interior of the Halifax .. Handley Page Halifax Mk III - Yorkshire Air Museum World War Two Aircraft Handley Page Halifax Mk III The Museum’s Halifax reconstruction is based on a section of the fuselage of Halifax II, HR792, which carried out an emergency landing on the Isle of Lewis in 1945. A crofter, Mr McKenzie, purchased the fuselage section for use as a hencoop. The... yorkshireairmuseum.org
That's pretty cool. It looks like the rails for the ammunition have been removed.
Am I wrong? I didn't think it went as far back as your dads position as tail gunner, I thought it was behind the white 'doors'.. I thought they were still restoring the aircraft..
Especially brilliant photo .. there was nothing like LIFE magazine to have the best photos..
It didn't show the tail turret or at least not in any detail but the tail gunner had the most ammunition and the racks went pretty much the entire length of the fuselage behind the cockpit. Four 1200 rounds a minute guns need a lot of ammo. My dad never had to fire on the 5 missions he went on but did inform the pilot to change course fairly regularly.
I have just been thinking about stories being lost.. because I joined up at 15, stayed for 12 years then emigrated, I hadn't thought until my sister asked me a couple of years ago to write and email.. where I'd been and what I'd done.. with many replies of , I didn't know that, really. The military is almost like a parallel universe.. civilians often, can't relate, don't care or worse still think you're full of BS, so you keep quiet. Thats why it was so nice that nobody reacted with a 'why do we want to see that crap' to all the Canada stuff I've posted. Daves comment on the drill rigs of, takes me back to being a toddler with my dad, what can be better than that.
A couple of friends in school saw my dad's back belly button. When my dad turned 65 they had him go to a Dr. to see how his back was doing. My dad said it bothered him more as he got older and thought maybe the gov't. would increase his injury benefit. Nope, they kept it at $126.00 a month. The gov't. gives a lot more money to immigrants coming to Canada than they do for the people who actually fought for Canada. Vets are always the first to see cuts in funding too. Pretty sad.
Ian, I think the small shovel is likely to be a Harman.
Ozdozer, no surprise I hadn’t heard of Harman.. just read about him starting out.. that cab looks quite small .. any thoughts on the other machines.. I think my interest in dozers etc started with the John Wayne movie.. ‘The Fighting Seabees’.. My other interest is old Jeeps, after my dad’s stories I’ve got a 1951 CJ Jeep that if I get my bum into gear May do as a RAAF airfield construction version..and the other vehicle I only got to see for real a few weeks ago was a White Scout car that he told me they had in Italy.. I saw it in a sort of private museum on a farm near Pinjarra..he’s also just been given a Macchi Jet, he’s extending his shed first..back to the shovel the only ones I ever saw were in a massive ‘war reserve’ shed in Belgium.. but who they would get to operate one then ,, well there wasn’t anyone..
Now I guess if I was doing a resume I wouldn’t be including this photo.. honestly, the day after I drove the 980 over the side.. the dirt boss told me to take the dump truck load up with rocks to dump near a tailings dam.. Ross was going with me to show me exactly where to dump it.. ‘yeah yeah keep reversing’, slowly it started to slip into the slime.. I am not a jinx, and Ozdozer is shaking his head glad he has never employed me.. Ross jumps off the engine cover telling me to jump out, which was going to be, well I think impossible..but I lasted 6 months so I can’t have been all bad.. I can remember the relief of being fired.. thankfully I don’t have any photos of that as it was at night.. and no surprise it involved having no brakes (predictive text said brains).. on my #98 scraper mentioned before..
Briefly back to aircraft, I went to an air show back in 2013, I did some video, obviously no Halifax, but B17 and a Mitchel, unfortunately I can’t upload it, I suppose it’s an old format.. I’ve got stills but I wanted that engine noise..
I should go looking but I think the guy who built this is actually severely disabled after an accident.
Yes I try to keep the stories Ian. Dad, mom, aunts and uncles, they are not here to repeat them so I do. You had a real streak going, first a loader and then a catwagon. Good thing they kept you off the roller. Those things will find an edge like no other
My sister is putting our family history together.. but I contacted a local historian about my grandad joining up underage in 1914. That snowballed into him filling in the hazy details of my grandad ending up as an officer after WW1, in a regiment we didn’t know he’d been in and then being dismissed (reason unknown), we also knew he had abandoned my dad, at about 6 months, and his wife and skipped to Australia, the historian , found a copy of the ship’s manifest listing his travel.. he was tracked down and brought back, after about 4 years. His daughter by a second marriage knows nothing of this, skeleton..She emigrated to the US in the 70s and now lives in Portland. . One uncle joined the RAF as an apprentice and was at college with Frank Whittle who as you would know was credited with inventing the jet engine. And yes those rollers are dangerous haha skyking..
I went looking and couldn’t find him again..
I’ve tried to upload a video of a Lancaster and Spitfires from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight, from the 2013 Duxford air show and my own video, seems like apple won’t upload because the files are too big?. I’ve posted a short video on the Canadian Bomber Command museum site if there is somewhere else I should put this please let me know..thanks..
Here's some WW2 photos of Harman shovels from the AWM site. Note the amusing cartoon and caption across the back of the Harman in the second photo - it reads "The Mad Digger" (Australian infantrymen were known as "Diggers", in the same vein as American infantrymen were known as "Doughboys") TARAKAN ISLAND, BORNEO, 1945-05-12. A D 5 HARMAN SHOVEL STUCK IN WET CLAY ALONGSIDE A CATERPILLAR ... www.awm.gov.au TRINITY BEACH, QLD. 1944-11-25. A SLING LOADED WITH 4 GALLON PETROL TINS BEING RAISED FROM THE ... www.awm.gov.au
Looking for Herman’s brought me to this site, lots of lovely vintage gear. Plough Book Sales: Vintage Machinery Collection not really books, lots of equipment..
Would you be able to help me please with the significance of the numbers prefixing the Ruston Bucyrus RB please..it was interesting to read up on the origins of the company..and to read that there were many machines bigger than the 22Rb which was the biggest I had heard of.. that short time I spent in Canada I wondered why over there its Bucyrus-Erie..
Komatsu also had a partnership with BE for hyd. excavators.
Ian, Ruston-Bucyrus and Bucyrus-Erie were two different companies, although they were owned by Bucyrus-Erie. Bucyrus-Erie was the original company formed in Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1880. In 1930, they went a joint venture with the Ruston Hornsby company in the U.K. and formed the company Ruston-Bucyrus. Bucyrus-Erie had the majority shareholding and management control of Ruston-Bucyrus. R-B transferred its shovel manufacturing business into the R-B company and initially all Ruston-Hornsby designed shovels were simply renamed R-B shovels. However, B-E designs gradually replaced the Ruston-Hornsby design shovels in the R-B line, until all R-B shovels were eventually B-E design shovels. I'm sorry, I have no idea what "numbers" you're talking about on the "Ruston Bucyrus RB" machine, or even what machine you're referring to. Your quote shows the Harman shovel on Tarakan Island.
Here's something interesting not many people might know. A future King was interested in heavy equipment. Then Prince Charles went on a tour of the RB plant in 1979. RB had some machines that BE didn't have like the excavator with the adjustable boom in the background. Not sure if BE converted any 350H's to a shovel front. Notice the 350H says BE so it was likely made in the US. I think BE might have made a shovel front for the older 40H. They had a 20H with a rotatable boom at the 1969 Conexpo.
Ozdozer thanks.. apologies for reposting your link.the numbers I was talking about eg 10RB , 15RB, 22RB, just wondering what they mean or just model numbers.. .?.
I think model numbers are taken from BE. The 22RB is probably a 22B BE that was extremely popular. I can't remember the number but there were thousands of 22B's built. I'd guess it's the most popular BE model of all time. I found some info that said it was built from 1937 and with series II and series III updates till 1976. 8828 were built but I don't know if that included RB made machines or other partners like Komatsu Bucyrus.
Ian, I believe the numbers were the operating weight of the shovel in tons.
Makes sense thanks.,
This just popped up on my fb.. not the same view but close I would think, Welderdave
Close but a different turret. I can't remember if one was bigger than the other or more comfortable. I think I read the Lancaster didn't have the best escape hatch or access to the rear turret but considering my dad had a sore elbow for a year because his was jammed, I'd guess they were both crappy. I mentioned it before that the Halifax had an advantage for the tail gunner. It had an electric turret and the Lancaster had a hyd. turret. The gunner in a Lancaster had to keep moving the turret to prevent the hyd. oil from freezing. The tail gunners wore electrically heated suits that plugged into the planes electrical system. This was decades before Milwaukee and other brands came out with heated clothing.
I sent it mainly for the view..can only try and imagine looking back and seeing all those aircraft behind you, though mostly at night from what you’ve said..
Yes the view would be similar. My dad said it's a little hairy sitting in the turret looking backwards on take off.
I’ll bet , just imagine the runway coming up to meet you every time then the relief and elevation as the aircraft leaves the ground..
At least in a WW II bomber it's a gradual climb. Imagine if there was jet with a tail turret. As soon as you're off the ground your at 45 deg's. or more! Landing you just hope the tail wheel is there and not blown off or damaged. I think I read somewhere about a plane with a damaged tail wheel but the pilot was aware of it. He made sure to keep the plane level and off the tail wheel as long as possible and may have even made a grass landing. There's been so much stuff I've read over the years it's hard to remember it all. This thread is bringing a lot of it back though.
That’s good to hear..
This only just crosses the earthmoving/aircraft boundaries..this was 1980, in Belize, Central America (not trying to be insulting but hardly anybody I have spoken to in 40 years has heard of it.)..I just remembered it was used as the location for a 1970s movie.. I'm fairly sure it was 'The Dogs of War".. I was grading a track next to the runway..in an Aveling Barford grader, the model before this.. Nige will know the one.. The aircraft below taxied out, then I noticed it had a propeller not turning.. my first reaction for a moment was 'I wonder if the pilot knows', then I thought of course he does, & there are hardly any maintenance facilities, and no doubt a dozen other reasons.. so off it went crabbing into the air.. There was only one RAF VC10 flight a week, the camp was next to the base and everything stopped to watch the landing.. next to where I was standing is the very basic radar station, the RAF guys from there would score the landing each week, holding up a massive board with 'CRAP' written on it.. I suppose on the other side it may have said GOOD??
and this crosses the boundary because the parrot is perched on an Allis Chalmers 645 steering wheel. After I left the guy on the right got seriously knifed.. without going into details, this was a very poor country. It wasn't unusual for a couple of kids to come up to you and say 'give us some money or you'll get knifed'.. that's the Aveling Barford grader & a D6D..
Is the middle pic. an AC 645 without a cab?
thanks for the pictures. Somehow I don't think 3 engines is on the MEL for that plane. I have a story about a ferry flight but I'll post it in the other thread.
The blue color is almost like on Air Force One.
It is..would have probably been better off with the cabs on, and roof’s panted white.. but hey it’s the Army..
What other thread skyking?.
W What’s a MEL?.
A convertible loader, that's got to pretty rare.
That’s the only time I’ve seen a cab off other than when they were swapped for the armoured cabs in Northern Ireland., Belize was the hottest place I’ve been, just humid oppressive heat.. I’m sure there’s worse.. I was remembering the AC 645 in Canada was different to ours, the wheels were smaller and I recall had water ballast in them that I’ve never seen before or after and the engine had a turbo I’m pretty sure.. think there is a photo earlier of it next to the Fiat Allis 745 we had on hire when we were returning all your gear to you..
MEL is Minimum Equipment List - it is a list which allows for the operation (takeoff) of an aircraft with inoperative equipment, subject to specified conditions. Minimum Equipment List (MEL) | SKYbrary Aviation Safety A minimum equipment list (MEL) is a list which provides for the operation of aircraft when particular equipment is inoperative (various restrictions may apply). The list is prepared by the Operator. skybrary.aero
Minimum Equipment List. Minimum required for flight in other words.
Aviation Fun It might be fun read through for you. There are so many pilots and aviation buffs here, I started a thread about it. I'll post up that accident that I witnessed and the ferry flight afterward.
So is there any possibility that takeoff was legal?.
Highly unlikely in any Western, civilised country. An engine out at takeoff, even on a 4 engine aircraft is cause for aborting the takeoff, if takeoff decision speed (V1) hasn't been reached. But if V1 has been exceeded and the aircraft is airborne and one engine has failed, that would normally mean a return to the airport (however, fuel may have to be burnt off or dumped to get down to maximum landing weight). But in 3rd world countries - anything goes. Qantas had a spectacular loss of a Lockheed Super Constellation at Mauritius in 1960. Fully loaded for the trip to Australia, one engine failed in a highly destructive manner, just prior to V1. Indecision by the Captain and a lack of communication between the crew and the engineer saw the takeoff abort delayed, and the Super Constellation failed to stop in time, ran off the end of the runway at high speed and crashed into a dirt bank, then fell into a low gully. Everyone got off with minor injuries, although one person broke a leg when jumping out - however, with 10,000 gallons of high octane petrol in the tanks, it didn't take long for the Super Constellation to catch fire and burn right out. The poor firefighting response didn't help, the Mauritius airport firefighting team wasn't equipped with fire trucks that could traverse rough terrain, so they failed in their efforts to put the fire out. Crash of a Lockheed L-1049G Super Constellation in Port Louis | Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives www.baaa-acro.com
Interesting you mention indecision by the captain. I remember when the plane had to land on the Hudson River, the initial investigation said they should have been able to make it back to the airport. The problem was when they did a simulation of the event they already knew the outcome. They totally overlooked the fact that the crew had to go through a checklist of things when an engine(s) quits and try to get it restarted. Until this was brought to the investigators attention they were looking at serious charges or consequences for the captain and crew. I can't remember exactly but it was only a couple minutes of extra time the crew needed to vindicate their river landing. It made Sully a hero and rightfully so. I'm sure some less experienced pilots might not have had the same outcome. This latest stuff with Boeing is really troubling. The plane that had the door plug blow out apparently had been in for some service work in Jan. that included the door plug and bolts were left out. The report was from an anonymous whistle-blower at Boeing who had access to the maintenance files. The investigation will be able to confirm this. It is amazing no one was sitting in the aisle the door plug blew off.
Return to your departure airport after total power loss will rarely work out. It is a fools errand to try it, as you need to make a 270 and then a 90 to get lined up. Those two turns burn up too much altitude.
I think I saw it on Mayday or a show like it. It made no sense they were looking at pilot error in not returning to the airport. He saved everybody's life due to his experience. That should have been the focus. They knew there was a bird strike.
Illegal was what I had thought.. but imagine the conversation.. about being stranded maybe a couple of hundred miles from home, knowing the fault probably wouldn’t be fixable for days maybe weeks, the aircraft is in the wrong country and it’s scheduled for another job in a few hours time.. or fly it home and the company engineer gets to work.. I suppose there must have been an ATC at Belize..as you said Ozdozer the difference between the first and third world..so how would you rate the pilot, surely had guts to take off on 3 engines..it was an unusual few minutes for me, maybe he’s still talking about it..
I would defer to the aviation experts but would have thought on a 4-engined aircraft there would be some way of making an unladen ferry flight using only 3 engines from a location where no maintenance facilities were available to one where the engine could be repaired/replaced ought to be permissible within the rules. I have no idea if that’s what they were doing or not.
The aircraft in Ian's photo is a Lockheed L-188A Electra, it was one of only two Electras in the Honduran Airlines (SAHSA) fleet. The L-188A had plenty of power with 3,750HP from each Allison turboprop, so 15,000HP available for takeoff. Even with one engine out, that still gives 11,250HP available, the pilot would just have to correct for assymetric thrust from the side with the powerplant out. The Electra was noted for high performance in its day, so a takeoff on 3 engines could certainly be allowable under an MEL, if no maintenance facilities were available. Unfortunately, the Electra had a patchy record for reliability, and that aircraft of SAHSA's was destroyed in a crash at Guatemala City on 8 January 1981, whilst on a ferry flight to Tegucigalpa for repairs. The Electra (once again) took off with only three engines, and one of the electrical generators malfunctioning - but shortly after take off the plane lost hydraulic pressure and tried return to La Aurora International Airport, but the plane lost altitude and crashed into some houses one mile west of the Guatemala City airport, killing all 6 crew members on board. Accident Lockheed L-188A Electra HR-SAW, Thursday 8 January 1981 After the plane arrived at La Aurora with one engine shut down and one of the electrical generators malfunctioning, the crew decided to ferry the aircraft to Honduras for repairs. The pas... aviation-safety.net More information on the Honduran Airlines Electra fleet - Lockheed L-188 Electra II in Honduras The relationship of the Hondurans with aviation has been a long and fruitful one. As a matter of fact, the Hondurans can claim that the very first air service in Central America was established there in 1922, when Dr. T.C. Pounds, an oculist from New York, obtained a Mail contract from the Honduran www.laahs.com
That is devastating honestly.. I can’t say the exact date but it was late 1980 just before I demobbed from the Army.. brilliant that you could come up with all that info Ozdozer..but devastating.. I guess that was their normal..
That last link was very interesting with all the history Ozdozer.. It’s amazing to me that one of the Electras was still flying commercially at the time of the article in2021.. probably not amazing to those of you who are involved with aircraft..
It still is in Latin America. Not a million miles SSE of where you were in Belize lies Villavicencio, Colombia. The spiritual home of the DC-3 in Latin America, mostly because it's still pretty much the only aircraft that can get into the bush landing strips in the Amazon rainforest of Southern Colombia on the border with Brazil.
it is not a matter of what you can do, it is what you should be doing. off he went no problems. Now picture the same takeoff and the remaining engine on that side packs it in when he is a ways off the ground. There is no recovery for that. When you fly a twin, there is enough rudder authority to handle the asymmetric thrust, but not two engines out there on one wing. It would go in upside down in a blink. Another interesting thing to note is relative performance. You'd think, more engines, better performance with all running. it is exactly the opposite. The UK and US air transport rules are similar for certification. They require a transport category aircraft has a minimum climb performance with one engine failed and feathered, at Maximum TakeOff Weight (MTOW) and worst CG condition. This is usually expressed in Ft/NM, so they can plan on being able to climb out and not hit terrain. So what you have is enough engines +1 to miss the hills near the airport. Twins have significantly better performance that the 3 holers like the 727, and that much better than the 4 engine planes. At heavy weights the 4 engine planes are relative pigs.
Seem to recall some WW II bombers had made it back on 2 engines maybe even 1 if 2nd last engine died when they were close to home. My dad always preferred propeller planes to jets because they relied on wing span and air currents. A prop. plane could glide a lot longer than a jet in an emergency.
What you can do when you are aloft and have no bombs is a far sight of what it is like staggering off the runway at gross.
At gross I don't think they'd even think about trying to take off without all 4 engines. It wasn't mentioned if the Electra's were at max. loaded weight which could make a big difference.
There's no freaking way they were loaded on the 3 engine takeoffs. Those were ferry flights to go get the engine fixed.
You all know so much, it’s really interesting to read and try and understand at least some of it..all I can contribute is a picture of a beautiful bird.. You probably know this is a Stinson Reliant..mid 1930’s I think.. I first saw it probably 8 years ago, at a combined fly in and classic car show, with the star being.. Jack Brabham the race car driver from the 1960s..apart from the exterior the interior is, indescribable..those pics are on my computer so I’ll load them separately. I had seen the aircraft locally at a fly in.. I was at the local post office and sat outside was a guy in a convertible 69 mustang.. I walked over and it turned out he had restored it.. oh and I’ve restored an airplane too.. I asked him..a Stinson Reliant?. Yes.. I knew he owned a property about a mile away with a grass strip on it.. I asked if he would mind taking me up sometime, I told him I’d chip in.. he called me up later that day saying I’m going up in half an hour if you can get here.. I did, and I’ve got the video but for some reason when I select photos to upload my videos aren’t available..any thoughts on what I need to do please?. And I hope the term ‘bird’ isn’t too naff.. and Ozdozer will relate to this, the owner made his money at least initially as a sheep shearer..
Love it! My friend Russell was getting into old planes, and we flew across the US to do a pre-purchase inspection on a Reliant in North Carolina. My partner is an Airframe and Powerplant mechanic with Inspection Authorization (A&P, AI). We headed out Friday after work and nonstop Renton to Rapid City SD @19000 feet. Spent the night and then two legs to get to NC. It was in flying shape so he took it for a spin, then we tore into it, inspecting the engine and airframe. It is the later model SR-77 It was good to go so they shook hands on the deal. He came back later to fetch it home. We flew out to Emerald Isle on the Atlantic that night, to stay at his grandparents beach house. Friday night Seattle, Saturday night I slept in a screened porch and listened to the gentle surf of the Atlantic Ocean. It was an epic run. The next day we did some body surfing and then slogged back home, even staying at the same hotel in Rapid City.
you need to upload those to a 3rd party site and then post a link. If you upload to youtube and then click on the 'share' link below it, that will paste directly into a reply here, no need to select photo or link or anything.
How do I export to YouTube please skyking1?? That was a flight to remember.. what did you fly at 19000ft?? what did you fly the Reliant at?? any flying I’ve done has been at 1500.. except a 1990s Waco that I asked the young pilot if we could get low so he dropped to 500ft.. I’ve got video of that but obviously need YouTube again.. I couldn’t believe how quiet the Reliant was and I’ve got to admit I couldn’t get the smile off my face, so much so that I had to apologise, it was a highlight, he owns a Tiger Moth too.. I’ve done probably half a dozen joy flights in whose and I’ve got to admit one of my favourite movie scenes is the Moth flight in Out of Africa.. there is actually a town called Finch Hatton in North Queensland I forget which relative it is named after..
I narrowly escaped being an airframe fitter it was my third choice for my Army apprenticeship .. at 15 the appeal of driving dozers won out.. one of my neighbours was a Harrier instrument fitter..
sorry couldn’t help myself.. Out of Africa clip..
Regarding uploading videos. Go to YouTube . Create an account there. I believe it will still be free for you. After that, you log in and you'll see a button up in the upper right of the web page that says create. Now you can start uploading your videos. Be sure to select "made for children" so they don't bother looking at to see what the content is. Regarding the flight at 19,000 ft. That was the 310 Cessna Riley rocket. It has four Rayjay rurbochargers with manual wastegates, so I could normalize power almost that high. I think I had about 21 inches of manifold pressure. I we had a 30 knot tail wind up there, so it paid to wear the oxygen masks that day. That kicked our ground speed up to about 250 mi an hour. We were able to non-stop that 830 nautical mile leg in about 4 hours. The whole trip across the country was about 11 hours.
That trip sounds brilliant… and thanks for the YouTube info..
Aircraft engines have always been way more advanced than vehicle engines. They had things like water injection back in the 40's, maybe even earlier.
Back to pushing dirt again, Canada 1979.. Lovely small rocks to doze after the first blast on the last outcrop. In this 'hole' we put the biggest culvert, I never stood next to it but it was massive, it must have been at least 8 feet in diameter though..you can see there wasn't a huge amount of fill from the rock so a massive amount of coarse sand was trucked in by Herbies fleet, the cut for the culvert was so deep that the sand fill only seemed to add a few yards of road length for a couple of days.
Oooh, that amount of rock looks like hard going. Hard on tractors, and hard on operators. We've got hard rock in the W.A. Goldfields here, that completely wears out ripper tips in under 2 hrs ripping. The iron ore is bad, too, I've seen a set of tracks totally destroyed in just 800 hrs. Strangely enough, the track shoes wear out rapidly from the iron ore rock, but when the iron ore is pulverised to powder, it's not anywhere near as abrasive.
By that stage of the project, about 3 months we had already had some really hard going, after the first blast most of the rock was big, some so big that a ramp had to built so the drill rigs could access the top and re-drill them to be blasted again..so you can imagine how big the rest was.. then between the two major outcrops were smaller ourcrops, these were too small to blast, so you would prize away at key slabs and rocks.. The Goldfields rock sounds bad and as you say it’s surprising that it’s so different when it’s smaller, I suppose it’s less resistance?.
I think we were just happy to actually be doing some real earthmoving, instead of our regular usage of machines, so we were all, mostly enjoying it, then again maybe I was the only one enjoying it?. as I said earlier I was only working on the machines on the weekends with a couple of others, and I love dozers, of which this was really my only experience other than training and a couple of small jobs..
So has your friend Russell still got old aircraft, skyking1?. who is licensed to work on the old stuff?. My neighbour the Harrier instrument man could hardly work on anything because he wasn’t current and couldn’t catch up, and another guy I bought a Bronco off years ago, used to work on the Sea King helicopters, but as a civilian wasn’t licensed. I forget what job he was doing but it wasn’t in aviation..
He does the bulk of the rebuild stuff with the supervision of an A&P.
That sounds like an ideal situation and I expect you will be involved too.. You mentioned before about touring the SW of UK.. I’m not trying to be your new best friend, but when I drove from Heathrow to Devon I went to Yeovilton , the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm museum, there is a Corsair displayed there. I then looked to see if they still had an Airshow, unfortunately they don’t until 2028 apparently.. but that then got me to thinking about the other aircraft museums in UK..The Army Air Corp museum is at Middle Wallop just off the same road..A303..it’s quite small but it is crammed with aircraft and exhibits, including the origins of military flying in UK which actually started with the Corp of Royal Engineers that I was in, and just typing that reminded me there is the museum at Farnborugh, that has I believe an exhibit of William Cody an American who helped pioneer aviation in UK as you may already know. I looked at Duxford, the Imerial War Museum location for aircraft and arguably the best air shows in UK..which then reminded me of the RAF museum in North London, which I checked on google maps is only 35 minutes from Heathrow, with Duxford just North of that Should you ever go to Duxford I would allow a day for the show obviously and an extra day for the static exhibits, and from what you have posted maybe an extra day talking to people who are working on aircraft.. Duxford Summer Air Show Fuel your senses with fast flying, all action aerobatics in the air above and a jam-packed programme of entertainment on the ground below at the family-friendly Duxford Summer Air Show. www.iwm.org.uk I should probably post this on the aviation thread too..
Oxford Diecast AEC 690 Dumper Truck Wimpey 1:76 Scale Model of the AEC 690 Dumper Truck Wimpey. Manufactured by Oxford Diecast one of the worlds leading producer of Scale Model vehicles. www.oxforddiecast.co.uk I found a Wimpey dump truck.. easier to park .. but I did enjoy driving them and now the memories of those times..
I've been to the RAF Midlands Museum, and the National Railway Museum at York. I left lots of museums to see.
Midland Air Museum The Midland Air Museum - Incorporating The Sir Frank Whittle Jet Heritage Centre, located in Baginton, Coventry, is a unique aeronautical collection. www.midlandairmuseum.co.uk Is this the one you went to skyking?. if not then another one for your list..this museum had another one down in Cornwall near Newquay, unfortunately it closed, I suppose for lack of patronage, I went to it unusually, you could walk up and touch all the aircraft, I’m sure some were still flying.. I think I have already said but one of my Uncles was an apprentice with Sir Frank Whittle, sounds like BS.. I would love to find a group intake photo, there was one at Newquay but wasn’t very clear and I think it may have been later.. my uncle was ‘bought out’ because he didn’t like it.. I’m less in to railways, but like most guys I like a nice steam engine. And I worked for British Rail for nearly a year before emigrating. I was in York Carriage works, as a stripper.. Of blue asbestos..we had all the safety gear of course. We used to remove it from the drivers and guards compartments of the diesel units.. didn’t matter that every passenger compartment had it in the roof and walls.. heaven knows how many daily commuters were affected in the UK over the years. I suppose a lot of classic aircraft would have had blue asbestos as insulation..
Samuel Franklin Cody - Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org I got it slightly wrong he only stole Cody’s surname.
The only interior I could find, but a lovely front view of the Stinson..
Found a couple more, I suppose the passenger area was of less interest when I looked in the cabin..
A lovely thing..
Go over to the aviation thread. @farmerlund has one.
I saw that video and heard the singing wires, if he hadn’t said I would have thought it was a turbo..not that it would or could have one fitted probably..
I went for a ride in a friend's 172 and we landed at a small airstrip that had a radial engine crop duster parked on the grass. The engine was huge but apparently crop fosters need big power to be able to climb fast if need be. Not a lot of creature comforts but pretty cool. Not sure what kind of plane or how old.
Years ago welder Dave they were the only ‘water bombers’ we had for bushfires in Western Australia.. they certainly sound the business but don’t carry much, although I still hear them every so often, they’re obviously the cheaper alternative to the rest of the assets used now. This year I have seen, but mostly heard the heavy lift Hueys. Last year there were Blackhawks and the Ericsson sky crane, I’ve got an old phone video of that sucking up water..And a passenger jet converted to a firefighting tanker. I’ll have to google it but one crashed here, I think it was last year. We’ve had ‘squirrel’ Heli tacs.. I’m pretty sure most of them are there for your summer..
H How’s the song go..’regrets I have a few..’.. high up my list is not going for a joy flight in a Stearman.. from Sonoma airport in 2006, I was visiting an aunt who lived in San Francisco then., the whole family have moved to Portland now..
You can get a ride down there. If you make it to Portland you are just about here.
The US may be my next trip,its on my bucket list, but I’m into Jeeps so the Rubicon and Moab are up there especially.. unfortunately I don’t think my flying (as a passenger) goal will ever be realised. I have always wanted to go up in a Hughes 500, that’s not impossible, but with Hugh Mills flying it.. I’ve read and re-read parts of his book, incredible.. I know one of his machines is in a museum..
Probably ten years ago I worked out a route, in at SF, north to Vancouver, I didn’t have relatives in Portland then. across to Calgary, keep heading east, down through Montana and Wyoming then follow the Rockies down to Moab and Monument valley, then back along the south side of the Grand Canyon..sounds simple ..
Keep us posted. Our tentative New Zealand and Australia trip is 2027 in the spring. I'd like to see wheels at Wanaka. I'd also be happy with wings over Wanaka in 2026.
Our spring I presume? You certainly plan ahead skyking. Amazing I’ve never been to NZ, I had a plane mad workmate who went to Wanaka, and showed me some video he’d done. One of my daughters was in a bad relationship with a Kiwi and now she’s married to one. So maybe I’m negatively biased. You’ve just got me thinking, a week in NZ couldn’t hurt... Actually a Kiwi guy at work had my dream job, he used to collect sphagnum moss up in the hills? He’d be choppered up , gather up bundles of the moss, I don’t know whether it was 3 or 33 bundles. The helicopter would come back, he’d hang off a line with a hook on it, he’d have a foot on the hook as they went around hooking up the bundles he’d made. And from what he said it sounded like a 500. of course he had no interest in helicopters, it was just another job to him.
My wife tells me to pay attention.. I reread your post I didn’t know there was a WHEELS at Wanaka, I’d only heard of the Warbirds.. next month..!, Wheels next year, think I need to plan a trip..soon..
Both wheels and warbirds are Easter, so your fall, our spring. Anything but peak heat or peak rainy season for us soft Yankees. Planning ahead is not that big a deal. We will be in the middle of a new home next time it rolls around, and if we don't get down there for the next one we might not get another go at it. I picked Wanaka because, why not?
Well I don’t think you Yankees are soft.. I hate the cold, I lived in Yorkshire for 5 years and in winter it was cold.. but not as cold for as long as you have up towards Canada. And even when I went to Yosemite in 2006, the road want cleared of show all the way through and that was April, even May? That job in Ontario, there was still snow in the tree line in April, and by October it was cold in the evening. I know you’re used to it, you’re prepared for it as we are for our scorching summers. I suppose as humans we individually choose the climate that suits us.. If we’re lucky enough to have a choice. One of my sisters ex workmates, and friend was a Royal Marine, he reckons he lived in snow holes for 3 years of his service. You have to want to do that. Wanaka looks magic.. I can’t believe such a small population use so much equipment, all my daughters ex could talk about was digging holes and how good he was at it.. I’ve got to say that looking at rhe scrapers on the Whhels at Wanaka clip, I wished I was going to jump in one tomorrow morning..
I think we'll get a caravan rental for NZ, and train and plane and bus for Australia. I forget where you are, Ian. We have friends to visit in Sidney.
I’m as far west as you can go skyking, the most isolated city on earth..Perth the City of Lights..named by John Glen as he orbited earth in 1962..(I knew it but not the detail as I arrived 20 years later). City of light - 50 years in Space | Western Australian Museum On February 20, this year, WA will celebrate the 50th anniversary of a very significant event. On that day in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. On this mission, Glenn flew over Perth and the people of Perth turned on their lights to... museum.wa.gov.au nearly 4000km from Sydney.. Ozdozer is the true West Australian, I’m the pommy import.
Looks like cheap airfare to get out there.
Yes they are pretty good..
you can see the depth of blast and cut on the last section.. The finished road leading up to the first section that was blasted. Looking now after all these years.. very untidy and a lot of wasted sand.. but we were on a vertical learning curve. In the Royal Engineers we learnt to drive/operate everything plus our core role as combat engineers, infantry, and you normally had a specialty like radio operator.. we had a period where we exchanged some guys for a week with a US Corp of Engineers who specialised in runway repair too.. the dozer op' had a book that recorded his hours on dozers similar to a pilot, he didn't operate anything else which seemed a waste of talent, but then again he was very good at what he did Probably a sigh of relief that this is the end of the road, literally for us. Im pretty sure another one of our squadrons came back the following summer.. Early on I mentioned what to us was some unusual names.. The last photo is of my best mate at the time.. Al Beaver (very apt for Canada)..
just found this in another album of the last outcrop being set up for blasting..
Many thanks to Ozdozer for posting about Dardanup Heritage Park in Western Australia.. I spent about an hour and a half there.. so only scratched the surface.. these are general views of the International shed, it is crammed with machines..
That's like when I went to see a large collection of very unique vintage equipment. You could spend hours and hours checking it all out.
Thanks Ian. My kind of place, dirt floor so the tracks don't mess things up.
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More in the International shed.. they are all drivable I believe.. yes you could just potter around for ages, although it’s difficult to not just want to jump on..
Any photos of what you saw Dave..??
My boss on the Canada job who had gone off the radar for years turned up on the squadron fb page which was a brilliant surprise.. he took this photo of us at the end of the job.. I didn’t know this photo existed.. blast from the past..
those headlights on that dozer are like kermit frog eyes sticking up there.
I didn't take any pics. when I was there. There are some pics. and video's on the internet though of some of the machines. Henuset H1900 Hopto excavators, Henuset Polarbear trencher, Raygo Giant grader.
There is certainly a wide variety.. what a monster this Euclid is.. amazing to me that it’s a cable machine.. but an hydraulic angle ram?? I should have looked closer..
An Italian Vender.. I didn’t know until I just googled it.. Vintage 1950 Vender Tracked Crawler Bulldozer Auction (0028-5049143) | Grays Australia www.grays.com many more photos on this link..
I googled of course, that brought me to yours and skykings post last year.. what an education.. mind boggling to me.. it would have been good to have a person next to most of that gear ..
There's video's of that TC12 dozer working at an equipment show.
The raised up H1900 is huge, 103 tons+ with the high walker undercarriage. They have the pipe work frame that goes under it to raise it another 10 feet and also straddle the spoil pile from the Polarbear trencher. It would be awesome if they installed that! The operator would be about 25 feet off the ground! They have 3 machines with twin 8V-71 engines. The two H1900's and the Giant grader. They want to have all the machines running for their working museum. The Polarbear has a 16V-149 at around 1200 HP! Seeing a bunch of trenchers at an auction, Henuset built quite a few if their own trenchers. They also made two HD41 side booms that could pick up Cat 591 side booms. The owner of Henuset was quite the innovator. Those machines weren't part of the collection though.
Excellent videos Dave, What engines did the TC 12 have?. like the earlier comments about the Vickers Vigor, looks like it would be difficult to keep cool.. and another dumb question, did Euclid become Terex?.
There was something different for me at every turn.. I had never heard of a LeTOURNAU and I thought Westinghouse only made fridges..
The TC12/ later Terex 8280 used two 6-71 Detroits. Each side had its own engine and transmission and pivoted in the middle to follow the ground.
Letournau has made some really remarkable machines. The most common ones are the diesel-electric log stackers. With the facilities and technology for big iron, they also made some really far out machines! These road trains were cold war tools for crossing the northern territories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_train the tree crusher, also diesel-electric.
What an education you are giving me.. I had never heard of a dozer with two of everything, the tree crusher like something from a futuristic apocalypse movie and us Aussies think we invented road trains, a tundra beating version, astounding.. a weird part of me wondered what the Westinghouse part of the partnership would have come up with for the kitchen if they’d been given free reign.. pure innovation those machines..
That first road train picture got too big for diesel and has 4 turbines in it. I love all the spare tires on top of the load on the last road train, and that crane on the back of the tractor is clearly for changing out tires on the trailers. Also love that willys jeep on the first trailer.
Well spotted on the Jeep skyking.certainly gives it some scale... an M38?.
I'm not good on that, all I know is that looks like Ken and Barbie's jeep right there.
Le Tourrneau was an absolute legend of a man and pretty much everything we know and use today regarding earthmoving equipment, is due to his innovations. I still find it hard to believe the scope of his achievements in one lifetime. This is a great read and should be read by everyone in the earthmoving industry. The book is Mover of Men and Mountains, -R-LeTourneau. https://www.amazon.com/Mover-Men-Mountains-R-LeTourneau/dp/0802438180 Really enjoyed this thread.
What an amazing man..from an invention point of view but especially from a philanthropic view., just imagine if some of the world’s billionaires contributed more (I know some do) to making a better world..
This is a pic of the area the 980 loader with no brakes on page 2 worked in..the liquid slurry level was usually higher..the photo is taken just by the bin the sand was dumped into.. This is of the stockpile that was constantly built and used as top up for the process.. there was a penalty to us as the contractors if the bin went empty..obviously the scraper bowl has slid off when rebuilding the stockpile..we didn’t always have a dozer available to push out the sand and shape the stockpile.. This was the full compliment of 633C and one D model..it wasn’t unknown to have only 2or3 machines working after breakdowns during night shift.. that’s when we’d have a dozer pushing the stockpile into the bin..aI do remember having a 627 twin power push/pull briefly but it must have been between contracts, also had a couple of earlier models with a rigid hitch..
you keep finding more pics Ian, this thread has some legs!
How common were 633's?
Other than brief appearances of the occasional 627 or something the 633 were all we had.. that was the only mine I worked on but they had similar size machines on the mine next to ours.. in my years in Australia I have seen mostly these being transported..
I think that’s about it skyking1.. I am feeling there may be a sigh of relief… I don’t know whether it was the same in the US.. but it was a very English thing for people to go on holiday then some time later to have a ‘slide night’.. think.. bad photos, probably of places you can’t afford to go to, or wouldn’t want to, maybe with a relative you hardly know..
I was wondering how common 633's were in general? I know Cat has some elevating scrapers but are more known for their conventional scrapers.
A local company called Leightons had a fleet of 631 open bowl scrapers carrying out large-scale overburden removal from open-pit gold mines in the W.A. Goldfields in the mid-to-late 1980's. I can recall watching this fleet at work stripping the overburden on the Paddington Gold Mine, near Broad Arrow, W.A., around about 1985. There were about 20 x 631's in Leightons fleet, and the guy running the fleet was a real gun on scraper fleet operation. He would stand on the jobsite and watch all the operators to ensure maximum production with minimum machine abuse. He would be watching for excessive wheelspin and ensuring the pusher dozer operators were working with care and skill. Unfortunately I either got no photos of this operation, or they've been lost somewhere. It was an impressive dirt-shifting operation to watch. This the Paddington Mine and nearby mines in recent times. https://www.mindat.org/gl/252644 Leightons earthmoving operations were exceptionally well run, and they ran their equipment almost non-stop. I often saw Leighton machines with 10,000 hrs on the clock, after just 2 or 2-1/2 years from new. I would often buy ex-Leighton machines after they were traded in on new ones, because they had such a good maintenance regime and records of maintenance, and Leightons didn't spare the money when it came to repairs. If an engine was getting tired, the machine would get a complete brand new or fully reconditioned engine installed. The same for other major components. They kept their machines in excellent condition. Leightons apparently had an excellent maintenance funding arrangement, in that they kept a maintenance fund running for each machine from new. As the machine clocked up hours, they would top up the maintenance fund for the machine with X amount of dollars for each hour operated. So when a major component was required to be replaced, the funds were there to do it. They had the running costs of each type of machine well-tuned, and if a machine was burning up more money than the maintenance fund contained, it would be sold off as uneconomic to operate.
They could be great advisors to other outfits or contractors on how to run the most efficiently. You save more money having a system in place to cover repairs and maintenance than just hoping for the best.
I would love to have seen that Ozdozer…I was going to ask about using an elevating v open bowl with a dozer, then. Twin power.. I think I have heard of a CAT book that gives all the efficiencies of machines.. ..
After the mining job I went to work in a refinery as an operator where all maintenance was breakdowns.. having come from the military I was used to planned and preventative maintenance.. I saw the area maintenance supervisor who was a mechanical engineer and asked about planned maintenance, I don’t remember the words but the gist was ‘are you mad’..or ‘what would you know’.!