by Nick Drew | Tue 15 Aug 2017
Plant man’s pics from the past
In the early years of this blog it was very common for me to receive photos from readers on a regular basis and it was something that I and other readers enjoyed a lot, these days though due to the rise in social media platforms we don’t get sent that much anymore, so it was with great delight that I opened an email last week from Neil Davenhill who wanted to see his photos immortalised forever on the pages of the Digger Man Blog, not just buried in a thread on Facebook and the like.
Neil’s first photo features the man himself stood in front of his truck a Cat 789 and was taken back in 1987 at the Lounge Opencast operation in Ashby De La Zouch in Leicestershire. Neil said, “This place was a great mine to work in and featured the first Cat 789’s purchased by Budge Mining. They eventually got shipped out to a mine in Sheffield as they had purchased an RH200 and deemed the RH120's too slow for loading, even though they were topping off 200t in two minutes! Great to see this old shot with not even a hint of PPE on Neil.
Also in action at Lounge opencast mine and seen in this long distance shot were examples from Budge’s fleet of motor scrapers including this Cat 631 being push loaded by a Cat D9L tracked type tractor. The machine was shifting subsoil for the reinstatement works. Plenty of black smoke and poke on display in this photo!
This next shot of a Hitachi EX1800 was taken at the Bleakhouse Opencast Pit in Cannock around 1993. Neil said, “I was now working for Wimpey Mining. This machine, if I remember rightly was hired from a company in South Wales and was sweet as a nut to operate. As you can see I put a Cat 225 by the bucket just to give an idea of the size of her!”
Also on site at Bleakhouse was a Marion 195 dragline, Neil said, “I only had a short period of time on this machine, as I was a spare driver on the site (we never stopped the plant for breaks) and I spent most of my time covering the RB195 electric shovels for their breaks. We had four of those onsite.
It was an amazing bit of kit, to this day, I still say the best machine I've ever operated. Unfortunately I only have this one pic of a RB195 which was taken at Bleakhouse, but not by myself”
This shot dated around 1996 shows Neil on a new Cat D9N at the Bleakhouse Opencast mine, you can see how new the machine was here as it still has paint on the blade.
Neil describes the German manufactured Demag 185 as a bit of an animal to operate. Apparently this machine had plenty of breakout power, but you couldn’t counter slew and open the clam when over the truck skip, you just had to time it right!
Finally in this batch from Neil an action shot from the cab of his Cat 789 as he passes an oncoming unit, no mention of hands free phones, or dedicated mobile phone zones back in those days!
Summarising about his time in the opencast sector Neil said, “After the year 2000 opencast dried up in the Midlands and so I went into pipelaying, roadwork and various other things. Around 8 years ago I came back into the game and started on the road to plant training and testing, which is what I am currently doing”.
We thank Neil for sharing these classic photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.