by Nick Drew | Wed 07 Dec 2016
Case Poclain’s 988 remembered
When I was doing the railway work back in the day at the time the Case 988 railroad conversion was the daddy on the track maintenance side of things, it had plenty of power and a fantastic lift capacity too. I recently came across this promotional video which features wheeled and tracked 988’s from when the model was first launched.
First thing to point out is that this video which was filmed on the site of the current Case Visitors Centre in Monthyon, just to the north of Paris, is in French, but don’t be put off as it’s an interesting insight into the machines and the features that they had. The whole area around Monthyon is steeped in hydraulic excavator history as it was just up the road from the Monthyon centre in Crepy-en-Valoise that Poclain excavators were manufactured and sent for export all over the world. In fact the Monthyon facility was the demonstration and proving area for Poclain back in those days too, so a lot of history stems from there.
I know from the many emails and PM’s I get that many of our readers have very fond memories of Poclain, especially from the red and grey era before Case started taking over business in 1986, a move that eventually saw the Poclain brand name removed in 1999. Sit back now and enjoy this video which features the very attractive commentary by Julie Cortes.