Dust, Smoke and Classic Plant at Welland 2026

The Welland Steam & Country Rally is always a well-attended event and one I have always fancied taking a look around, but for one reason or another, I have never made it up there.

On this occasion Digger Man Blog follower, workaholic, and construction equipment super enthusiast Kenneth Hatcher popped along with his ex-boss Paul Harkins for one of the days, and has kindly shared some images and video clips for us to take a look at.

Of course, the show is a massive event with all the steam powered traction engines and the like, but from our perspective the most interesting aspect is the vintage plant on display.

There were some superbly restored machines on display, largely dominated by equipment from JCB and Caterpillar. Paul Harkins was keen to get in the seat of a JCB 114 crawler loader, apparently, he used to run some on his plant hire business back in the day, so it was great to see man and machine reunited, you can see him running the machine in the video at the end of this post.

There was a nice gathering of iconic JCB backhoe loaders presented with some of them having been restored to showroom finish. Standout example for me was the JCB 4D which was produced from 1968 to 1973, I always recall my late father talking about these machines, but I’m not sure if he ever operated one, as he was mainly on the 3C’s.

The standout big dozer at the event was the Caterpillar D9G. This was an iconic machine for me as a youngster growing up, in fact it was first introduced by Caterpillar in 1961 the year of my birth! It continued in production until 1974 when it was superseded by the D9H model. Power came from a Caterpillar 6-cylinder D353 diesel engine which offered a power output rating of 385hp, the superb noise and the belch of black smoke on powering up is really something to behold.

We don’t see that many restoration jobs on CASE construction machinery, so it was good to see the Construction King CASE 580F backhoe loader being displayed and digging. There was a time when these machines flooded the market back in the late 1970’s early 1980’s, I remember seeing a lot of them around in Hampshire at that time. Nice to see a lovely Priestman Mustang in the background too.

Also on show was the Thwaites Alldrive 4x4 rear tipping dumper, possibly an 8-tonne Goliath model. Launched in 1979 it was the first fully cabbed dumper produced by the long-established British manufacturer.

JCB hydraulic excavators were also displayed including 6D and 5C model, great to see these venerable old machines still out there doing a bit.

Last but not least in this batch of photos, the Caterpillar 205 LC which was based on the German EDER, this one I believe belongs to our friends at Earlcoate in Hampshire. It was 1984 when an agreement was signed with German manufacturer EDER, to badge examples from their 800-Series excavators as Caterpillar.

Five tracked models were produced consisting of the 205 seen above, 211, 211LC, 213, and 213LC, with four wheeled excavators to follow, 206, 212, 214 and 224 models.

I recall visiting Leverton’s the then Caterpillar dealers in Southampton when the Cat 205 first came out. At the time I was trying to get going as an owner operator and fancied the kudos of running a Cat, unfortunately a financial deal could not be sorted, so it never happened on that occasion, but I had a spin in one and flet it was a nice machine at the time.

Checkout the video below which also features some other gems in action such as the Ex-British Rail Hymac 580C and a 22-RB face shovel.