Komatsu in the China clay pits

by Nick Drew | Fri 22 Jan 2016

Komatsu in the China clay pits

I have had a selection of photos of Komatsu machines at work in Cornwall for many years now, which were taken in 2005 by a professional photographer called Simon Burt. They are great images and I would like to share some of them with the Digger Man Blog readers.

Back in their hay day equipment rental specialists Hydrex ran a massive fleet of machines covering a wide selection of types including rail, which I worked with them on, materials & waste handling and mining in the China Clay pits in St Austell in Cornwall. Initially I believe the company was running PC750’s but it was decided machines with more capacity were needed.

So a deal was done and an order was placed for 3 PC1250 machines to be deployed to the world famous and challenging pits. In fact one of these machines was a star attraction on the Marubeni Komatsu stand at the 2005 Hillhead exhibition in Buxton where it was displayed with one of the two of the company’s small mini excavators sat in its bucket!

The machine was operated by Michael Lyne aka “Twinkle” (seen below in the cab) who was digging and loading overburden onto a fleet of big Bell B50D articulated haulers.

I have no idea how long the machines remained working there as plant suppliers often change in the pits and of course Hydrex eventually ceased trading. It would be interesting to know where these 3 machines ended up as it’s not every day you come across this size machine in the UK.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Simon Burt for the reproduction of these photos.

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