Memory of the month the way things were. (Part Thirteen)

Continuing with our series on the memories of retired plant man William (Bill) Peters told in his own words with period photos from Bill and the Digger Man Blog archives

Usk to Newport Trunk road Wales

Whites had purchased a Cat 983 track shovel, a machine that I couldn’t see the point of because it was too big for ordinary work and too small for loading dumpers as it only had a 5½ yard bucket, annoyingly the machine was sent to Wales to work and operator wouldn’t work away so a chap who was unfamiliar with it was sent to run it. 

This did not go well, not because of the operator but because the machine was just too small for the job and after a while I was sent up there with two 180 Payhaulers, it took me over a day to get there as the Hough would only do 20 miles an hour at a gallon a mile.  These machines were never designed to drive long distances and in this case the transmission used to get very hot and on occasion the filter gasket would fail, I would instantly know when this happened because it was located under the cab so the smell was the instant indicator, I always carried spare gaskets and oil so it was a quick fix but hot and messy, the tyres would also get flat spots as they cooled down overnight leading to a rough ride next morning until they warmed up.

We arrived on site at about 08.45 and it was immediately obvious why the 983 couldn’t cope as there was a line of 50 ton Payhaulers so long I couldn’t see the end of it, but there was a D9 and two D8s pushing out a large pile of limestone and clay so I thought whoa we’ll really move some dirt here so got stuck in right away.

There were several of the road management team there with stopwatches etc. checking how long it took to load a dumper (1minute 20 seconds) when the last dumper left I saw the D9 and a D8 tracking off so I said to one the chaps where are they going ? to spread what your loading he said, now I reckoned there was about 5000 tons in the pile plus what the D8 would push out so I said if you don’t get them back that pile will be gone and the trucks will be lined up in row by one o’clock, well they just laughed and walked away because they had no concept of what a large shovel could do. One o’clock arrived as I put the last bucket full on a truck, they weren’t laughing then.

I said to my mates we had better get some digs so off we went to Llantrisant the nearest town, we had been warned by the 983 operator that decent digs were hard to find but we didn’t expect what happened. We saw a guesthouse with a vacancies sign so knocked the door, a lady opened it and we asked if she had room for four, she looked at us as if we were dog turds and slammed the door in our face, we hadn’t expected that I must say, anyway on a bit further another place with vacancies, the door opened and the lady spoke to us in English but as soon as we answered she gave us a load of verbal diarrhoea in welsh and slammed the door again.

These people obviously had far too much money if they could afford to turn away business, so it was with some trepidation we knocked the third door expecting a similar welcome but a totally different experience ensued, we were welcomed with open arms all four of us, all we wanted was B&B and a packed lunch if possible, so this lady from Lancashire made a good few pounds in the weeks that we were there. By the time we got back to site more material had been pushed out and they decided to put a night shift on the dozers to avoid embarrassment again and all went well. 

In the evening Nick the fitter and I decided to go for a drink in the pub, as we opened the door everyone was talking away but as soon as we asked for two Guinness please the whole place went silent as though someone had turned off the sound, we had never experienced this sort of behaviour before, quite juvenile really and no one spoke a word until we left, closed the door then they all started talking again, hardly the way to welcome strangers or holiday makers and I see from a recent letter in the paper little has changed. The co-operator