by Nick Drew | Wed 19 Oct 2016
Quarryman’s plant photo archives (Part Two)
Rounding off the selection of photos sent in by reader Alan Angilley from his father, Austen Angilley’s, collection of shots taken during his time working at the famous Foster Yeoman’s limestone quarry in Somerset.
This last selection is dominated by dumptruck’s which Austen Angilley was operating in the early 1970’s. In this couple of shots we see the once hugely popular Terex R25 dumptruck which appears to have lost a front wheel while on the move with a heavy load of rock on board!
In the early 1970’s on/off road going trucks were being produced with small “half cab” designs, I can recall Foden’s adopting this style but in this shot taken around 1973 we see a Seddon Atkinson on/off road dumptruck being driven by Austen Angilley, having just tipped its load and stopping by to have the “craic” with the operator on the MF track shovel.
In this shot we see the same Seddon Atkinson truck which has been fully loaded with no prisoners taken! One would imagine this load is way over the suggested payload but that’s the way things were done back in those days.
Two Cat classics at work here at the quarry face. Identification is tricky as they are a long way in the distance but I would imagine it’s a 988 wheeled loading shovel, loading a Cat 769 rigid dumptruck, both these models sold like hot cakes back in the day. Both these models were first introduced into the Caterpillar range back in 1963 and became legendary products. Since this blog post was first published, we have been contacted by reader Nick Lamb who suggests that the machines in the photo below may actually be an early 992A wheeled loading shovel and the dumptruck might be a similar age 773A model.
Finally in this post, check out this grainy photo which features a chaotic scene with Euclid/Terex trucks, Caterpillar wheeled loading shovel, Komatsu tracked loading shovels and a Cat D9G all at work in the Torr Works pit.
Once again we thank Alan and Austen for sharing these photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.