Hillhead/QMJ 2024

News

Digging deep into construction machinery news

Doug Hamilton’s machine memories (Part Two)

Mon 20 May 2019

Doug Hamilton’s machine memories (Part Two)

After the Plympton Bypass job Doug headed for a start at the Lee Moor China Clay Quarry where he would be running a Caterpillar 631 motor scraper, something he was not too familiar with, Doug takes up the story, “These things were not my scene to be honest, I thought I was doing ok until one day we had to go up to the top of a man-made mountain. I was the last in line, then as we reached the top, we stopped with our boxes down to go and see what we were to do. Well the view from this point was amazing, you could see for miles all over Plymouth and out to the ocean”. “Then to my surprise, the first scraper went off over the edge with his rear wheels hanging up there in mid-air, then at that very moment a D8 gave him a push and he was gone, I ran over to take a look and then a second scraper went over and then a third, at this point the Cat operator was waving at me! Oh s***, my turn had come, so over I went, I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared, I had the bowl down so far that I stopped halfway down”. “I could see a foreman way down below giving me signs to raise the bowl, so I did and with my feet on the dashboard I took off like a bat out of hell! I finally made it to the bottom in one piece but could not get it in gear”. “I got off looking for a suitable piece of wood and encountered the foreman that had been waving his arms about shouting, you’re fired, you’re fired, good I said, at least I haven’t got to go up there again! “I thought I would continue to dig out the gear linkage on the back of the transmission where all the clay had jammed in when I had the bowl down so far,  “what are you doing, said the foreman, I thought you were going to clobber me! forget what I said get back up there and do it right this time” “Damn I thought, fortunately not long after that I received a letter from Cripps saying they had a job for me on the M62 so off I went. I will write about that in the next instalment".

Loads more

LOADS MORE

This website and services embedded within it use cookies to offer you the best user and functional experience and to provide us with performance statistics. Please click more information to read about cookies and to view the cookies we use.

More information | Block cookies

If you choose to block cookies some parts of this website may not operate. To block cookies please do this within your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to block cookies within their settings and we have provided links to the most commonly used browsers. Please view our cookie details page for more information on the cookies we use.

Chrome | Firefox | Safari | IE

Accept + close