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F Shephard'Hill Caterpillar 245 shovel?

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:38 am
by Mark Williams
Hello Everyone,
There doesn't seem to be many posts on here these days? .( So I thought I would ask a question.
F Shephard'Hill bought in the late 70s a new Caterpillar 245 front dump shovel & 3 new Caterpillar 769C trucks. I was an operator of 1 of the 769s (DT93) & spare driver on the 245 shovel @ their Pen Bryn Oer OCCS in the mid 80s.
Can anyone clarify for me whether the original purchase of the 4 machines was for ,either their dam job they built in the Isle of Man, or for its dam job they built @ Carrsington in Derbyshire?
I know they all worked together on all 3 of these contracts, but, what happened to these 4 machines after the Pen Bryn Oer OCCS finished up in South Wales?
These were excellent items of plant & the reliably of them was second to none. They were well maintained by SH & the story of this Caterpillar equipment is a testimony to Caterpillar itself.
Photos of the 4 of them, new can be seen on clockworklozenges flickr pages, if he wouldn't mind posting them on here.
I only know of 3 companies in the UK that used the Cat 245 front dump version, obviously F Shephard'Hill, RF Budge, Levak Construction.
I don't know if Stokey Plant had any in their large fleet of Cat 245s? I read last week, @ 1 time Stokey Plant had 60, Cat 245s on hire? Is this correct?
The front dump shovel had a higher load capacity than the bull-clam, but the bull-clam type had a slightly higher dump speed over the truck.
The only problem I found with the shovel, in various digging conditions, was that there was so much power in the crowd out, it used to skid the machine back & in hard digging it would make quite a mess on the area the machine was standing on, so clean up & re-leveling had to be done often, thus wear on the track groups & undercarriage was inevitable.
If anyone can fill in the gaps, that would be great,
Regards from Ontario,
Mark Williams.

Re: F Shephard'Hill Caterpillar 245 shovel?

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:46 pm
by Jeremy Rowland
Great history there Mark thanks for sharing :thumbup: clockworklozenges is a member of this site although he has not posted on here for a while, you could always pm him and ask permission to post the photos; as for any of the machines histories, other members may be able to help out with that?

Jeremy

Re: F Shephard'Hill Caterpillar 245 shovel?

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:51 pm
by modelman093