little stuck

[richie51]

this happened when i was with hewden crane hire.while working on a wind farm site the crane operator wanted to avoid a large puddle so he thought best to drive round it, only the road wasnt that wide

[Holger]

Yeah, that is stuck! Not easy to get unstuck!?

[richie51]

driver got it stuck about 8am, i got there to cover him with my crane about 10am. we were wrapped up and finished at 6pm and they were still trying to extract the crane when i left the job. they got it out at 9pm that night.

[MGI]

Some photo's of a 36" pipeline around Southampton in 1977 - MK Shands The Lieber driver is Vince Kilgannon, Tommy Kilgannons brother and I was driving the 583. I got bogged trying to skulldrag the digger out!

[MGI]

This is a shot of my 22 RB ICD on a Tarmac site in Micheldean (Forest of Dean) on the construction of a water treatment plant - the machine is in one of the underground reservoir constructions. The bloke with his back to the camera wearing the brown Richards & Wallington overalls is Tommy Kelly. Tommy had to go to Bristol Hospital for a check up and I went on his machine for the day because it had a fly and the bloke who went on my machine was (this is absolutely true) a labourer who was working for a subby on the site. This was sanctioned by John Edkins because they didn't have a spare driver. This all came about when I was told that I wasn't needed one weekend (normally worked 7 days) but when I came in on the Monday and fired up Bessie the front drum (which hadn't been used for ages) was rotating and I couldn't stop it, the clutch had seized on because it had been out of use for so long. No stress because it wasn't roped up but it clearly demonstrated that someone had been in the machine, the someone was this red faced Labrador called Eddie who came from Tamworth every day with the subbies (chippies & labourers) He had pushed the wrong lever to hoist some thing and caused the problem. I complained to the GF who didn't give a damn and then I reported it to HQ who sanctioned it, mainly because they had three 22's on the site and they didn't want to lose the hire, they also had a rake of navvies on other sites for Tarmac. I revved up on Peter Reid, the GF, because apart from anything else I was losing money, the upshot was he stopped my bonus and I was on the point of jacking. Pat O'Neil who had the title of supervisor (for BCHC) came down to site and negotiated my bonus back and also gained an agreement that the Tamworth Tosser would not be allowed on my mount again. However on this occasion it was official because we were one driver down. No one was hurt, thankfully but the TT was never seen again! Tommy Kelly was on a 'long & wide' with a fly which the senior management thought was outside the scope of the 'reseve operator'. Poor old Tommy was dead four weeks later!

[Jeremy Rowland]

Smashing pics thanks for posting them.

Jeremy

[Nick Drew]

More great photos Bill

Good stuff ...I especially like the stuck in Liebherr shots ...whereabouts nr Southampton was that ?

Its my home city

Nick

[MGI]

I cannot tell you exactly where the route of the pipeline was, but I was in digs in Romsey which wasn't far from the yard. I believe Laurie McEnemy lived in the same village. The ditching foreman was a Yank by the name of Lonny Alexander and he had come over here to show us Limeys how it was done - prior to this job he had been working in Alaska on the massive pipeline through the tundra (I believe a lot of that pipe was above ground to avoid any potential adverse effects on the eco tundra). We were ditching with 4 583s as compared to Murphys the green who used 5 D8 based booms. I always remember a guy called Carruthers (honestly) who jumped on my machine whilst ditching one day and asked me if these booms ever tipped over. At this point we had so much pipe in the air that it was visibly sagging between machines, I said to Carruthers "be patient"... within two minutes the lead boom went over, I threw my brake off because the pipe was going in the ditch irrespective of anything we could do, I had been lowering off on the brake with the winch in second gear, the pipe went in the ditch so fast that the winch couldn't pay off the cable quick enough and the boom came up, as the pipe landed in the ditch I pulled the winch brake on and the boom stopped literally on the point of turning turtle - then I heard this tremendous crash which turned out to be the counterweights flying into the park position because I had left them on float! The pipe snaked into the ditch for about a mile in front of us but luckily nobody was between the pipe and the ditch! Two booms went over out of the four but no casualties and Lonnie kept his job because he was a big mate of Beau, the American spread boss! Incidentally, one of the fitters on that job came from Worcester, a well respected guy called Reg. I first met Reg on the M5 working for Lemand Mackenzie Shand! He more or less settled in the Southampton area, I think there was a queer one involved.

[MGI]

Here is a trio of shots from a pipeline way south of bristol, I cannot remember who the main contractor was, might have been Laing, it was near the Babycham factory. I will never forget the hills we had to contend with! Pete the Leek on the blade.

[MGI]

This Poclain was from a firm near Barnsley called Agri Plant, the driver was the boss's brother. The boss was a really nice guy, I think his surname was something like Bailey... I went to a sale with him once when Malcome Stockdale went down the tube and I remember an Irish mate of his (a plant dealer from the area) bidding & winning a massive Cat rubber tyred loading shovel which he paid over a million for (can this be correct? or is my memory playing tricks?) There is a couple of Landrovers bogged, the short wheelbase had a front half shaft break, it was only a few days old... I got crossed up in the reinstated ditch with opposite wheels spinning on both axles, I thought that if I let them spin in low first and then gradually applied the brakes, at some point the differential force would equalise and the wheels, or wheel, on hard standing would start to turn - not so! The half shaft went instead... live & learn. The 3c was driven by Peter Nicholas, we called him the leek eater, or Pete the leek, he came from down by Haverfordwest somewhere... he was remarkably talented being able to drive any digger regardless of lever orientation without appearing to have to learn himself. There was only one position for the throttle though... flat out with loads of black smoke. This shot was for effect, no one could accuse the Leekeater of being modest, as soon as the photo was taken he extricated himself in seconds!