Hi,
To continue the story of "NCK Rapier."
In 1935 Nweton Chambers who had surplus foundry and engineering capacity decided to go into excavator production.
They entered into an agreement with the American manufacturers "Pawling & Harnischfeger," (P&H), to build machines under licence. These were marketed as "Newton Chambers Harnischfeger," (NCH).
They met with a great deal of success and by 1939 a new factory was built at Sheffield for excavator production, this was seriously curtailed when the factory was requisitioned for production of Churchill Tanks for the war effort and any excavators built then went to The Ministry of Defence.
The first NCH was a 1/2 yard universal machine with a Cat D4 power unit. Two models were produced, the NCH 125 and NCH 150, these were basicly the same machine with the 150 having an uprated D4 engine and heavier running gear giving it a bigger footprint.
In 1958/9 my work took me to the Steel Company of Wales Quarry at Stormy Down near Bridgend and there was an NCH on face shovel parked up there. I hardly noticed it in the shaddow of the 110 RB and 100 RB shovels though.
There was also one in use locally on a housing development.
Photographs are hard to find, but I have this one taken in 1947 on a job just 5 miles up the road from me. There's a fair bit of footage of one at work in The East Anglian Film Archive "City Engineers Work" Cat. No. 476.
![Image](http://www.classicmachinery.net/forum/images/userpix/2600_1O7C5JAS6Y6D21447019327.jpg)
The agreement with P&H finished in 1946 and the following year a license agreement was entered into with Kohering and the first NCK the304 was built. For the British market this was available with Dorman, AEC, Thornycroft or Gardner engine.
At this stage Kohering, like P&H before them, had no financial interest in Newton Chambers.
More next post.
Fred