Just bought this in the hope I can I can put it behind my tractor to do the odd gate post hole and a bit of ditchwork.

Does it look familliar to anyone here, I cant find anything on the 'barfords' side or anything that looks like it under another name.












It has its own PTO driven pump & oil tank,
Two buckets, the trencher has the 'paddle' to clear itself, not sure if thats an aftermarketor quite what year that idea caught on (but a bonus)

In use the operator drops the whole assembly to the ground to stabilise it, although each
leg is adjustable manually,
this machine is operated from the tractor unlike some which had their own seat perched on top although someone told me today he thought that was outlawed on H&S grounds


should add, I saw it working yesterday although it leaks oil through old joints as its been standing for Four years

Hi Richard,

The 'paddle' is the ejector plate of a factory made ejector bucket - many makers offered them and I remember them being popular in the '60s for tile drain work on farms with clay soils. The farmer/drainage contractor I worked with as a boy had them for both their McConnell and Whitlock diggers.

The machines with separate seats, like the McConnells, caused a few accidents with the introduction of safety cabs way back with operators becoming trapped (and in some cases killed) by becoming trapped between the tractor cab and the control block when carrying out certain operations - mainly moving the machine along using the dipper/boom. McConnell was forced to introduce a 'clearance frame' which indicated the safe clearance between the back of the trencher seat and the tractor cab - it offered no physical protection just an indicator. These incidents and the subsequent changes were well covered in the farming press of the time.

Ditchers with the separate seats are still sold today, Foster being one brand, and basically they look pretty much like your Barford, and they even do an ejector bucket!!

http://www.fostersalescompany.co.uk/diggers.html

Dave. S.

Dave I cant find one reference to Barfords(Diggers) anywhere,
The Ejector seemed at least a relatively modern device, oh well.

Hopefully beyond the hoses and pumps sub-frame it wont need much to make it work reasonably well, although it could always do with the dipper arm re-welding here and there but I may be able to remove this to have it welded locally.


Does it look familiar to you by the way, the seller seemed to think there were a lot of them about although he may have meant 60's onwards

Yes, I have seen them around, and somewhere in my stuff I have an advert for them, but finding it could prove, er, difficult

I think surviving machines will be quite rare though.

Dave. S.

As Dave S said above there was problems with the McConnel type with seat on and safet cabs. ican remember nearly geting squashed between the can and seat if you pushed the tractor forward with the arm when digging. climbing on and ff was apain witha cabed trator for trenching to move forward very couple of yards.

S looking at your Barford machine I say it was 1970s vintage as it is heavyer duty than the mcConnel's from the 1960s

Heres a restored one for comparrision


Your barford looks prety tidy and would be an intersting addition for showing with a tractor like the one ablove.

Appears the machine was called the Barfords Safety Digger. It was being sold as early as the mid sixties.

Thanks both for your info,

tried so many different search criteria the last few days looking for details on it,
I'll be in touch with progress

Is that Richard from Northants?

The ejector bucket can work really well saves shaking, prodding and digging out with a spade. We had one on an MF 220.

Northants Pete, thats me

update:
Got it working this morning by plumbing it directly via rear hydraulic point on tractor
this way I hope to avoid using the PTO driven pump it came with.

The splines were a bit shot and ready to let go at any time,
plus I couldn"t see enough room to pass the top link between tractor and digger with the pump in the way it appears (at least) to be working OK although I noticed that swapping buckets looks a bit more involved than i'd initially thought as the ditcher with its paddle inside wont just swap on quickly without unbolting a large lump of steel from the end of the dipper arm,


does anyone remember much about swapping out the buckets?