motorway muckshifting

[nick lamb]

and some more..

[nick lamb]

The pics apart from the lady driver of the 3309 are of the main fitting shop on the job.It is an air conditioned workshop where all the major breakdowns were dragged or pushed.In these pics you can see some of the machines that were down at the time.Gillespies of Glasgow had one of their 962's in for a hyd pump,Dow's had a Moxey in for another transmission,I had a D8 in for a slewing clutch problem and Geoddis had a D9 in for a split fuel tank.
I know that D8 looked abit rough at the time but it was a good tractor with a strong engine and tranny.When the slewing clutch went I decided to overhaul the crown wheel and pinion bearings and seals while I was in there.The top pinions wwere in good shape and the machine went back to work for more years to come.That's me at the controles.

[nick lamb]

Some more.That's me stood up on the left.The D8 behind was waiting for me to put the box on.I appear to be quite clean for once.I must have been meeting up with a girl later

[nick lamb]

Here's another pic of the workshop again.Nice place to do a major rebuild eh?
The chap stood next to me is for Volvo Wullie.He was running Morrisons Quarry with an O+K loading shovel.He was froom Aberdeen too.I think he was called Tony,a nice feller.The last pic is of a head case called Jimmy Zoot from Glasgow.He was actually a really nice guy and would often clean his dumper down with a hosepipe.

[DaveS]

Hi Nicky,

Great pictures, and it was one of the few jobs of the time where I never stopped to take photos!

A friend of mine, David Henderson, was down there with Levack, and ended up in Glensanda with them in the superquarry, but like sooooo many of the contractors you mention they went bust. David is now in Uruguay with a fair sized contracting business of his own.

You also mentioned William grant - he had the first 40 tonne Moxy I ever photographed, and had two-axle DJBs in his opencast as well. Thirty years ago he had the big Merc bonetted thee-axle dumptrucks and I think they were in his yard 'till the end. I did a bit of welding for Grants, but alas they too are gone.

Dave.

[innes]

Some more.That's me stood up on the left.The D8 behind was waiting for me to put the box on.I appear to be quite clean for once.I must have been meeting up with a girl later

Hi Nicky,
Photos bring back some memories for me, I spent a fair amount of time attending this site as a service engineer for Liebherr, mostly panic repairs on AC McKays kit and servicing and repairs for Morrisons on their shovels, McKays stuff was pretty rough like some of his operators but he was a great guy himself, I went to his funeral and it was one of the biggest I ever attended and everybody had a story to tell about him.Andy Wiseman from Hopeman was in charge of Morrisons crushers when I was there and he kept them all on their toes,I remember the O &K shovel as it had an oversize bucket fitted and eventually snapped in two, did some jobs for Gillespie as well, I think John Roberts was the foreman fitter at the time, John was with Yardwoods last time I spoke to him. Happy days (sometimes).
All the best---Innes

[Jackblack]

Great pics and great story

[nick lamb]

Ok lads,thanks for all the interest in the story.I will do some more motorway pics of other sections over the hols.After this job one of my D8's went back to the finishing up of the Johnston bypass on hire to Levacks and another went on hire to Tractor Shovels up at Glenrothes.They had five D8H and 463G boxes,a D155A/463G and a 8240B as pusher on this job with two very tidy D6D's as tip dozers.After all the rock at the M74 cutting it was great to shifting muck with scrapers again .
Jobs that I will cover next time will feature Balfours PC650,TS24B's,R.D Keartons 245D's,James Moores D9H's/TS24B's and D8's and boxes belonging to Barr's,D.Wardle's,Geoddis,RJT's,Maurice Hickey's,Billy Kitchens and my own of course!
Bye for now.

[komatsu d475-1]

Excellent topic here Nicky and lookin forward to the photos to come,i will have have a hunt [again] for the photos i have [somewhere] of James Moores 24s sadly decaying in a local quarry here.They are gone now and i think someone on the forum [Neil Dillon?] had posted that they had been scrapped.Cheers Mervyn

[Neil D]

Yes,I was told that James Moore had the remnants of the fleet (6or 7) at Boville McMullans quarry somewhere about Antrim and cut them for scrap last year.

Mervyn,contact me for a chat

Thanks guys for all the photos

Neil