by Nick Drew | Tue 29 Aug 2017
Big Komatsu PC1000 remembered (Blog Re-Visited)
Back in the early days of my blog during the Contract Journal period, I was lucky enough to be in contact with Gary Steen, who was at the time working for the Abi Group in Australia. Sadly for one reason or another we lost contact, so I was delighted when an email from Gary came winging its way into my inbox again!
Gary had been reading the Digger Man Blog, where we published photos shared by Martin Grant, of a Komatsu PC1000 being cut up for scrap in the Sydney area. Apparently Gary used to look after that machine and another identical 100 tonne class Komatsu PC1000 when he was working for Komatsu back in the day, and he has shared some photos of the machines when he last saw them in one piece back in 2005. In this first shot we see Gary stood by the machine, during a routine maintenance visit.
According to Gary these machines were modified locally to meet the requirements of the job they were going to do, these modifications included extended booms and dipper arms and a much larger additional counterweight retro fitted behind the existing one.
Originally these two modified machines went to work on a contract in Sydney Harbour unloading barges, but at the end of the contract they were sold to Devine Marine and relocated to the docks at Glebe Island. In this shot the sister machine shows off an impressive reach!
It is believed that the new owner didn’t really find much work for the two machines after buying them and they had been lying out of commission for some considerable time. Devine Marine went into receivership and sadly the machines were auctioned off for scrap value, the results of which we covered in the earlier blog post, which you can re-visit here.