British Army fights Mother Nature on the beach

by Nick Drew | Sun 16 Feb 2014

British Army fights Mother Nature on the beach

Last Friday I popped along to Chesil Beach in Dorset during some appalling weather, to check out the kit involved in the shore defence works, which has had a fair bit of coverage on national TV in the past week.

On Friday despite heavy wind and rain, I had ventured out from home on route to Portsmouth some 175 miles from home; where I had been booked in to photograph some more new machines for a customer. Sadly when I reached the aptly named Puddletown on such a rainy day, I was advised by my client to turn around and go home. Not one to be defeated I then began to think about how I could salvage something out of the day. A good friend on Facebook suggested a visit to Chesil Beach, and on checking my Sat-Nav I realised that I was only 13 miles away, so it was game on. On my arrival at the beach there did not seem to be much going on and a member of staff from the under pressure Environment Agency told me they had pulled everyone off the beach as the high winds were considered to be too dangerous to work in. There was however a rescue attempt in progress of a Cat D8L which had blown a hose on one of its blade lift rams, and they were trying to get it back to the safety of the compound where a Pirtek fitter was to repair it.

Initially the Army had been using two of their own Caterpillar D5N’s fitted with PAT blades, but they were simply not up to the massive task of bulk material dozing, so they had hired in some larger dozers one of which was this Cat D8L which was sourced from Chunnel Plant. An Army spokesman told me that they had initially requested five D8 sized tractors for the job, but had been told there’s probably not five D8’s available in the whole country, so they had to make do with a combination of different makes and sizes.

The big D8L had been stuck on the other side of the stone defences and with the heavy tide coming in rapidly whipped up by the strong winds a quick decision to get it back to safety was made. Unable to lift its own blade a Caterpillar 336E L hydraulic excavator, on hire from Wembley based Flannery Plant Hire, was dispatched to lift the blade as the dozer limped back into the compound for its repair

The weight of the blade and travelling on the loose pebbles of the beach made for a tricky operation. The build-up of stones around the sprocket on the Cat 336E made the tracks go incredibly tight too.

They later decided, logically to me, that it would be better to have the excavator at the front, which facilitated a much easier lifting angle and which seemed to work a lot better and in no time the dozer was brought back to base for its repair.

Also spotted in the compound on this job was the UK’s first Dressta dozer a TD15M Extra that was on hire from J. Ffrench Plant Hire and was part of a large order of Chinese machines that we featured here on the blog last year. This machine was also joined by a larger Komatsu dozer from the same company.

In addition to their Cat D5N’s the Army have three Volvo EC210C hydraulic excavators in attendance all of which have had starring roles on national television news, especially when the Prime Minister Mr David Cameron visited the operation recently.

And finally in this post a shot of what the Environment Agency spokesman described as a support vehicle, a Morooka MST 800VD tracked dumper on hire from Eagle Plant Hire and sold by Colchester based dealers Cautrac Machinery.

It was a real shame that I couldn’t catch the army machines in action on the day, but for a totally unplanned visit it didn’t turn out too bad on the day!

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