“Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!”

by Nick Drew | Tue 03 Apr 2018

“Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!”

A Volvo L120H and a L150H have been supplied to Rail Freight Services on a long-term contract for Lytag, handling pulverized fuel ash (Fly Ash) at Drax power station near Selby in Yorkshire.

Both machines are six months into a long-term contract at Lytham’s bespoke ash processing plant and are proving to be the right machines of choice for the job in hand. The 20-tonne L120H is deployed loading fly ash into the plant where it is mixed with a binding agent (bentonite), pelletized, then burnt at around 1,100ºC and separated into various sizes of product. The larger 25-tonne L150H is in charge of the stock yard, unloading the bays of separated material, carrying to the stockyard and loading out onto road going wagons. In all some 3,000 tonnes of material per week is being moved between the two machines.

Since the raw material has a light material density of around 0.5 tonnes m³, both machines have been equipped with large capacity high tip buckets of 5m³ and 7m³ respectively. Powered by Stage-IV final Volvo 8 and 13-litre engines, developing 276hp in the L120H and 300hp in the L150H, both machines are coupled with Volvo designed and manufactured powertrain components. These, along with other fuel saving devices such as the Volvo Eco pedal which encourage the operator to run the machine at its optimum rpm in the engine’s torque curve and Opti shift with torque converter lock-up found in the larger L150H, make them highly efficient and productive loading shovels in their size class. Other options installed on both units include RDS Loadmaster weighing devices, Ogden VMS with automatic braking systems, boom suspension and hydraulic attachment brackets enabling both machines to revert to standard general-purpose buckets if required.

Commenting on the recent purchase, Rail Freight Services Managing Director, Jim Flatman, says; “We have much experience operating Volvo products which have given us a high degree of reliability and longevity, so when we decided to purchase the right machines for this particular project, choosing the L120H and L150H with all the service support and backup we can rely on from SMT GB made perfect sense.” Both machines have been supplied with a Blue Volvo service agreement ensuring that they will be regularly maintained at the correct service intervals by Volvo trained service engineers using genuine Volvo parts. They join other Volvo excavators and loading shovels in Rail Freight Services’ overall fleet of some 70 items of mobile plant. Rail Freight Services, based in Harlow, Essex, is a premier company for the loading and unloading of railway wagons and water-borne vessels, being able to service a huge variety of contracts operating within time constraints, rail and tide timetables nationwide. The company also undertakes long term bespoke projects handling bulk materials and commodities. All of its equipment is custom built and uniquely designed to give maximum benefit to their customers in efficiency whilst ensuring the highest levels of safety in operation.

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