Golden Machinery Treasures in Holland

Our good German friend Dirk Bömer is back with another selection of photos from a summer time visit to the Netherlands.

Bouwmachine Van Toen is an organisation that is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of vintage construction machinery which they display in a museum in Vinkel.

There is a vintage Caterpillar collection also with machines that are privately owned. The shed is not normally open to the public but, back in the summer, Dirk got the chance to view these yellow beauties during an organized Caterpillar open weekend.

Also presented is a fully restored 1973 model NCK 305B dragline/crane. These machines were once very popular in Holland for dyke and river bank clearance operations before hydraulic long reach options were commonplace.

We don’t have much information on the Caterpillar machines, but I am sure many of you true Cat geeks, will have more in depth knowledge on these machines than me, in terms of serial numbers etc. This old rope-controlled blade D8 looks a nice example, sitting proudly beside two ex-military machines.

Virtually every vintage Caterpillar collection has at least one D2 model in the line-up, and this one is no different, what a little beauty she is too! The 31 horsepower D2 was a real classic especially amongst American farmers back in the day.

A trio of what I would say are Caterpillar DW20 motor scrapers were on display outside. These four wheeled tractor units with the 255-horsepower Cat D337 diesel engine and 18-cubic yard bowls, were marketed as the alternative to the DW21 which featured the more traditional two-axle scraper set-up. Apparently, these were actually able to attain a higher speed on good haul roads.

I came across this video compilation of photos from somebody else who attended the event, there is no background music though.

We thank Dirk for sharing his images with us here on the Digger Man Blog.