Memory of the month the way things were. (Part Fourteen)

Continuing our series of blogs featuring the memories of retired plant man William (Bill) Peters, told in his own words and with archive period photos supplied by Bill.

Bridport A30 road improvement.

Our team worked on several jobs in quarries sand pits and small road schemes, one such job was at Bridport in Dorset, this was adjacent to the Jurassic coast famous for fossils. On one part of the job was an area of yellow sandstone which was quite soft and I was easily able to dig it as it consisted of layers about a foot thick so I could put the bucket under a layer and lift up a large slab.

Upon lifting these large slabs numerous small fossils and ammonites would drop out some small black ones could be swept up by the wheel barrow load after being rubbed out by the tyres and some were very large. I’m sure I remember one ammonite at least four feet across but of course we couldn’t waste time getting them out. About twenty feet down I came across a large black object and on closer inspection it turned out to be a fossilised tree, it really put time into perspective and makes you realise how little time we have on earth as you look at something hundreds of millions of years old and wonder what it was like and where did come from 

On the way to work one morning we came upon a police road block and they looked at us with some suspicion, four scruffy blokes early in in the morning especially when they searched the car and found tools and a chainsaw, but we managed to persuade them we were legit, however one dumper driver was late and pressing on drove right through the road block so the cops leapt into their cars to give chase, they weren’t best pleased and a severe telling off ensued making him even later. When we started the job I did feel a bit sorry for the farmer who was losing quite a bit of land and he patrolled the fence line with a shotgun saying if you b*****s step over this fence I’ll have you, who knows if he would have carried out the threat, nowadays cops would be swarming all over the place.

One day we were moving from job to job and travelling downhill on a fairly narrow country road near Exeter and glancing in the mirror I could see a colleague in the dumper behind me making pointing gestures downwards, looking around I could see nothing but he was still pointing so leaning over I looked down the side to see a mini squeezed in between my front and back wheel, it seems he had overtaken the two dumpers only to realize he couldn’t pass me as well. 

We were now approaching a right hand bend so the car would be squashed as the wheels came together and then I’d run over it or if I slowed up he would hit the front wheel bounce off and I’d still run over it, so I slowly eased off on the throttle and he managed to get by but he was a lucky fella, we can’t have had a rear escort that day. Normally we would have at least two police escorts and often three, on one trip I was on a fairly narrow main A road when I was just about to go round a blind right hand corner when a woman in a car came round it, saw me, let go the steering wheel and covered her eyes just as the car went out of sight behind the bucket, I waited for the crunch, none came but it was close, luckily on that occasion I was on my own as the dumpers at fourteen feet were a slightly wider than the loader it may have had a different ending.

Returning from a job with the Hough I was coming downhill through Chudleigh Knighton on the old A38 where ahead I could see temporary traffic lights round a collapsed manhole, on the left a high wall part of a police station and the first vehicle at the lights on the right was a large Hovis flour tanker, I could see there was not enough room to pass so started to brake but nothing happened the brakes had completely failed! With only a moment to react, I quickly rammed the transmission into digging gear hoping it would hold, it didn’t like it much with a lot of noise and a bit of a wriggle it slowed but I couldn’t stop, should I hit the tanker certain death for the driver or the wall killing anyone inside the building? Ignoring both options I started to raise the bucket but needing full revs to do so which meant I was still travelling forward at speed losing sight of what’s in front as the bucket rises, it was just high enough to clear both obstacles, as I squeezed past I could see the driver looking at me as if I was a complete drongo, little did he know I’d just saved his life.

The road was much steeper now but with the wall continuing and open ground behind it I crept slowly down knowing I could steer into it if needed then it levelled out and my destination was Rixy Park about a mile away and I was glad to arrive, the police escort never knew what had happened.  The brake system was air over hydraulic and the diaphragm had split on one rear wheel so no air equals no brakes, the system was not designed to be fail safe not a big problem on site, but bad news on the road. The Co-operator

Find out more about the Hough 400 loading shovel in this video from PA Mining. The model featured in this video is actually a later C Series machine but its still gives a good insight into these large old loaders.