UK’s last Cat 657B rides again

by Nick Drew | Tue 01 Jul 2014

UK’s last Cat 657B rides again

Leading classic plant aficionado Jeremy Rowland has kindly sent us these photos of a Caterpillar classic that has recently arrived to join the S.E. Davis collection of vintage plant.

This machine which is the sole surviving 657B model in the country has joined the impressive collection after it became redundant from its job moving coal at a power station. The giant scraper is believed to be an ex Neil Becher unit.

Famous muck shifting man Neil Becher used to run seven of these machines with a number of them working on jobs in Africa. Some have since been stripped for donor parts and one has been sold for a modification project.

Jeremy caught up with the big Cat at the 23^rd North Worcestershire Vintage Tractor & Engine Clubs annual gathering recently, where it was fired up and paraded in the ring by Paul Davis who was at the controls.

It’s great to see that this machine will more than likely see out its days as part of the S.E. Davis collection, so future generations can see how muck used to be moved in the UK before the excavator and ADT combo took over.

Jeremy Rowland is a well known authority on Hymac excavators, regular contributor to Classic Plant & Machinery magazine, as well as a moderator on one of Europe's leading plant and machinery forums the Classic Machinery Network (CMN). We thank Jeremy for sharing these photos with the Digger Man Blog.

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UK’s last Cat 657B rides again

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