Old Pond publishing days

Peter Robinson's Lincoln's Excavators Part 3 book advance information

Lincoln’s Excavators: the Ruston-Bucyrus Years 1945-1970 by Peter Robinson. Hardback book, 336 pages inc. approx 600 photos. ISBN 1-871565-52-9. Now in stock at Old Pond at £34.95.

In the two decades after the Second World War the story of Ruston-Bucyrus was one of almost continual growth – in the range and size of its products and in the size of the works and workforce.

In this golden age the company’s products included the 54-RB shovel/dragline, 38-RB, 22-RB, the 100 series mining shovels, the 30-RB, machines for piling and special applications, tower cranes and the introduction of hydraulic excavators.

These were machines that sold themselves in a world hungry for plant and construction machinery.

Know Your Buses - new book in stock

Know Your Buses by James Race is a pocket-sized guide to 44 types of bus currently licensed for Britain's roads. It is now in stock at £4.99 from Old Pond Publishing.

Geoff Lewis's Cranes and Excavators DVDs change hands

In 1998 Geoff Lewis began recording big plant at sites in Wales and elsewhere. He started with Ruston-Bucyrus, the company in which he had served his apprenticeship after leaving Swansea Secondary Technical school.

Eight more programmes followed over the years, offering what must surely be a unique view of draglines, grab cranes, dozers, excavators, scrapers, dump trucks, face shovels and graders at work over the past decade. Nine DVDs - over nine hours of viewing.

Geoff's interests now have changed to scale engineering. He is building a one-eighth working model inspired by the Lima 1201 and Marion 1-11, making all the component parts and finely engineering it in steel. He expects the final weight to be 350-400 pounds.

Geoff has sold the masters and rights in the DVDs to Old Pond which is planning to release the complete series - as well as some extra footage recently edited by Geoff - in one set in February next year.

Geoff (centre) during his Ruston-Bucyrus apprenticeship days.

Kings of Construction DVD back in stock

Kings of Construction, Discovery Channel. 8-disc DVD set, approx 6½ hours, released 2007. £21.95 inc VAT. Now available again at Old Pond.

This popular DVD set, which runs for more than six hours, tells the stories of some of the world’s most demanding building projects. These pioneering dreams require ambitious designs, vast amounts of money and nerves of steel as engineers, builders and architects attempt to deliver on time and to budget.

The projects:

• Gotthard base tunnel, 58 kilometres through the Alps.
• Hallandsas ridge tunnel, Sweden. Two 8-kilometre tunnels to enable train access from Sweden to the rest of Europe.
• Operation Snohvit. The building of Europe’s first liquefied natural gas plant, in Cadiz, Spain.
• Hong Kong cable car. The longest detachable cable car system ever constructed.
• Stonecutters bridge, Hong Kong. Connecting Hong Kong with the mainland across the harbour, a main span of over a thousand metres.
• Hoover dam bridge. America’s longest arched bridge, spanning the Black Canyon 275 metres above the Colorado river.
• El Cajon dam, Mexico. The highest rock-filled dam ever constructed.
• The Dubai ski resort. Building the world’s biggest artificial ski slope in the middle of the desert.

Massive backhoe dredgers DVD advance information

Massive Backhoe Dredgers by Steven Vale. DVD, approx 100 minutes. ISBN 978-1-906853-36-5. In stock at Old Pond at £17.95.

Steven Vale shows some of the world’s largest and most powerful pontoon-based hydraulic backhoe dredgers at work.

These enormous machines – often adapted mining excavators – serve the needs of ports, deepening their seaways and building new facilities to handle ever-larger cargo vessels.

By UK standards, machines shown in the first part of the programme such as the Liebherr P964 and Caterpillar 375 are impressive. However, Steven moves on to some truly massive floating dredgers.

Developing the southern end of Felixstowe’s Trinity terminal is ‘Maricavor’ a 300-tonne Komatsu PC3000. At work in the Finnish Gulf of Bothnia are two Hitachi EX1900s and ‘Nordic Giant’, a Liebherr P995 that shifts 12,000 cubic metres of material a day.

An even larger Liebherr, a 520-tonne P996 capable of reaching down to 37 metres, is operating in the hazardous seas off the Belgian coast at Ostend. Hazardous because of the unexploded bombs it regularly dredges up.

Steven Vale uses interviews to highlight some of the choices and issues faced by the operators of these machines.

He finishes by offering us an insight into an even more exciting future - that of the Backacter BA1100, one of a new class of hydraulic dredger that is specifically made for the task.

Some stills from the filming can be seen on the blogs of 8 July and 30 April.

For more programmes by Steven Vale see the Earthmoving and Demolition section of the Old Pond website. 

Harwich & Dovercourt new book advance information

Harwich & Dovercourt: the photographs of Alfred Smith by David Kindred and Peter Goodwin. Paperback, 234 x 169 mm, 128 pages inc. 210 photographs. ISBN 978-1-906853-49-5. In stock at Old Pond at £12.95.

 

Standing on a narrow peninsula in north-east Essex, Harwich has had a long maritime history. The old port of Harwich with its fishing boats, the more modern terminal at Parkeston Quay and the promenade at Dovercourt are all reflected in the many photographs in this book.

Alfred Smith started his commercial photography business in 1952. The majority of the images in this collection are of the 1960s and ’70s. Besides many fine photographs of the shipping and quays, there are sections on the streets of the time – some facing demolition – events such as the Queen’s visits, the Guy Carnival and the distribution of the spicy buns known as Kitchels. The shots of sporting teams of the period will bring back memories to many readers.

Harwich and Dovercourt has a very special character, as depicted in this fine compilation of photographs.

David Kindred, whose extensive archive of photographs is a major source of information for Ipswich and the surrounding area, has prepared many photographic books of local interest. Some of these titles are available from the Old Pond website at the photographs section.

Peter Goodwin, born and bred in Dovercourt, is a keen collector of local photographs and local history.

Farming Diaries Volume 2 - new DVD in stock

Lots of elements draw together to make Tractor Barn's Farming Diaries Volume 2 something special. It features Stephen Richmond who has a wealth of experience of farm work and an enthusiasm for farm machinery going back to young childhood. He and Jonathan Whitlam have been involved in DVDs since 1998 and know just what you enjoy watching. Their new programme is now available from Old Pond at £15.95.   

Model Tractor magazine on the move

Tim Bolton, who for three years has published the quarterly magazine Model Tractor, has announced its sale to Malvern-based Traplet Publications.

New editor Martin Rickatson came from the family farm  to study agriculture at Wye College, Ashford. His journalism pedigree includes a stint on Farming News and seven years with the English edition of Profi, ending as deputy editor.

Martin would welcome contributions. You can reach him on 07595 031217 or [email protected].

However, Traplet doesn't have the field to itself. Andy Ebbage has started a paper version of his models digital magazine under the name Model Farmer.  

Scrap Metal Giants forthcoming DVD 4th post

(Continued from the previous post.) We saw two MultiDockers at Thamesteel.

The first (far left), based on a Cat 365, was selecting from different types and grades of waste to make up the batch required for the furnace.

A second MultiDocker was sorting heavy melt, such as steel girders, at the other end of the store.

For each operation the furnace takes about a hundred tonnes of waste, loaded in three passes. Thamesteel  produces recycled steel through a Fuchs UHP Electric Arc Furnace, consisting of two in-line ladle furnaces.

Although we weren't allowed into the furnace area, we did see a tapping from a safe distance.

Thamesteel's four-strand continuous billet casting machine produces billets 150 mm square, 9.6-13 metres long, with an average weight of 2 tonnes. The steel is cut to length automatically. The mill has an annual output of 750,000 plus tonnes of steel a years.

LV Handling's Iveco Stralis 430 is taking a 20-tonne load to Sheerness Docks to be loaded into 40-60,000 tonne vessels for the rolling mills in Saudi, and eventually for their building industry.

The mini-mill does produce products other than billets. For more information about this facility see Thamesteel's website.

Scrap Metal Giants forthcoming DVD 3rd post

Back on 29 June we posted some pictures and story about the visit we made to Thamesteel at Sheerness. We are looking now at the ways in which the waste steel is handled and what is the main end product.

Among the different types of steel waste being handled were compressed blocks of what looked like your old washing machines and other white goods. Behind the Cat 980H is the gantry of the magnetic hoist.

The steel waste is loaded into baskets each holding about 30 tonnes of waste

 The baskets are moved by Kress 6926 ladle carriers, made in Brimfield, Illinois.

The Kress carrier was in continual action taking baskets to and fro between the waste store and the furnace. Here it is reversing into position for one of the MultiDockers.

(Continued in the next post.)