David Bowers attended the rally for the ‘big boys toys’ – where members of the Vintage Excavator Trust get to play in a real quarry.

Arranged twice yearly at the Threlkeld Museum of Quarrying near Keswick in the Lake District, The Vintage Excavator Trust hosted a working weekend on May 24/25. This allows members to demonstrate their excavation machinery in action and includes rope-operated face shovels, draglines, skimmers, drag shovels, grab cranes and dumper trucks.

Andy Wolfenden (left) and John Whitter with the 1986 Peterbilt 359 low-loader and Andy's AEC 760 six-wheeler dump truck.

Many members actually keep and maintain their excavators in the disused quarry. It is an ideal location, for it enables them to be displayed in an authentic environment and they can also work over any spoil heaps on site.

From left, 1957 Priestman Cub Mk Va luffing shovel with Lister FR3 diesel engine, 1960 Priestman Cub Mk Va with Lister HA3 diesel engine, 1968 Preistman Cub Mk Va with Lister HB4 diesel engine, 3/8th cubic yard dragline on 32ft lattice boom and a 1944 Priestman Cub Mk IV with Dorman 2DWD diesel engine, crane grab on a 26ft boom.

Fifty working machines were in operation over the weekend and site owner Ian Hartland supervised the get-together of members and their navvies. Ian and fellow members of the VET believe that a good museum is a working museum, and the event represented this approach, as demonstrated by Trust secretary, Philip Peacock, who put a 1968 Ruston-Bucyrus 22 RB with a cambered boom drag shovel through its paces loading a Muir Hill dumper. Philip explained how the Trust acquired this excavator. “Many are donated to the Trust, and this one came from George Fordy, a contractor from Northallerton. He didn’t want to see it scrapped as it’s in remarkably good condition. The 22RB is a very powerful machine and they were very good for their day.”

Although many of the excavators are donated to the Trust, transport costs by load loader can be prohibitively expensive, so there is a certain irony in that if an offer is turned down, then the excavator will almost certainly be reduced to scrap – a situation that they will always try to avoid.