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2 hours ago, plantfit said:

I noticed the starting handle hole in front of the cab just above the number plate,did anyone ever swing one of them things to start a lorry? seen similar on some of the older buses too

 

Rog

 

The trick was to turn the engine over until you reached a point just before it was ready to fire. Then tie a decent rope to the handle & get yer mates to give the rope a good pull. If you got it right the engine would spring into life with the mumblings of thank god for that or similar words.

Once saw an old haulier do that, I thought he would never do it then I saw his mates arrive !

 

Rog, you were extremely lucky. You ought to have gone & bought a lottery ticket !!

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HI CATZ / Nice of you to answer, I am now living in Swinton , Manchester, but still miss Nottingham, I will be 75 in March and I look back on my life , and were iv,e been , but I

They were still doing a little bit of that in 1987 when I started working there. There were no depots at the resorts by then but we still took a few cases; growing car ownership and package holidays k

My godfather, Derek Foster worked for Harris for many years; he ended up driving a road sweeper for Gedling council, said it was the best job you could wish for. He always told me to avoid road haulag

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In the past I have lit a piece of paper and held it in the air cleaner when turning the engine over with the starter motor,usually fires into life but I have had some narrow escapes too

 

Rog

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I had a mate worked at TJ in Ruddington & they had old Commer wagons, would have been usual to leave the engines ticking over night especially the winter of '63.

Just remembered an incident on NCT I will relate tomorrow when I'm up & about again, if I forget remind me by quoting anti freeze !

Night all.

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Diesel gels in bitter temperatures, once that happens you're up the creek without a paddle! We can get down to single digits here in Missouri in mid winter and single digits I mean F and not C.

I've had wax form in the water trap, only thing I could do was wait until the temps rose a tad, and just pray I don't need the tractor.

I recall Dad and his mates one winter having to carefully light a fire under the fuel tank of a diesel truck one winters morning, he worked for a Mother and Son outfit in Colwick back then.

Modern big rigs in cold climates usually have heaters built into the fuel tanks and heating tape on the fuel lines to the fuel injector pump.

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Truckers over here usually leave their engines running all night in winter, two reasons, to keep the heat on in the sleeper or dog box as they call it, other reason, less wear and tear on the engine, most wear comes from a cold start with diesels.

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I know only too well about diesel turning waxy in the fuel filters and traps when the weather gets really cold,we had an old Heathfield truck on site and at the first sign of a good frost the diesel turned,used to spend best part of the mornings getting it sorted while the driver sat in the warm canteen,funny thing though the other Heathfield parked next to it never gave any trouble,suppose it must have had a bit of insulation or sommat

 

Rog

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First truck I drove for Derrick Orme's was a Bedford J type, I could get away with the winter diesel problem if I left it over night at the yard in Chapel en le Frith, but if I parked up at Buxton I left her ticking over as did most others. Funny thing is I never heard of one being nicked.

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With most of the states here having bitter winters, try north Dakota with down to minus 40F, we have a winter blend of diesel, plus many anti waxing additives available.

Both my tractors have de comp valves on them for easy starting in cold weather, pull the decomp lever and spin the engine up to speed and let the lever go and they usually start up with loads of black smoke until they warm up a bit.

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When I worked at Clearways they'd leave a couple of bad starters ticking over on really cold nights. I was there guarding on 1'st Jan 2000 when a frozen pipe burst & flooded part of the warehouse, no wagons ticking over that day so don't know if they started on 2'nd of Jan. BTW was paid at 3 & a half rate for a 12 hour shift, was flipping tired though, but worth it, lol..

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Having spent a lot of time driving around locally recently, two long standing specialist machine moving firms still have business dealings in the area. I have seen Jack Swinglers low loaders (Cotgrave) with oversized loads, not only in the surrounding area, but on the M1 too. 

Seen several of Joseph Merritts machine transport wagons too. Good to see that both companies are still in business.

I was at FFGS with young Jo in the late 50's. 

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Here's a couple for you NBL, bring back a few memories

 

DSCF4259.jpg

DSCF4260.jpg

I really miss working on these things sometimes,happy days

 

Rog

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^^^Thanks Rog, memories yes but they are a little new for my time.

 

We had Canadian Hough loaders which we called 'cleaner' shovels as being wheeled they mostly ran around cleaning up any mess, except after a big snow when they would dig out the road between the quarry and Buxton as the bucket would just fit between the verges. One guy lost his mini one year, he had left the quarry early to get home but got stuck on Waterswallows road, a couple of hours later along came the shovel and when the guy returned for his car next morning gone, found later over a wall in a field when the snow melted.

 

Can't remember who made the face shovels but they were tracked and electric driven using the Ward Leonard DC control system, I remember being amazed when I first saw one dragging a high voltage cable behind it, but they really only had to drive into the face pick up, then reverse and when the dumper had driven underneath, tip.

 

We shifted some rock though, big 'well' blast once a week to fetch the face down and 'popping' shots every afternoon except Sunday.

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When I first started in the industry we had Ruston Bucyrus 22 RB and a 10RB as face shovels loading onto two rigid Heathfield dump trucks, one year we got a new (to us anyway) 22RB air cooled ex NCB what a load of rubbish that was,couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, had a call one day from the dig telling me the thing wouldn't start,the operator thought there was some muck in the fuel lines,he wasn't wrong,when I got up the the whole machine was buried up at the face, all tou could see of it was the two rope wheels at the top of the boom,the face had collapsed during break time and he hadn't tracked it back from the face, on the 10 RB I removed and rebuilt the engine in that, it was a Ruston three cyclinder long stroke engine, after the re build it could be run at such low revs it would blow smoke rings out of the exhaust stack, happy days

 

Rog

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I know these aren't Nottingham hauliers but they do haul, Ruston Bucyrus 52B steam face shovel and the other end of the scale Ruston Bucyrus 10 RB three cyclinder diesel fitted with a grab bucket (sadly going to rust away) both built in Lincoln

P1050805.jpg

north_ings1_(1).jpg

 

Rog

 

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Don't worry Rog, another bit of variety and slightly off topic posts are always welcome.

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You can include Denby's of Lincolln if you wish !

Did they ever get permission to use that extra trailer combination, whereby an artic tractor unit plus trailer plus a dolly bogie and second trailer were pictured ?  It appeared to look like an artic plus another trailer. I've seen such rigs in Sweden, but nowhere else in Europe.

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