New hear but not to plant

[powercom]

Hi folks just joined the forum and thought I should do an into , So i'm from the North East not far from Newcastle so by way of background I love pretty much all machines , trucks cranes, plant , tractors etc of just about every type.
And I am always interested is how stuff works , and how a job is done.
Probably my earliest memories where when I would be 5 or 6 mid 70's watching a nearby housing estate being built , there was an international 100b working on it and a JCB 3c this was long before everything was surrounded by Herras fencing and I pretty much took up residence on rock at the corner of the site just soaking it up , then I had had a "miss spent" youth working on a farm when not at school doing everything tractor related, the then spent a good few years operating plant mainly tractor diggers and excavators up to 20 tons but also mini excavators , Hydrema dumpers , Tracked shovels and so on all on general plant hire, even a spell driving a low loader, I loved the work --- except a short spell on an opencast coal site "cleaning coal" on an opencast site that I found pretty depressing
Work then took me away from plant into other avenue , but still with some plant involvement we ran JCB 8080 for few years hired in other plant from time to time , and currently we have a 2cx that we use for some in house work on our own property's but i still take a great deal of interest in the plant industry.

 

[Furniss]

Welcome - it was all going so well till you mentioned JCB 8080

 

[LDK]

Welcome.
I had a year on a coal site myself, 30 plus years ago. We were stripping top soil and subsoil, it was the most depressing winter of my life, without a shaddow of a doubt.
Going to work in the dark and going home in it and in between just dull grey days of mind numbing boredom.
I was asked to go back the next winter, I jacked!

 

[Shovelhands]

Welcome along Powercom

 

[powercom]

Welcome - it was all going so well till you mentioned JCB 8080

Oh wasn't such a bad machine really an we had it on selector grab mainy the only thing it really lacked was proportional controls for the Grab that would have made it a bit smoother

 

[powercom]

Welcome.
I had a year on a coal site myself, 30 plus years ago. We were stripping top soil and subsoil, it was the most depressing winter of my life, without a shaddow of a doubt.
Going to work in the dark and going home in it and in between just dull grey days of mind numbing boredom.
I was asked to go back the next winter, I jacked!

I hear what you are saying there but at least that was on top

I was scraping the top 1/2 inch off a coal seam taking if I recall correctly brown coal off the rest , but to be honest it all looked the same the whole time i was there the bottom of the pit was thick with fog . There was a proper miserable supervisor there who worked directly for NCB guess he started at 8 and worked till 4 we worked from 7 till 7 what made it even worse was 10 mins after he left a cat shovel pushed the heap that I had spent all day separating into the rest of the coal seam and loaded it all away guess he thought it looked black also made the job pointless.