adr:
ARC Shoreham Plant.
Hi Chris , your finding some good AMEY stuff these days -where from ? -let them come -yes Scammels every where those days --the pic shows the Premix steelfield concrete plant and if the snapper had stepped back a few yards he! would have been on the beach --it was that close i remember that one well !
Loaded at Shoreham today now got Laferge Tarmac signs up but
there are still some Hanson tippers there & the premix plant is Hansons
will try & take a picture from the gate same as the old one next time
i go in there.
Regards Geoff,
Do you recognise me dad yet Ivor?
My mate, Codger (Colin Brown) stayed on with Ameys after I left and drove a rigid (don’t know what you call them, flat bed for carrying vehicles/plant sort of a semi-loader rigid?) Moved to Sutton Courtney with them. Les Barrett and Charlie the crane drivers were there as well. The other crane driver based there was Bob (Aubrey) Webb drove one of the 5 ton Thorneycrofts (ex RAF).
David
PS I’ve got a couple more pictures for another day.
davidcox:
Do you recognise me dad yet Ivor?
My mate, Codger (Colin Brown) stayed on with Ameys after I left and drove a rigid (don’t know what you call them, flat bed for carrying vehicles/plant sort of a semi-loader rigid?) Moved to Sutton Courtney with them. Les Barrett and Charlie the crane drivers were there as well. The other crane driver based there was Bob (Aubrey) Webb drove one of the 5 ton Thorneycrofts (ex RAF).
David
PS I’ve got a couple more pictures for another day.
Hi David .Great photos mate, brilliant making my day and the stories behind them too.yes recognised your Dad and Bob .Stan and the famous Charlie ! others --no. those Thorney cranes served Ameys well over the years !
davidcox:
Another pic at Dow Macs We were taking beams to Coventry for the inner ring road.
We used to leave at 1ish in the morning, travel up through the night via Birmingham. Arrive on site early hours, sit there and wait to be unloaded before lunch time. Back down to Gloucester and load up again. Park up in a café just outside of Dow Macs where I had my car. Drive home, drop Bob Blowing the driver off at his house in Wooton, I would go home, change and go and see my girlfriend leave her ,pick up Bob at 11.30 ish drive back to Gloucester and then start all over again.
This went on for a couple of months. I was the mate/steersman. This was in the late 60’s before tachographs and log books, where you wrote out a single sheet log and when you had done your hours stick it under the engine blanket and start another!!
We did have Friday night saturday night off.
David0
122 ERO was still pulling concrete beams out of Dow Mac at Quedgeley well into the 70’s in the ownership of Don Griffiths aka Cheltenham Commercials or Allwood Transport. Driven by either Gordon ( Nobby ) Richards RIP or Jock King , the latter now working for Arthur Spriggs Tewkesbury depot.
Laurie
I formed a real attachment to 122 ERO. I often wondered where she went, wished I could have bought her and nowadays would be off to classic shows with her.
Bob and I wood panelled all the dash of the cab, put a heater in my side (passenger) and as you can see from the pictures kept her looking good. Used to have trouble with the double reduction hubs leaking at the seals and sometimes the gear selector follower if that is what it was called would jam up jamming it into gear. We jammed in second taking an RB 38 (38 tons) from Didcot power station to Milford Haven. We carried on stuck in second with the three ranges (not air change but manual). With the double reduction hubs we had ranges of super low, low and direct. Got into the middle of Milford Haven, with a police ■■■■■■ and couldn’t get up the hill. Blocked the centre of Milford up completely. Had to get one of those old Army Scamell 6 wheel recoveries out to pull us up, which it did by digging two big groves out of the roadway while wheel spinning!
Happy days
The other Foden S20 RMO 386 ended up as a recovery vehicle based at Wootton trucks at Wootton after Amey moved out, see below.
An amusing story about 122 ERO - Gordon was loaded from Dow Mac with 90’ bridge beams e/r to Abingdon for the A34 construction and he had a young inexperienced lad steering the bogie. As they came down the slip road from the M4 to join the A34 Northbound the steersman steered the bogie to the right then left but was unable to get it straight and ran into the bank with the bogie, pulling the beams off the bolster on the unit. Apparentley as the beams hit the back of the chassis on the Foden she stood bolt upright before returning to the ground - minus load and in the process poor old Gordon swallowed his roll up! Fortunately no one was hurt in the incident although pride was a little dented!
If it was the same dolly (bogie) that we had, it only had a little 150cc petrol engine and it wasn’t powerful enough to pump the hydraulics, so to get it back straight you had to keep juggling it back and forth catching it before it stalled. That said, I did it for a while without any problems.
The same happened to a firm we used to run with. We were going from Stamford over the Pennines Wood head pass into Salford with beams for the M6 I think. On the way down wood head they used to steer so that they could speed. The steersman hit the kerb it swung round and went through the wall on the nearside just at a point over the reservoir they were only saved from going into the water because they chose a point where there was a buttress holding the wall up!!
That’s the end of my photos for a bit, until I venture into the loft.
Hi David , Just to say thanks for your recent valuable contributions to the Amey thread ,and to find so much original information after all these years is remarkable . it shows the versatility of the AMEY GROUPS operations throughout the UK and makes me to feel proud to have worked for such a professional Company. As a long service employee as many others i was sad the day the news broke that they had been taken by Hanson ! .and to soon find out that you were no longer a name but just a number on the payroll — Regards
Steve
davidcox:
0
Hi Davidcox, Is that Stan Carter stood with you on top of this one ?–toshboy
Hi Tosh boy
No that’s Alfie Pennie he was the driver of the other leyland like mine. We were on the lay-by waiting for a police ■■■■■■. He had one of the hoppers on the low loader trailer and some one else had another hopper. We were waiting to get through Kettering, they were taken around the wide load rout but because I had the 40ft trailer I could put the load over keep left bollards etc so they took me through the middle of town.
Still can’t quite believe I used to do this aged 21yrs!
