Transporting 600,000 Tons of Rock
Page 51
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
rlA TOTAL of 380,000 cubic yds. of concrete and 'masonry will be used in building the new Claerwen Dam now . under construction in the Elan Valley, „Central Wales, for the City of Birmingham Water Department. And the job is an urgent one. Every year consumption increases by 1,000,000 gallons a day, and without an extra 'reserve a dry summer may prove dangerous.
In this all-important undertaking, road transport and passenger vehicles, excavators and many types of mechanical-handling plant, are playing
a vital part. A total of over 40 site-. vehicles are employed by the contractor, Edmund Nuttall, Sons and Co. (London), Ltd.' in addition to about half a dozen hired vehicles and the large fleet of lorries used for delivering sand from the Midlands.
10-ton Tippers
The stone for the concrete aggregate is brought four miles from a rock quarry, where the face-shovel equipment consists of two 37 R.B. excavators, fitted with lfcubic-yd. buckets, and one 54 B.E. excavator with a 2i-cubic-yd. bucket, which load into special Foden six-wheeled 10-ton tipping lorries and • F.W.D. 8-ton tippers. These vehicles have specially designed steel bodies. which deliver to the tipping bay above the crushers. Nearly 600,000 tons of rock are needed.
The foundation rock being excavated is unsuitable for aggregate, and the transfer of 160.000 tons to spoil-heaps adds to the transport problem, particularly as the going is very rough and roads have to be built up for the pur
pose within the dam-area. The vehicles employed on the job are 33 RA, 24 R.B. and 19 R.B. excavators, and Aveling-Barford 4i cubic, yd. dumpers.
The tipping lorries are naturally kept busy and the fleet, which numbers 21. includes vehicles of Austin, Bedford, F.W.D., Thornycroft and Foden mannfacture. A Ransome and Rapier 30-cwt. mobile crane is used for a variety of duties, the power unit being a Fordson petrol-paraffin engine. There is also a Neal 12-cwt. stewing and hoisting crane
powered by a Lister single-cylindered hopper-cooled petrol engine of 5 h.p., and fitted with a self-sustaining brake, and a Smith 2-ton • mobile crane powered by a Blackstone 15 h.p. oil engine.
Three angle-dozing tractors and a tractor-driven Le Tourneau crane are other important items of site equipment, and 13 passenger vehicles run a service for the 300 workmen billeted in a camp seven miles down the valley..
The maintenance and, when necessary, the complete overhaul of the vehicles, crushers, mixers, compressors, pumps, conveyors, power station plant and all the allied gear, are undertaken in the well-equipped repair shops.
A mobile workshop is also in constant use and has already given invaluable service. Mounted on a Fordson chassis, the unit is equipped with a 7.5-kW 110-volt generator driven from the power take-off. Electric power is thus obtained for driving a lathe, twinwheel grinder, pedestal drill and battery charging equipment.