Life expectancy.

[StarCruiser]

Great pics Pat. Love the old trucks, full of character. Sounds like 'the good ol' days' and they were good by the sound of it.

 

[Pat]

Love the old photos Pat, a bit of nostalgia to see the RB rope operated face shovel and the box scraper. What make is that? It doesn't look like a Cat or Terex...

Shayne, I recon you're due to receive 2 pensions from the state!

On the subject of food intake, IMO, if you're active, sugar gets burned off. On injestion, sugar transforms to glucose and it's pure energy. Burn it and you're OK.

For 20 years plus, I had 1 meal a day at about 8:00 pm. Doctors will say that's not good, but it never seemed to do me any harm, I have no stomach ulcers or anything remotely connected to that lifestyle. Of course I drank tea and coffee with sugar in it, so from waking in the morning till food in the evening I was managing on the sugars in the drinks, but I never felt any ill-effects.

Now, I still can't stomach breakfast (except at weekends at about 10:00 am) but my main meal is at lunchtime, with a snack type meal at 7-8:00 pm when I get home. These days I'm hungry at 12:30, so a lunchtime meal is ideal.

Eat when you're hungry, I say, not to any set time.

Clive, the scraper is a twin powered Euclid,In those days made by General Motors with 2 Detroit 2 stroke diesels.I think they were either 6/53 or 6/71
which meant6 cylinder and either 53 or 71 cu\inch per cylinder.
Bedford trucks also used the same motors in some models.Pat

 

[Pat]

Great pics Pat. Love the old trucks, full of character. Sounds like 'the good ol' days' and they were good by the sound of it.

hello mate,all my life I reckoned you had to have some laughs every day and we did.We had a big Scotsman down in the bush where the crusher pics were taken and big Jock Mc Lunie was in the bunk room and saw young Johnny scratching his nuts.Whats wrong boy,well he had crabs.It was coming on winter and bloody cold.Jock stripped all his gear off threw his bedding outside
made him get in hot shower and when he came out had to rub kerosene on his nuts but the crowning glory of Jocks rage was when he found that he had been using the long drop dunny that we all used.He tucked a 4gallon tin of petrol
under his strode downto the dunny splashed petrol all over the seat and then stood outside the door and threw a match in.He only wanted to sear the seat but there was an almighty explosion and the shithouse burnt down and Jock
got his whiskers and eyebrows seared.great fun.Pat

 

[clivehorridge]

Clive, the scraper is a twin powered Euclid,In those days made by General Motors with 2 Detroit 2 stroke diesels.I think they were either 6/53 or 6/71
which meant6 cylinder and either 53 or 71 cu\inch per cylinder.
Bedford trucks also used the same motors in some models.Pat

Thanks Pat, a couple of Detroid diesels working in tandem must have produced some wonderful "music"

A great story in your reply to Richard, guessing there are plenty more where that came from.

We had two guys arguing in the pub all evening as to who's Terex TS 24 scraper was the quickest fully laden and before anyone could stop them, there they were, in the dark, pissed as farts, racing down the haul road neck-and-neck with loaded scrapers. These things grossed some 80 tonnes each, so you can imagine it was quite a sight.

It was all good harmless fun till one of them drifted into the other as they were traveling along an embankment about 5 meters high at the time. They both slid off the haul, and tumbled down the batter together.

We reconned they'd written-off the best part of a million quids worth of equipment between them.

Lots of stories, some funny, some very sad. A side road watchman fell asleep on his "stop-go" lollipop, causing a loaded scraper on "green" to hit and roll on top of a Ford Prefect killing the 2 old ladies inside. He committed suicide soon after.

The not so good, good old days, 18 hour shifts, criminals and hard bastards many of them, work hard play hard.

 

[StarCruiser]

Had a tale told to me by a chippy I worked with.
He was working on a job where there was a plumber with a great mop of ginger hair just finishing off installing one of the old oil fired 'Wallflame" boilers and was commissioning it. The house had a separate boilerhouse and there was another chippy hanging the boilerhouse door.

My mate said he was working in the loft when he heard this muffled WHUMP!! Come from outside. He got out of the loft and rushed down and outside to find the other chippy laying in his back with the boilerhouse door on top of him. The plumber then emerged from the smokey boilerhouse, black from head to foot save for his mop of ginger hair.
"Funny" he said "it always does that"

He had been trying to light the boiler for quite a while when it finally caught.

 

[Pat]

Had a tale told to me by a chippy I worked with.
He was working on a job where there was a plumber with a great mop of ginger hair just finishing off installing one of the old oil fired 'Wallflame" boilers and was commissioning it. The house had a separate boilerhouse and there was another chippy hanging the boilerhouse door.

My mate said he was working in the loft when he heard this muffled WHUMP!! Come from outside. He got out of the loft and rushed down and outside to find the other chippy laying in his back with the boilerhouse door on top of him. The plumber then emerged from the smokey boilerhouse, black from head to foot save for his mop of ginger hair.
"Funny" he said "it always does that"

He had been trying to light the boiler for quite a while when it finally caught.

when we were growing hothouse tomatoes we had 2 /400,000btu gravity fed coal fired heaters and one night I was sitting up drinking and waiting for a rugby game inSA to start early morning our time.My ears were tuned to when the heaters were not running right and it happened so got in the car across the gully to the g/houses and yes there was a blockage so there were still good embers in the firebox got the coal running and sat there with my finger on the firebox door waiting for it to catch, it did,the explosion blew me across the
boiler room floor,decent surface burn on my left hand but the fire was going beautifully.Went back home sitting up by myself with hand in a bucket of cold water still drinking beer and watched the game.I think SA won but next morning the hand wasn't too bad.

 

[StarCruiser]

I've had that happen with our log burner on a much, much smaller scale. Good embers, put some new wood on and just when you're not expecting it it gives a huge 'sneeze' and shakes and blows dust and ash out of every orifice and damper. Gives a good idea of how the Kings Cross fire erupted to engulf the whole wooden escalator in a fireball after the 'producer' gas ignited.

Wakes you up too if you've nodded off!!