CLASSIC PLANT // M9 MOTORWAY // TAIL END
Above: A Ruston-Bucyrus 22-RB dragline with 7/8-yard bucket loads 15 tons into an AEC 690 dump truck on the M9 project. Inset above: An NCK 605 dragline with 1½-yard bucket excavates unsuitable material, too soft to be traversed by mobile equipment.
FAST FROM FORTH TO FALKIRK Keith Haddock recalls the Tarmac contract to build sections of the M9, where the use of hydraulic backhoe excavators for mass muck shifting was pioneered “SEVERAL AREAS REQUIRED THE BULK REMOVAL OF SOFT MATERIAL, WHICH WAS EXCAVATED BY DRAGLINES”
n 1971 Tarmac Construction was awarded contracts to build two consecutive sections of the M9 motorway, running 10 miles from the start of the Falkirk bypass to the approach to the Forth Road Bridge. Although not a particularly difficult road to construct, the contracts were awarded on the basis of an accelerated build schedule lasting just 18 months from start to finish. This two-lane stretch of motorway was duly opened in December 1972, the first feather in the cap of Tarmac’s newly-formed Earthmoving Division. Just before the M9 contracts were awarded, Tarmac had acquired the Scottish earthmoving and civil engineering contractor, AM Carmichael. Well-versed in opencast mining and general earthmoving, although none of Carmichael’s plant came
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to Tarmac, a significant number of their experienced drivers and foremen formed the core of Tarmac’s new Earthmoving Division. I joined them in May 1971, after I was transferred from Tarmac’s Roads Division, to be their Earthmoving Sub-Agent on the M9 contracts. Tarmac’s newly-formed Earthmoving Division had amassed a fleet of Terex TS-24 motor scrapers and Caterpillar tracked tractors with pull scraper boxes for this job. Several areas along the route required the bulk removal of soft material, which was excavated by draglines hired in from local plant hire companies. However, this was at a time when hydraulic excavators were just starting to take over from cable-operated machines, graduating from a service or trenching machine to production earthmovers. For this job, we pioneered NOVEMBER 2021
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