Excavators at Nystrup Gravel (1/35)

The building of my Ferguson tractor is still in progress. I'm on the final stages of weathering and it'll be finished soon. While the paint dried I assembled a little info on the excavators of Nyestrup Gravel. When gravel production started at Nystrup the only tools used were shovels and skips. It seems that Nystrup Gravel went straight from hand digging to a diesel excavator. It is not known if the first excavator was the RB-17 in the image below or if it was preceeded by a smaller model. In the mid 1950's a new Menck M60 machine supplanted the old Ruston. In the beginning of the sixties the R&H excavator fell out of use and was sold. During transport from Nystrup the excavator fell from the road trailer and almost blocked the road for two days.

Nystrup Gravel's Ruston & Bucyrus RB-17 excavator. It came to Nystrup in 1938. In this image it is photographed at the loco shed in the summer of 1954. Probably the excavator was in need of some serious repair. Minor repairs were usually done in the gravel pits.

The Menck excavator was the first new major piece of equipment Nystrup Gravel bought after the war. In the first 10 years after the German occupation the company made do with it's old machinery or obtained used items. For a photographic record of the build of the model see my Flickr-site.

The R&B excavator in an awkward position. The machine was put upright again and continued to serve the new owner for another decade before being scrapped.