Classic Plant & Machinery Magazine Vol.12 No.7 CAT D4D Debut Back Issue

As I write this the rain is still pouring down and gale force winds are still
around. It’s stopping progress on my new workshop/garage and although we haven’t been flooded yet, the garden is saturated here in East Sussex. In addition, we have lost the power five times, and for long periods, over the last week, which I will come on to in a moment. Now the phone line has stopped working too, so things are interesting to
say the least. With all the coastal damage and more, there’s certainly going to be lots of work for plant contractors over the next few years. It would seem some of the damage could have been avoided if proper maintenance had been carried out. But, owing to a lack of funds this hasn’t happened and now it’s caught everyone out, unfortunately.
Talking about those dreaded power cuts, it wasn’t the wind and rain that
caused them. UK Power Networks informed us that it was going to switch us to generator power for 17 days. This was to enable it to carry out
maintenance work and it placed about ten generators in an eight-mile radius. We only had our generator going for just over a day when it cut out, the feeling is that it had run out of fuel, hum... It took some four hours to sort that sorted out, then some 36 hours later the same thing happened again. Then, when I was away in Somerset at the tractor
show the power went off again, this time for some 14 hours. According to the local ‘grapevine’ on this occasion someone had someone decided to pay a visit to several of the generators in the area and relieve them of the copper power leads, combined value of the leads: £48,000. This type of theft goes on all the time on our railways and more and really needs
to be sorted out. We know what it’s like when taking things to the scrapyard now, which is why the new rules and regulations were set up, but it’s still going on in a big way.