Sandpit
For the weekend rally when the cast came out to play, approximately an acre was used for a “sandpit”  where the tracked tractors and other machinery had free rein to excavate, push, till, and mound soil.  It’s not as easy at it looks, carving a piece of earth out with a bulldozer blade. As the ’dozer follows the contours, the blade must be raised and lowered to compensate for the movement. My attempt with a D2 made for some rather lovely corrugations, not exactly as I planned it. But my 13-year-old grandson picked it up (snaps fingers) like that.
The operators on the Bay City face shovel and especially the Ruston RB10 dragline were impressively adept. No hydraulics here, folks.
Another 15 acres were ploughed and diced using machinery towed by Caterpillars.
One chap was telling me that ploughing with a wheeled tractor by comparison is relatively simple. “Just put the wheel in the last plough furrow and the tractor follows its nose.” Not so with a tracked vehicle—you need to drive it all the time.

Read more in the June/July 2010 issue of The Shed