Heathhall staff with Priestman Mustang excavator

Date Added: 30 October 2014 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1978 Picture No: 2667

This photograph is courtesy of David McQuillan, Dumfries.

David comments ‘This was a field service team working from Heathhall Workshop at Dumfries during the late seventies. The lads are working on a Priestman Mustang 120 digger. The service van is a Sherpa 200 series and the tool trailer is equipped with an engine driven air compressor to provide power greasing and radiator blow out etc.
The mechanics working here are Colin Kirkpatrick and Hector Adams.’

Download Large Version (2.3MB)

Groups: Forestry in Action, Other Vehicles and Machines, Road and Bridge Engineers and Works

3 Comments

This is a very interesting photograph. When the first hydraulic crawler excavators started to replace the Priestman Wolf rope excavators the F.C. had such a fixation with the old face shovel rope diggers, and indeed their proven application to forestry work, that they specified the Mustang's with hydraulic face shovel equipment. This photo shows such a machine. In general construction this was not a common rig. But around this time, (1979/80) I remember the F.C. hiring our Ford H-48, A 20 ton digger that carried optional face shovel configuration to work in Gartly forest. Comment left on 01 November 2014 at 20:34 by Ian Cameron, mobile mechanic dunkeld 1962/1070.

Used to drive Priestman 120 MK 2 and MK 3 and 108 s when I worked for Dalgliesh Brothers who were based in Moffat DG10 9EQ.

They were good strong machines suited to forestry work,roadmaking and draining. Comment left on 17 June 2020 at 23:40 by Wullie McRobert

I used to operate a 220 for Biggswall. They had 2 of them for special Deep dig jobs with 2mtr wide bucket especially made for machine with stabilisers. Good for putting sewer and double pipe line in one dig. Very advanced machine for the day Comment left on 21 July 2023 at 15:40 by Roy French

Form Goes Here