Forestry Memories

Bogged ploughing tractor - Benmore in Shin Forest

Bogged ploughing tractor - Benmore in Shin Forest

Date Added: 07 May 2008 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1983 Picture No: 331

Donny Junor's Super Low Ground Pressure Caterpillar D4D with double furrow trail plough in deep trouble! This machine usually worked in soft and very soft peat conditions where it was sometimes difficult to walk but occasionally the very difficult conditions caught the driver out and he would be unable to extract himself when the surface of the peat gave way. Many times in a season whilst ploughing, the tractor would break the surface of the peat and the usual routine was to unhitch the plough, sometimes attach the winch cable to the plough and then creep very slowly either forward or back and often as not the skill of the driver and that their team mate enabled them to extricate themselves from the potential severe boggings. Once every few years things did not quite go to plan and an incident such as above occurred.
This machine has long extensions added to either side of the apical track plates giving a total plate length of over 4 feet if I remember. The drive shafts and under carriage of this D4 were specially modified to take the extended plates.

Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Forestry in Action, Tractors Ploughs and Drainage Machines

4 Comments

A good bogging right enough. I remember one on Rannoch where the tractor was completely submerged, just a winch rope coming out of the bog. It took three tractors pulling from a knoll about 100yds away must have pulled it 50yds before it re-appeared, the cab got torn off and sat at the roadside for some years afterwards. Comment left on 20 January 2017 at 21:45 by Colin Bain.
Did the tractor ever go again, after they got it out??? Comment left on 14 January 2020 at 16:38 by MARK
Indeed Mark the tractor was taken into the Forestry Commission workshop at Lairg and given an engine strip down, fuel tank clean, several oil changes, new batteries and electical wiring replaced. It ran for many years afterwards until the advent of stop on ploughing on deep peat around 1989 following which it was mothballed and then sold. Very few of these very wide tractors were made. Norman Davidson Comment left on 14 January 2020 at 19:35 by Norman Davidson
Ian Cameron the FC mechanic in his book 'Forestry of the 1960s in Highland Perthshire'describes the efforts to extricate the bogged tractor on Rannoch moor.
Some tractors were fitted with experimental aluminium tracks to reduce weight, don't think they lasted very long, they left a snail trail of ally when driven on the forest road. Comment left on 16 January 2020 at 22:45 by Colin Bain
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