Buchan Forest District Harvesting Team
The photograph originally taken by Ronnie Legge, Huntly, is courtesy of Tom Dow, Rhynie, who was one of the harvester operators at Buchan Forest District. The year is thought to be around 1996.
The occasion was the arrival of the new Ponsse HS16 timber harvester and also the imminent departure of John Weir, Harvesting District Forester, to take up a post in Wales.
The machines from left are the new Ponsse harvester, Timberjack 1210B forwarder, Akerman excavator base harvester with Lako 60 head (being replaced by the Ponsse), Valmet 840 Fowarder (Registration number K177FSX) and Timberjack 1270 harvester.
The operators from the left are Doug Morrison (Forwarder), Peter Bremner and Calum Skinner (Ponsse), John Weir in shirt and tie, Tom Groat (Akerman Lako), Albert Brittan (Forwarder) Tom Dow (Timberjack Harvester) Jim Farquhar (Fowarder) and Mike Bremner (Timberjack harvester).
Shortly after this Tom Groat also moved down to Wales to take on a harvesting supervisor’s role.
These were the first purpose built wheeled harvesters to be based in Buchan Forest District after several years working with excavator based thinning and clearfelling machines. The then booming oil and gas economy attracted many of the felling chainsaw operators and it was almost impossible to complete the large thinning programmes. The first thinning harvester, Atlas base with Pika head, arrived in 1990 and with a second machine steadily caught up on the back log of thinning. A number of operators were recruited from outside the traditional forest industry.
Any corrections or more stories of these early harvester days would be very welcome.
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Groups: Forestry Areas, Groups of people, Northeast Scotland , Timber harvesters, processors, forwarders and cable cranes