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						| Front Cover. |  
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						| Sample page. |  | 
					
						| This book covers British Coal 
						Opencast Sites in the period 1986-1994.  It is 
						largely a pictorial book containing 230 colour photos 
						most of which are good quality.  Nearly all the 
						photos are of the machines that worked the mines during 
						the period concerned. 
 The book is organised in sections with each mine 
						allocated a few pages although it is not clear what has 
						determined the order of the content as it is not 
						alphabetical, and not wholly chronological either.  
						However the index lists all the sites.  There is 
						also an Index at the back of the book which allows the 
						main machines to be located within the book.
 
 The strength of the book is the photos with the text 
						providing a little background, but it is not in any way 
						a technical text about the machines or mines.
 
 Among the machines covered is the 'Ace of Spades' 
						walking dragline (along with a number of others of this 
						type) and there is an interesting selection of cable 
						shovels and hydraulic excavators.  Other plant such 
						as dump trucks and dozers appear also.
 
 The author has also included a final couple of short chapters 
						covering some information from 'Open Day' events and 
						there are a few pages of reproduced specification sheets 
						for some of the machines.
 
 The book will be of interest to anyone interested in the 
						machines being used for opencast mining in the UK a few 
						decades ago.  It is also interesting to see the 
						liveries of some of the long-gone contractors that 
						carried out the work at that time.  Overall the 
						book is recommended.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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						| Sample page. |  
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						| Sample page. |  |