Publisher: Old Pond Publishing ISBN: 978-1-908397-42-3 Author: Dave Wootton Book published 2012, 144 pages Review Date: December 2012 Books, DVD and Software Index
Opencast Images Video
Front Cover.
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.
