Hallo Hanno, thank you for your reply, and for the nice picture of the 606 at Beltring.
To start at the beginning, I was surrounded, in my youth from the age of 10 by a huge arsenal of ex-US/Canadian military vehicles that were used in a civilian construction company in the Netherlands.
The construction company was called "Kuiper en Leeuwenkamp" and they had 2 offices, one was in Petten NH and the other was in Monster ZH. The company was biased to coastal work, called in dutch "Kust en Oeverwerken" and most of their work was done on the salty shores of the coast of Holland.
I started working with this company, in the workshop as a grease monkey during holidays and later on as a "leerling-monteur grondverzet&wegenbouwmachines via het SBW, in English a trainee mechanic earthmoving and roadbuilding equipment.
At that time, around 1970, there were the following vehicles still in everday use:
GMC CCKW- all with Ford Diesel and Nooteboom/Netam tipper
GMC DUKW - all original except a wooden floor up on the rear to carry large stones, ther were at one time at least 10 of them. (in Hollands stortsteen genoemd)
Diamond T - all original with Pasal dragline and Samofa diesel engine, Pasal stands for Gebroeders v/d Pas Alkmaar, there were at least 3 or 4 of these.
Mack 6X6 with Priestman dragline, one of them had the slewing gear of a dutch torpedoboat (ex-US Navy)
Diamond and White halftracks- also with original engine, hercules JXD, and at least one with a Pasal dragline.
Reo SXS- original engine with a Ruston or Priestman dragline, not shure off at this moment.
Quickway dragline mounted on a original CCKW chassis with a original half cab.
Federal 606, my favorite and the cause of me podting here, they had at least 2 of them, huge trucks, I remember quitte clearly that we had one them outside the workshop, they were to big, or the workshop too small, wich was running roughly, and the senior mechanic decided we had to take one of the cyl heads off, there are two cyl heads on the engine of a Federal 606, when we finally took the cyl head off, the top half of a piston was completly missing, but the engine started running anyway!
Later on the REO's came in and they replaced the CCKW's as the Terberg N800/1000/1200 replaced the REO's.
About that time hydraulic excavators like Atlas and Liebherr replaced the draglines.
Diesel engines replaced the petrol engines.
The last DUKW's were phased out in 1980, alltough I remember that we went to Normandy and bought 2 brandnew, allthough at least 35 years old, DUKW's all original and used them throughout 1985, in the end the costs of maintenance and refusal of the innsurance company put a end to it.
We also used, not being of WW2 vintage, FWD Terracruisers, Austin Champ, Dodge,Bedford, etc.
Since my father died in 2002 I have in my possesion a huge amount of photo's and negative's. The photo's, most off them being at least from 1952 onwards are discoloured due to ageing, the negative's are in better condition, some are sticky.
I am intending to scan all the negative's digital, my scanner can't work with analog photo negative's so I am looking to buy a good scanner that will do the job.
Also I am doing some research and will try to visit some people who worked with my father from early on, and try to get storys and pictures on tape/scane, so I can contribute on a bit of history of the ressurection of Holland after WW2, (wederopbouw).
There were many more civilian construction companys that used EX-WW2 equipment and vehicles in the neighbourhood when I was young, like Kubbe-Den Helder, P.Daalder-Alkmaar, PJB Brugman-Petten, Meereboer-Schoorl, Twisk&Bosman-Limmen.
When I worked for Arie Hak Pijpleidingen in the sahara in 1982-1984 we had a Caterpillar D7/3TSP crawler with a history that dated back to 1944 and a fleet of so-called SNO-CATS that were EX-US from Antartica, being a Caterpillar D8 drivetrain on a extended Caterpillar D9 chassis.
Keep those Federal 606 pictures coming!
With best regards, Bertus.
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