An engineer who rescued the world’s oldest working excavator which is now on show to the public at Threlkeld has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the National Transport Trust.
Ray Hooley, who is now 95, was responsible for salvaging a 48-ton steam navvy, built in Lincoln by Ruston, Proctor and Co in 1909 from a watery grave.
The navvy spent 47 years 25ft deep in the Blue Lagoon at Arlesey in Bedfordshire before it was rescued in a campaign inspired and led by Ray, a Lincoln-based historian and former librarian and archivist for the successful company, Ruston and Hornsby.
The navvy was worked at the bottom of a chalk quarry pit and left there when quarrying ceased because of the Great Depression in 1930. The quarry gradually filled with water.
Ray needed the help of nine companies and their machinery and manpower and it took 18 months of intense involvement to organise the rescue, finally carried out in October 1977. Bedford Sub Aqua Club were prominent in its rescue along with a company that had oceanic flotation equipment and a company that loaned a 90ft crane.
The chequered history of the navvy involved many more ups and downs before it was finally restored to full working order in the last few years by the Vintage Excavator Trust at Threlkeld Quarry and Mining Museum with the help of a Heritage Lottery grant.
On February 28 the National Transport Trust honoured Ray with a lifetime achievement award and its president, Lady Judy McAlpine, and chairman, Stuart Wilkinson, attended the ceremony at Lincoln’s Guildhall to see the city’s mayor, Cllr Roseanne Kirk, present the award.
Lady McAlpine said: “One perhaps has to see the excavator working at Threlkeld to appreciate the physical might of this task, let alone the nightmare of dealing with the various organisations needed to help.”
The story is told in a DVD called The Ruston in the Blue Lagoon from Blow by Blow Productions at www.blowbyblow.co.uk (£14.95).
