Today's photo is of a Cat D8 (or D9, I'm not an aficionado) ripping the earth a new one – road that is.
Since the blade is raised, he's actually reversing up the slope in this image. Most of the time the driver would just push his way through with the blade. I only occasionally saw him use the ripper when some large slab wouldn't yield to the immense force this bulldozer could bring to bear.
This photo doesn't do justice to the choking dust clouds that would rise up as the operator cut a new route down the escarpment pushing eons of rock formation out of the way in mere minutes.
The roof on the ‘dozer provided some shade in the middle of the day but provided no means of filtering the air.
This picture does nothing to conjure up the sound, of course. Over the roar of the engine was the clatter of the tracks and, especially when the blade was scraping across the top of a boulder, a sound similar to but much much louder than the sound of nails dragging across a chalk board.
I wonder if it sounded different to the operator since most of the sound would travel out, away from the machine. Maybe from his seat it wasn't too bad. Or maybe he'd destroyed his hearing long before.
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