Hi Ian,

Came across your MT drivers website while trying to find information about 117 Signals Unit in Hong Kong.
The construction of the Tai Mo Shan radar site was mentioned in one of the e-mails on display. I was a Cpl Aerial Erector and helped to build the site. There were two Bedford tipper lorries which delivered all the steelwork etc to the site up a very narrow and hairy track, the two drivers were great, carefully dumping the loads of steel exactly where we asked thus saving us a lot of sweat and toil. We, the construction guys, were taken up there every day from RAF Kai Tak in the Tai Mo Shan Express, a Bedford 3 tonner driven by our MT driver Cpl Jim Cook who also operated the crane. The journey up and down the mountain was very hair-raising with lots of shunting to get the 3 tonner around the hairpin corners, often with sheer-drops below. Jim was a brilliant driver and could work wonders with the crane to get the girders into place for us. The crane often had to be moved from one tower to the other along a steep and winding rough track which had to be done with the crane reversing down very slowly. Towards the end of the job Jim took a few days leave to get married and a new driver was sent to operate the crane for us. He knew it all!!! No creeping down for him. Just shoved it into gear and set off next thing it started sliding and over the side it went. He was lucky not to be killed. The crane was wrecked. Jim went ballistic when he heard about it, up there for Months and not so much as a scratch. Fortunately most of the heavy lifting was done by then.

Attached are a few photographs which may be of interest.

Happy days

Regards,

Eddie

(More details about this in 'Archive 3' - Ian)