Roteho Trench Digger And Tile Layer’s Working Tour

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 29, 12 March 1948, Page 5

Roteho Trench Digger And Tile Layer’s Working Tour

A return trip of about 400 miles from Palmerston North to Wairoa is being undertaken this month by the Roteho trench-digging and tile-laying machine under the supervision of Massey Agricultural College. The machine, which is operated in conjunction with the College’s farm drainage advisory service, has been engaged by the Wairoa A. and P. Association for the digging of about one and a half miles of trenches for the tile-drainage of its showgrounds. The drainage work, it is expected, will permit the annual show to be held in November, irrespective of a wet spring, instead of in Januaiy, when, though conditions are generally dry, the district stock is not in its best condition. While at Wairoa the Roteho will have reached a total of a quarter of a million tiles, either laid by its special device, or for which trenches have been dug and automatically graded. Besides drainage of ; he soldier settlement block at Milson, the machine has left a grid of tiles under Ongley Park (Palmerston North), in several farms in son district and is now .Derating on •an ex-servicemen’s settlement block at Karere for the Lands and Survey Department. After the Wairoa trip it will lay about 20,000 tiles in the Lake Alice Mental Hospital property.