Machinery Training in the olden days

I look back on my machine-operator training: operating dozers, loaders, scrapers, graders, rollers, crusher plants, excavators, rock quarry blasting, and of course trucks. Total training for any one of these was less than a day. It was always a case of - get 'er rolling and don't Break it'...

Most such operations depend much more on muscle memory and a feeling for machinery, than any amount of theory. Simulators like the Caterpillar series do help with the muscle memory, but not much with the practicalities - like a tracked machine can slide sickeningly down-slope if walked across it sideways in the wet.....

Not much help now, because you need two years in an Approved Training Establishment and a piece of paper to even climb aboard an actual live machine....
My total 'test' for all of F/R/W/T classes was driving an ancient Cat D6 in a figure 8 in front of a country cop in 1971. Total elapsed testing time 2 minutes. No test at all for wheeled loaders (Cat 922 and Hough 65), no test for rollers (numerous), graders (Cat 112 and Champion D686). No license to run quarry plant (jaw and gyratory crushers, hammer mill, gensets to power all electrics). No license to run rock drills and place explosives. No RMA to doze up gravel, walking an International TD24 back and forth through the middle of the Hurunui river.

No kidding, there was simply zero environmental oversight or thought given. That's one reason why the 'old MoW' and assorted contractors of the era seemed so productive.....