When Morpeth engineer John Alexander retired in December 2006 he had nothing on his mind but spending time with his wife Sarah, travelling and enjoying all that life had to offer.

Little did he imagine that within a year he would be juggling the joys of fatherhood with work at the forefront of one of the region's biggest demolition jobs — but that is exactly how it turned out.

For five years John was responsible for operating and maintaining a true giant of the coaling industry — the Ace of Spades.

The Stobswood dragline, named by schoolgirl Tracy Latheron in a 'Herald' competition, was Europe's largest when it was unveiled in December 1991, weighing in at 4,000 tonnes, standing 200ft high and measuring 371ft end to end.

It was powered by 12 motors, using the same amount of electricity as a small town, and covered 200 miles as it 'walked' around the opencast site on its mechanical shoes.

Making sure the £15m machine was in tip-top shape was not an easy task, but with John's care the Ace managed to shift about 300 million tonnes of overburden, putting in 56,000 hours of work.

However, as operations at Stobswood began to be scaled down, the long-serving excavator became too big for its boots and in 2005 it was parked up.

Many feared it would go the same way as its forerunner 'Big Geordie', which worked in Northumberland from 1968 to 1993, before being scrapped in 2004, but the 'Ace' had attracted admirers from near and far.

Initially, Swiss mining group Xstrata was interested in putting the giant to work on a South African site, but before the deal was done the North American Coal Corporation came forward.

Vice-President Mike Gregory flew in from Dallas to view the machine and, eager to show it at its finest, owners UK Coal asked the man who knew it better than anyone — John Alexander — to lead the inspection.

John, 67, agreed to give up a morning of his retirement to meet Mr Gregory and on inspecting the colossal dragline, the coal chief immediately made an offer. It was accepted and the Ace was set to begin a new life in the United States, the only problem was getting it there.

Not to worry — Mr Gregory knew just the man to help.

"UK Coal asked me to represent the company to show Mr Gregory around, but as soon as he arrived he took the wind out of my sails when he knew my name and everything," said John.

"I had never met this guy in my life, but my friend worked with him in Dallas and had told him about me.

"He said he was pleased to meet me and then asked if I would strip the Ace. I told him I was retired, but one thing led to another and I came out of retirement to put a team together of local guys."

John re-launched his Plantexact consultancy company and the rest came together like a BBC sequel to the adventures of construction site chums Oz, Dennis and Neville.

"A lot of the guys worked for me when I operated the Ace and quite a few came back to help to disassemble it.