This looks rather like a ship in a bottle: how did they get it in there? But the little caterpillar tracks and the extending feet of the cherrypicker must make it so small and manoeuvrable that it can be driven through the entrance behind it. I am sure that this is part of the design of this enclosure. I don't know which specific tasks it is required for.
@FunkyGibbon Just so. The regiment was made famous by the notoriously stupid Lord Cardigan, who set a new standard of confusion at Balaclava by leading so many cavalrymen, from this regiment and others, to their deaths in the Charge of the Light Brigade.
@gentle lemur I first came across the regiment in the excellent but very un-pc series Flashman. The book about the Crimean war brings the incident to life quite vividly.
It's neat that this fits inside. I imagine it can also accommodate a small crane and digger.
@drill We are talking about the large shiny red thing in the middle of the picture.
@drill them = cherrypickers (aka cherry pickers)
From the on-line OED, noun
informal
A hydraulic crane with a railed platform at the end for raising and lowering people, for instance to work on overhead cables.
Lord Cardigan designed those 'cherry-coloured pants' for the regiment he commanded. So in one sense, he is the origin of the name. He came from the Brudenell family in Northamptonshire, although the title he inherited was Earl of Cardigan - I remember being quite impressed when, as a schoolboy, I read that several villages on his estates were largely populated by his illegitimate children. However he had no legitimate children, hence his remark after he ordered the Light Brigade to charge, 'Here goes the last of the Brudenells'.
I guess that the actual name was invented by a member of a rival regiment or perhaps by a Grub Street hack (19th Century term for a journalist). They might have come from anywhere.
