Diggers

Book 2 of The Bromeliad. The Nomes have driven the truck until they crash it and are forced to run into the wilderness again. They come across an abandoned quarry and take refuge in the manager's hut. Once again, disaster as the quarry is about to reopen.

Some of them take off to explore and find a permanent place for the community to live.

The men arrive to get the quarry into action again and the Nome need a quick escape plan. Having once driven a truck they decide to take a digger from the quarry and to an old barn up the hill behind the quarry. Everyone gets loaded into the front scoop and the 'drivers' get coordinated again and they drive the digger out of the yard with the workers running after them in the muddy field.

This is the middle volume of the trilogy about the nomes, telling what the other nomes get up to while Masklin and his two companions are missing, presumed lost, on an expedition to the nearby airport.

I don't really need to say much about it because you'll read it if you liked the first volume, and not otherwise. It's satisfactory, but Masklin's story is the important part of the trilogy, and that's told in the first and third volumes.