I was a welder by trade and one winter my job was to weld the digging conveyor at the end of the shift late into the night on a machine like this. The constant wear on the rock caused the conveyor chains to wear out so my job was to build it up with wear surface nightly. This was in Maine about the 1998 era. They were putting in water lines on the side of a mountain in solid ledge.
Farmers have pto driven ditchers that run a wheel that slings mud sideways to make a ditch.
On the railroad a logging contractor had a type of ditcher that had a massive arm that could sling the mud and dirt out into the woods, or cover the digging head and send it up into a conveyor and into a gondola car. In the winter a snow blowing head was put on it and it could launch snow...some 176 feet away! It had 3000 horsepower.
Another farmer invented a bat wing type V-plow that could make instant ditches, but it was more like a plow then a conveyor type