Phitberds Manor, East Harvey, Wantage, Berks, England.
Last year my father purchased 5 or 6 back-numbers of your
magazine. I have studied these with great interest.
We are joint owners of two engines, a Fowler cable slough
engine, and a Marshall portable. The Fowler is a compound cylinder
7′ x 12′ x 12′, 16 H.P. I don’t know what this
portable being larger than the Fowler. The boiler is 3′ 11′
1 cylinder 11′ and 11′ x 16′, double high pressure.
I would like to make a few comments on the article on page 3 of
the May-June 1973 issue. There are only 2 or 3 McLaren ploughers in
existence compared to 130 (approximately) Fowlers. There are also 2
Burrells, 2 Aveling and Porters and 1 John Allen.
There are no undermounted engines left, excluding some lorries,
as only very few were produced before being tagged a failure. One
make of lorry has a return flue boiler of which about 5 examples
exist.
Most engines are two speed, some road engines have three, but
four was almost unknown. The only double cylinder engines that I
know of are portable. We went in for compounds over here due to
their greater economy with coal and water.
These were either cross-compound or special patent called single
crank compounds. These were produced by one firm only. The layout
was to have the high pressure cylinder mounted diagonally over the
low pressure. Both piston rods drove to a common crosshead and
thence via a single connecting rod to the crank.
One set of valve gears was used with the drive split after the
Stephenson’s link motion. These engines made a very good name
for themselves.
On the subject of valve gears over here, we are virtually all
Stephenson, although some experimenting was carried out using
Joy’s and Firth’s. They did not catch on.
Cam-operated poppet valves were used on a few steam lorries but
normally slide valves were the order of the day with piston valves
in conjunction with super heating (itself very rarely come
across).
On the subject of the engine I half own, we got the plougher 6
years ago when I was only 11. I drove to our first rally, (father
steering), when I was but 14. I hate to think what the legal age
limit is. We thought we had at last finished work on it last year
after fitting a new cable, then a boiler tube blew rust as we were
about to start work at a rally. We replaced it and eventually
worked the following day.
Last Winter we removed the other 44 tubes and hope to replace
them shortly. This gave us the opportunity to have some electric
welding done to build up the inside of the boiler barrel where
corrosion had taken place. We are hydraulically tested to 300
pounds and blow off at 180 pounds.
The Marshall was bought last year. It had been built in 1910 and
from then till 1936 powered a sawmill. It was then bought by a
brickman who used it until 1941. They had sunk it to just below the
foundation ring in a pit which collected all the rainwater that
fell on the works. This was its feed water supply.
They also built a building around it. Over the years the pit
filled up with muck. Thus when we came on the scene we had to dig
out the pit, knock down one end of the building, jack it up, and
replace the rear wheels, then tow it out. It took four men, a four
wheel drive tractor and countless blocks of wood, three days.
It is now here. We will have to get a new smokebox rolled up and
a new chimney made. We have had cast three new bearing brasses,
(the gypsies had stolen the top halves but the crank was sitting on
the bottoms), and bought a complete new set of lubricators. It may
be going next year.
Wallis and Stevens made some double high-pressure, piston valve,
outside disc crank rollers.
A firm called Buffalo-Pitts made some overtype steam wagons that
looked remarkable like some of ours.
I would be interested to know the fate of the cable plough
engines made by O. S. Kelly of Springfield, Ohio and also those
imported from Fowlers in the 1860’s and 70’s to work the
Mississippi cotton fields when slavery was abolished.
So there are a few notes from this side of the
‘puddle.’
