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farm tractors as shunters


adanapress
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The latest Railway Bylines (vol. 17 issue 5 April 2012) has a couple of photos of a BR owned Muir Hill - no details unfortunetely. The tractor carries the number CRW 0320 F on the bonnet side.

 

Got my copy today and can add a little.

CRW 0320 E was new to the Eastern Region in May 1959, and was unregistered. A Fordson Power Major with a conversion by Muir Hill. Another one appears on page 219 at Wisbech and the registration looks like TGU### which would make it another Fordson Major of 1956-7 with a Weatherhill Epping auto shunter conversion numbered one of RY 0303-10 E

Merf.

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  • 3 months later...

East Anglia used to have an even stranger 'shunter' at Lowestoft sleeper works- a powered Grampus wagon. I remember there being a piece about it in Rail about 20 years ago.

You don't happen to know which issue? Better still have a copy?

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Not farm tractors but close, this is from memory as a youngster in the 1950's/60's so details may wrong. Bass breweries in Burton-upon-Trent used a fleet of what I was told were ex RAF bomb trailer tractors, very low slung, with buffing plates either end, almost level with the top of the bonnet and very comprehensive mudguards over all the wheels. I can remember them being used to push wagons round on wagon turntables and into buildings where the loco's couldn't get. Also used for towing converted low floor horse drays around the streets full of empty barrels.

From the recollected bonnet shape I would say the tractors were David-Browns but may have been Fergies. There were a good number of them and yet I don't ever recall seeing any photo's of them.

 

Phil T.

Edited by Phil Traxson
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Truman's also had at least one shunting tractor, which looks to be a Fordson, fitted with a cab and buffer beams but only standard farm style mudgaurds on the back. There's a photo on page 186 of 'Brewery Railways of Burton on Trent' by Cliff Shephard taken in 1958 when the tractor was apparently new.

Edited by halfwit
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Not exactly a farm tractor, but from the same general family: a fine piece of late forties engineering.

post-6995-0-39768100-1342007373_thumb.jpg

Edited by Krusty
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Guest stuartp

Not farm tractors but close, this is from memory as a youngster in the 1950's/60's so details may wrong. Bass breweries in Burton-upon-Trent used a fleet of what I was told were ex RAF bomb trailer tractors, very low slung, with buffing plates either end, almost level with the top of the bonnet and very comprehensive mudguards over all the wheels. ... From the recollected bonnet shape I would say the tractors were David-Browns but may have been Fergies.

 

The 'classic' RAF bomb tractor was indeed a David Brown, with a few Fordsons (with cabs) early on in the war. Airfix do one in the 1/72 Stirling kit which is close enough for 4mm. A few built ones here: http://airfixtribute...t__t_12432.html with some photos of real ones if you scroll down a bit.

Edited by stuartp
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The 'classic' RAF bomb tractor was indeed a David Brown, with a few Fordsons (with cabs) early on in the war. Airfix do one in the 1/72 Stirling kit which is close enough for 4mm. A few built ones here: http://airfixtribute...t__t_12432.html with some photos of real ones if you scroll down a bit.

There is one in the pipeline from Oxford, I believe. The French have used some even stranger vehicles as shunters, usually at grain silos. Amongst others, I've seen photos of a White M3 scout car, still fully armoured, and a Dodge 0ne-tonner'

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  • 6 months later...

I have posted photos of a couple more shunting tractors - 66006 Massey Ferguson 50 as Shunting tractor @ Ripple Lane C&W 30/05/87   http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/road/e54eaed42  - this is working!

and

66014 PVY125F Shunting tractor with front loader @ Gateshead 24/09/88  http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/road/e54eaed48

 

Paul Bartlett

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  • 2 weeks later...

The latest issue of Railway Bylines (Volume 18: Issue 4 March 2013) includes a photo of a shunting tractor pulling a 16t mineral across a road in Dundee.

 

Just got my copy.  The fleet number looks like RA 9004 SC, and it appears to be a Fordson Major, the most common type used by BR in the 50s.  My lists only have one Scottish Region one and this is it, registered LYS438 in late 1953 or early 54.

Merf.

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  • 7 years later...

Almost certain that United Glass used tractors in Castleford to move individual wagons of sand and soda ash into the plant. Rockware glass did something similar in Knottingley that involved crossing the main road.

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Truro Gas Works had a shunting tractor which I occasionally saw from across the river. It was red with steel bufferbeams and I'm sure I've seen a colour photo of it quite recently but can't remember where. The works had two long sidings I think, set in concrete, at a higher level than the goods yard at Newham. BR locomotives were not permitted into the gas works site but did use the spur to allow gravity shunting operation of Newham yard which AFAIK didn't have a run round loop.

The gas works spur opened on 3/4/55 and closed 25/12/70 (?!) so the tractor may well have been the site's only shunter.

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On 01/06/2020 at 21:55, doilum said:

Almost certain that United Glass used tractors in Castleford to move individual wagons of sand and soda ash into the plant. Rockware glass did something similar in Knottingley that involved crossing the main road.

I remember seeing the Rockware tractors in Knottingley probably late 70's. The Cadtleford operation IIRChad a wagon turntable right up against the factory wall so i never saw what shunted the wagons insude the factory.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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  • 4 weeks later...

Sadly, I don't have any photos but, here in Western Australia, a newish John Deere (I think, from the colours) is used to shunt tank wagons in and out of the unloading dock at BP's storage facility in Kewdale.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest Jack Benson

The LNER forum posted a lengthy thread of their use in Lowestoft and other locations in the 30s.
Poole Quay once possessed an ancient Fordson with a pushing baulk at the front, presumably towing facility at the rear?  Falmouth Docks also used a repurposed farm tractor, all long gone.

 

Finally, this image is from the US (I think)
 

 

F20E3980-B193-4F24-945D-14149D3185F3.jpeg.323635f5626b61239ecf1c280189de0a.jpeg

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  • 1 year later...

I recently picked up a copy of Lost Lines: LMR by Nigel Welbourn (Ian Allen, 1994) from my local charity shop. This has a picture on page 56, taken in Burton-on-Trent on 12 April 1958, of a small agricultural tractor fitted with a cab and buffing plates being used as a shunter.

 

Ironically, in the picture in question, the tractor is being used in reverse to push a Peckett 0-4-0ST into an engine shed - a case of a tractor shunting a shunter!

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