Old Glory June 2014

LD ENT WOR EV T S R FI

Leicester set to run aLL four beam engines!

Britain’s Best seller for

26

8

No 292

years

JUNE 2014

Wheels on my waggon

Bonhams to auction

MICHAEL BANFIELD COLLECTION

e reconstruction of a rare Sentinel DG8

TARMAC TRIO REUNITED

NO SURVIVORS

Atkinson Omega

at Beamish Great North gala event

Sunshine miners walking dragline ◆ Royal Yacht Britannia

PLUS ◆ Steam archive ◆ Floether portable ◆ News & events oldglory.co.uk

£4.10

Contents 74 No 292 | June 2014 NEWS 6-22 News & Events 84-86Old Glory in Miniature News

FEATURES 26

Eight wheels on my waggon The story behind Richard Straughan’s unique rebuilt Sentinel DG8 No 8016, which made its mid-April debut in its stunning Tarmac livery at Beamish.

32

Sunshine Miners Walking Dragline The UK’s last extant walking dragline is to be found in a field just outside Leeds.

42

48

52

Avann of Eastbourne On the trail of a Sussex family business that operated a fleet of steam wagons.

News updates at oldglory.co.uk www.facebook.com/ OldGloryMag 78

The Gothic mill that went green How the newly-restored Howsham Mill near York became a green project that 80 feeds the National Grid with water-powered electricity.

Les Birch: man of steam Peter Love pays tribute to a well-known rally founder and steam preservationist.

56

No survivors: the Atkinson Omega With only five examples believed to have been built, the Atkinson’s Omega handled everything that could be thrown at it under desert conditions.

70

Keeping Britannia shipshape How does the Britannia Trust keep this historic ship royally maintained, despite 250,000 visitors tramping through her each year?

4 | JUNE 2014 OLD GLORY

RT @ 75 A photospread commemorating 75 years of a British classic icon – the red London RT Class bus.

Floether power!

John Boyling’s rare 3nhp German-built Floether portable engine is unique in the UK.

REGULARS 24 38 40 46 62 66 74 88 106

80

Underbidder Enginelines Helpline Reviews Vintageworld Museum Guide Steam Archive Events Diary ‘Tail Lamp Tom’

READER SERVICES 36

56

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Save money when you subscribe

See page 36

32

40 Front Cover: Richard Straughan’s much awaited rare Sentinel DG8 waggon at the end of a 25-year rebuild debuts at Beamish Museum in April. COLIN EDWARDS This issue was published on May 15, 2014. The July 2014 issue of Old Glory (No 293) will be on sale from Thursday, June 19.

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84

Meet the team Derek Rayner

Colin Tyson Editor

Technical Advisor

Mike Dyson

Steve Dean

Correspondent

Correspondent

Andrew Bruce

Roger Hamlin

Advertising Executive

Correspondent

Malcolm Ranieri Photographer

James Hamilton Photographer

OLD GLORY JUNE 2014 | 5

Underbidder

Cheffins clears the nation’s sheds OK dear readers, the headline may be a bit of an exaggeration but it certainly felt that way. The entries in every category were huge and this produced the highest number of lots ever at a Cheffins sale. As for the number of cars, 4x4s, vans and trucks parked on every piece of available ground, it looked like a parking convention.

It was easy to understand why.

For the main course, serve a pair of Fowler BB1 ploughing engines, mix in five more steamers and then garnish with one of the best showman’s living wagons you may ever have a chance to bid on.

Offer a range of starters that include some of the finest examples of model engineering available then finish off with a sweet trolley offering over 300 tractors and 50 motorcycles. This was unquestionably a gourmet feast of an auction.

Our model engineering chums must have been overheating their micrometers in anticipation of the delights on offer. A bid of £7500 secured a 5in gauge ‘Britannia’ and £8000 went to a 5in gauge 22-2 GWR tender locomotive that fully deserved its catalogue description as “a work of art”.

Upping the bidding was a 5in

This is just part of the huge crowd that was spared the rain that was forecast.

£120,000

Strumpshaw Museum’s Fowler BB1s Nos 15340 and 15341 of 1919 were the star attractions at this monster sale at £120,000 for the pair.

24 | JUNE 2014 OLD GLORY

gauge 4-6-0 GWR No 6000 King George V that got the gavel down at £10,000 and set the scene for a 5in gauge 4-6-0 ‘Castle Class’ No 4079 Pendennis Castle to secure a huge £17,000.

Going down in scale to 3.5in gauge, a second ‘Britannia’ went into full forward gear to steam past its guide price. This stunning model was built by the late Bill Linfield (Carterton, Oxfordshire) who sadly died in 2013 in his 99th year. This exquisite piece of model engineering secured a thoroughly deserved £11,000. From the same stable was a road going masterpiece in the form of a

1.5in scale Allchin traction engine Royal Chester. This model was of extraordinary quality and achieved a winning bid of £7000.

Outside, despite an awful weather forecast, the rain was easing as Sale No 5 began. There was a long line of cars and commercials before we got to steam and the tractors didn’t get a look in until a third of the way down the second row. High rollers had the choice of three RollsRoyce cars at bargain basement prices – one of which was consigned from the barn of a deceased estate. It went to an internet bidder for just £6800. The real bargains were a 1963 AEC Mercury tipper and a 1947 Ford V8 petrol tipper, both fully restored. The hammer dropped at £7000 and £6000.

The last commercial was a superb 1932 Foden fitted with a Gardner 6LW engine and offered complete with a trailer that required completion. Bidding was strong and it took a final bid of £31,000 before the gavel came down.

Somewhere in the heaving mass of bodies there lurked a pair of Fowler BB1 ploughing engines.

Built in 1919, Nos 15340 and 15341 were consigned from Strumpshaw Steam Museum and just screamed to be returned to steam. Examination indicated that they both needed work; however the guide price of £130,000£150,000 for the pair suggested that the gavel would find a buyer.

£24,000

Visually it was very different to a typical English engine but that didn’t stop this George White (Ontario, Canada) machine from finding a buyer.

Cheffins, Sutton, Cambridgeshire, April 26 £3200

£27,5

£1800

00

Portables built by Marshalls and a stunning Howcroft living wagon await the crush of the massive crowd.

Piston valve Aveling & Porter F Type road roller No 10079 of 1921 had a sensible guide price.

£31,0

00

Opulence in a grand style. Built for showman John Murphy of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1904.

This very fine 1932 Foden was fitted with a Gardner 6LW engine.

Bidding opened at £100,000 and a distant finger on i-bidder.com nosed in front at £115,000. Two bids later at £120,000 the mystery keyboard was the victor.

Cue wagging tongues and crank up the rumour machine – everyone wanted to know where they were going. Underbidder will just say this – it ain’t south, west or east. When this pair returns to a field it will be a day for all enthusiasts to celebrate. A John Fowler three-furrow balanced plough secured £9000 and a 13tine cultivator in good order took £11,500.

Staying in the Fowler camp, the crowd turned to face Blackjack, a B4 traction engine built in 1899.

This engine received substantial boiler work in 2013 and provided the opportunity of a very sound purchase. Watching it tick over, it seemed a forgone conclusion that it would soon be heading to a new home.

The opening offer of £80,000

indicated the gavel would soon ring out but bidding stalled at £92,000 and our chum Bill King looked perplexed. Surely there would be more bids… er, maybe not. If you’ve got just over one hundred thousand sovs in your tea caddy then get on the blower right now!

Come on, admit it, we need some sensible pricing in the steam roller department and price realignment was about to arrive with Aveling & Porter No 10079.

This ‘F’ Type compound piston valve machine from 1921 needed a tidy up and maybe a new smokebox but when the hammer fell at £27,500 there were nods of agreement all round. Even the chattering classes on a certain internet forum posted their approval!

You needed just £24,000 to be the new owner of the George White (Ontario, Canada) traction engine. This interesting single cylinder machine (No 1470) was

Cheffins’new singing duo‘The Bidding Police’get a grip on proceedings. Ian and John Nissen prove there’s humour to be found in the Fens.

worthy of study, particularly the gearing, and was offered with a good boiler report.

It’s always tricky to put a price on portable engines, especially if in need of serious work. It’s very easy to spend more on repairs than they will ever be worth. The two Marshalls on offer needed to be looked at very carefully before waving your bidding card. The 6nhp machine with traditional firebox sold for £1800 and the second machine, also 6nhp, with ‘Britannia’ style firebox, took £3200.

Newcastle upon Tyne showman John Murphy clearly liked to live in comfort and the opportunity to bid on his fully restored palatial Howcroft living wagon was a once in a lifetime chance. The interior was simply stunning – a fairy tale vision of cut glass and beautiful woodwork. £18,000 got the bidding under way, followed by hesitation at £21,000 before faltering at £25,500. This wasn’t

quite enough and everyone moved towards the tractors.

Negotiations continued behind the scenes and a while later the final bid of £25,500 was agreed.

This was a sale where one’s strength of character could only be measured in stamina. Most folk were already starting to feel weary and there were still over 300 tractors to be sold. In the building, proceedings were only just getting into second gear with over 700 lots on offer and in the marquee things hadn’t even got into gear. It would be several hours before the stunning range of motorcycles kick-started the gavel.

Underbidder has to record that this was without any question of doubt a truly sensational auction.

Just view www.cheffins.co.uk and study the results at your leisure. In the meantime, please turn off the light as your scribe needs to recover with something greater than forty winks!

OLD GLORY JUNE 2014 | 25

stEAM trACtIon

AvAnn’s of EAstbournE

a seaside success

One has to wonder how the draw of the fire was affected by the fact that the precarious poles seem to obscure the chimney.

David Vaughan investigates an East Sussex family business that operated a eet of steam wagons.

From humble origins the enterprise grew in the 1920s and prospered before being taken over by a multi-national in the 1990s 42 | JUNE 2014 OLD GLORY

A smartly dressed Frank Avann with his Garrett wagon and consignment of telegraph poles. So pleased was he that he’d made it up and down the South Downs with the load that he wrote a testimonial letter to Garretts.

A

s a child I lived on the outskirts of Eastbourne near, what was then, a vast expanse of shingle beach known as ‘The Crumbles’.

The area was home to a series of gravel pits, owned and worked by Messrs Hall & Co, whose elderly Albion and AEC lorries were to be seen shuttling backwards and forwards to the grading plant, resplendent in their bright-red livery with shaded gold lettering.

The other company whose vehicles served the pits regularly was a local firm by the name of Frank Avann. Its vehicles were mainly ‘O’ Series Bedfords and they wore a workmanlike livery of chocolate brown with black mudguards and were adorned with a distinctive gold monogram depicting the owner’s initials.

I was fascinated by the activity at the gravel pits, not least by the narrow gauge railway which served it, with its trains of skip wagons, hauled by Simplex and Hunslet locomotives and loaded by a Ruston-Bucyrus dragline

The testimonial and photo from Frank Avann that was used in a Garrett & Sons advertisement in The Commercial Motor, dated September 1930.

excavator. It was, however, the lorries that held my attention, particularly those of Avann’s, which could be seen every day hauling gravel, carting demolition materials, or moving building materials for the new housing estates that were springing up all around Eastbourne.

Many years later, after the company had been taken over, I was privileged to interview the son of the founder of this successful family enterprise, Nelson Avann, at his home in the town, and to learn about the history of his father’s business.

Frank Avann was born in Old Town, Eastbourne, in 1894. His father died when he was only nine years old and he had a fairly unsettled childhood as he was brought up in the homes of various relatives in order to relieve the financial burden on his mother.

Frank did, however, receive a good education at St Saviour’s Choir School – which must have left a good impression on the young man as it was the school uniform colours of chocolate

brown with gold piping and blazer motto which he later adopted as the livery for his lorry fleet.

The origins of Frank’s first business venture are hazy but it is known that, at 18-years-old, he had a horse and cart that he used to deliver laundry to the town’s many seaside hotels and guest houses.

He also had a fruit and vegetable round, and early pictures show the rig with a canvas tilt or as a flat wagon so that it could be used for general merchandise, thus showing that Frank already valued diversification.

In 1914 the nation went to war and Frank joined the Navy. He achieved the rank of Petty Officer at a gunnery school at London’s Crystal Palace. At the end of the war Frank joined forces with two of his brothers who had been in the Army, and went into the transport business in a bigger way starting, as many small hauliers did at the time, with ex-Army subsidy types such as Leyland and Pierce-Arrow.  OLD GLORY JUNE 2014 | 43

StEAM trACtIoN

FloEthEr power!

Roger Hamlin visited engineman John Boyling to see what he’d restored since his Fowler ploughing engine debuted 10 years ago – a very interesting and rare 3nhp German-built Floether portable – the only one in the UK

A working life in Chile: The rare 3nhp version Floether portable engine.

80 | JUNE 2014 OLD GLORY

More or less the condition as purchased from Preston Services.

Getting a heads up on what’s required!

David Boyling cuts out the tubes.

A

decade has now passed since John Boyling and his then just-restored Fowler ploughing engine No 14695 of 1918 Hilda met with its sister ploughing engine No 14694, owned by Geoff Westlake.

They made their grand entrance at the Royal Cornwall Show at the showground in Wadebridge – John coming in from the west and Geoff from the east. This was the first time they had been together for many years after both had been extensively restored (OG October 1994).

A SECOND ENGINE

John’s ploughing engine attended numerous rallies over the next few years along with Geoff ’s, but John felt the time had come that he needed to start another restoration project.

He thought that another full size engine such as a road locomotive would take too long, and it seemed that something smaller would fit the bill. Not a miniature, but something that would be easy to transport to rallies.

Reading Old Glory one evening in 2005 he looked to see what Preston Services was offering and advertised was an Aveling & Porter portable engine that he thought would ‘fit the bill’.

So off he ventured from Cornwall over to Kent with his friend Gary Hoar, who took his wagon (just in case John purchased something) to see what was on offer. He looked at the Aveling but a few things were missing, so he moved on to view a Ransomes portable. But out the corner of his eye he spied a little portable, the likes of which he’d never seen before. He looked all over it, and it seemed to be almost complete. He returned to the Ransomes, but everything seemed to point back to the unusual portable. It took a little while but John decided on the interesting little German-built engine.

Built by Theodor H Floether of Gassen i L, Germany (now within Poland) in 1925, this 3nhp portable engine was only a fraction of the agricultural machinery made by this company from 1854 to 1930. This example was the

smallest portable the company made, and there are around 10 of the larger six to eight horsepower sizes in various conditions around Europe. It is certainly a unique engine in the UK.

EXPORTED TO CHILE

This engine was delivered new to the firm’s German agent, M Gleisner & Co of Conçepcion, Chile. It was sold to a sawmill up in the Andes and to move it there at that time it was carried by boat to the base of the mountain range, then it is believed it was pulled up 10,000ft by a bullock team.

It worked at the sawmill right until eventually purchased by Preston Services of Kent – at least it was easier ‘coming down than going up’, with roads built in the meantime, and it was shipped to the UK in 2005.

Back in Kent the portable was loaded on to Gary’s lorry for the trip back to Cornwall. The engine appeared mostly complete, no doubt due to the engine having had a long commercial life under cover and had only recently retired.  OLD GLORY JUNE 2014 | 81