[Leica] A new album

[DouglasMSharp at netscape.net (Douglas M. Sharp)]

Peter Dzwig schrieb:

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> To finish up - can anyone tell me exactly what this is please?
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> http://gallery.leica-users.org/album70/SteamEngineRudgwick200408
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> SURELY someone on the LUG has the expertise!!!!
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> All:  IIIf 5cm f1.5 Summarit Kodak T400CN
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> Your comments are as always welcome. Thanks for taking the time to look.
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> Peter Dzwig
>
What it is is easy Peter.
A stationary steam engine, they were pulled along to where they were 
needed by horses, just like hitching a portable generator behind a 
Landrover  today. Mainly used for powering threshing machines, balers or 
beet-cutters, sometimes in mobile saw-mills too.The expense of having 
your own thresher was often defrayed by itinerant threshing companies 
with traction engines travelling from farm to farm pulling a whole a 
full range of harvesting equipment. Ploughing teams with 2 colossal
Fowler ploughing engines, which pulled heavy ploughs on a wire rope 
between them across a field (then moving up for the next set of furrows) 
were also common in the area I was born.
Though it is more than likely that this machine would have been used on 
a private farm.
It looks to be an english construction, (Ransome, Garrett or Burell?), 
and more likely coal-fired than wood or straw. Most of the straw burners 
had spark arresters on the funnel.
I'll take a look in my reference stuff tomorrow, maybe there's something 
in there.
cheers
Douglas