The Traction Engines that made pretty good Steam Trains - Aveling & Porter Locomotives 

It's a tractor, and a train? A tractrain? A trainctor?

What train experts see: Blue Circle What I and Thomas fans see: Fergus

So glad to hear that some have survived. It always breaks my heart to hear about historically significant locomotives being scrapped to the last of their number.

“Do it right!”

Do It Right! From Morning Till Night!

It is so hilarious to see traction engines of nowadays having a great race on public roads making a pile of traffic behind them. Btw, Fergus should have returned in the CGI series in Thomas.

As a farm kid, traction engines have always been the absolute peak of my interest in steam powered machinery. Obviously I love locomotives, but I adore traction engines.

Australia has a traction engine locomotive named Snorting Lizzie, which actually was a locomotive modified from a road running traction engine. She had a long chain that connected the wheels together to improve traction. She is very unusual, but it also made her unique

On that closing note: I've seen people outfit an old VW Golf with flanged wheels before. They even added a rig to the front in order to adhere to the German signal code for headlights (one at the top, two at the bottom). They did all that to ride some decomissioned branch lines, even with permission from DB. Just stop near a crossing, do a "tire change" and off you go!

"Do it right" ~ Fergus

5:52 Well the next time they ever tell us what to do... *WE'LL DO IT WRONG*

Gotta wonder, maybe Fergus was built in 1926 as well shortly after his sibling Blue Circle and arrived to work at the Cement Works the same year, he was never said to be new in Season 7 (it has been implied he's older and has been around on Sodor longer where the portrait of him in Fergus Breaks The Rules looks pretty old) making him the last Aveling and Porter Railway Traction Engine in the TV Series universe for Thomas instead.

Regular cars with their wheels swapped with railway wheels were used as inspection vehicles in Eastern Europe.

Sarapite is preserved at the Long Shop Museum where she worked (2nd hand) for Garretts, before becoming part of Bill McAlpine collection in the 1960's. Her first owner was going to name her after his two daughters, until someone realised the combination spelled Parasite, so they swapped the S and P around. After being taken over by Garretts she lost her Aveling "Invicta" rampant horse, and gained a Garrett Panther. One of the reasons she was picked over a normal small saddle tank was the lines that connected the workshops of Richard Garrett and son, and the Leiston Goods yard were laid for horse traction, so full of sharp bends and with minimal clearance with steep gradients, so a rail mounted traction engine was much more suitable that a conventional locomotive. Many normal traction engines were converted to run on rails by lumber mills in Australia and New Zealand. Some companies actually offered conversion kits with their traction engines. Several of the "Steam Sappers" supplied to the War Department in the late 1800's were supplied with both road and rail wheels. As a boy I remember reading a bit where Blue Circle and another (I think it was Sir Vincent) were used to pull a train on the Bluebell railway which took many many hours. I have only had the privilege to see 2 of these engines. Sarapite lives about 40 miles away, and when we took our Burrell engine to a rally at the Battlefield railway, they had Blue Circle on the line at the time, and for the weekend was giving shuttle rides at Market Bosworth. In a reversal of this idea, a friend of mine used to own a steam lorry that was built using a ERF A Series chinese 6 wheels chassis and transmission. The builder took the boiler and engine out of a scrapped Sentinel 100 HP (that worked at 300psi!) shunting locomotive (similar to he LNER Y1) and fitted them into this chassis, and he also converted the boiler into a double chimney. Because of the amount of tea the builders consumed building it, it was called "Typhoo". Because the engine worked a 4:1 step up gear box, which in turn drove a conventional ERF gearbox, mounted to a Eaton Twin speed rear axle, Typho could motor along at up to 60mph, but cruising speed was around 40, with long burst of 50mph if required. The Irony was that ERF formed when the Foden Brothers fell out before WW2 regarding the future of steam powered HGV's. with lead to the formation of ERF that produced petrol and diesel Lorry while Foden carried on making Steam lorries well into the 1930's. There is also several old Fordson Tractors, they have been mounted on goods wagon chassis to serve the same purpose. I believe there used to be one on the Colne Valley Railway. There was also a Sentinel steam tractor that had buffers fitted so it could shunt railway wagons, but it retained its road wheels. Near me, after WW1 a local farmer, so annoyed with the state of the roads and a lack of access to a railway, purchased lots of redundant narrow gauge railway track and some wagons from the war office, and made a railway to take sugar beet from the various fields he farmed in Langley and Claxton, to a Jetty on the River Yare, so a sailing werry could take the sugar beet across the river to the Cantley Sugar beet factory. The locomotive was converted from a old Model T ford, modified into a 2 4 0 wheel arrangement. by the mid 1930's the roads and lorries had improved enough that his son decided to take the sugar beet the long way round (via Norwich) and the railway line was ripped up (all except for a short length inside one of the barns which is still there) and the track and wagons were sold to the Fenland Drainage Board, but the little loco was scrapped.

So fergus really was really usefull

At low speed, the mass of the machine is more important than pure hp when it comes to delivering tractive effort - those solid wheels would be the secret sauce \m/

Blue Circle. Pride of the cement works

I'm quite surprised to learn that Aveling & Porter traction engines worked until the 1960s along side the rest of BR steam. That is impressive. I don't usually throw in Thomas and Friends connections for my comments on this channel (mainly because many others have already taken care of that to the point it almost makes me roll my eyes), but hearing about the history of traction engines has made me realize more how characters such as Fergus and mainly Trevor are important characters as they complement the main cast of steam engines on Sodor from the history of their basis.

They were, indeed, very useful engines.

“Right on time!” Congratulated Fergus/Blue Circle

You did an amazing job with this one man 0:32

Ive had the pleasure and honour to drive Sir Vincent and can testify, it is simple to understand....to drive can be quite easy too Is an interesting little loco to drive and fire It is also a compound

Go on lamborgini, make a tractor with steam, I dare you

Trevor the Traction Engine: "I'm a traction engine. I run on roads instead of rails." Fergus the Railway Traction Engine: "Am I a joke to you?"

Huh, I never realised those engines were designed locally in Kent, Ruckinge is only a few miles from my old stomping ground, another thing to be proud to be Kentish about

"Do it right!!!" -Fergus

Huh, well this blew my mind. Hit entertainment did their research on Fergus from Thomas and Friends. Basis: Blue Circle of the Bluebell railway formerly a cement works locomotive. Fergus: small shunting and DOW based at Sodor Cement Works even being called "the pride of the cement works". Spot on unlike say Whiff a inspector engine turned waste plant shunter.

What is the greatest comeback of a steam locomotive ever?

They still do this, actually. There are Unimog tractors that have been fitted up as shunting engines, and in the US some of the railroads use conventional heavy trucks equipped with steel guide wheels to haul a few cars around as maintenance crews.

Wow. It’s so cool that such a simple idea could work so well! These engines could really *do it right.*

Whenever I saw it was blue my little Thomas brain went IT’S FERGUS

My favorite Averling & Porter loco has to be Sirapite. It looks like it's given features of locomotives like the large cab and covering the flywheel but despite that it still retains the charm of the traction engine!

I love your stories from the more eccentric byways of railway history.

❤That's you awesome wonderful workshop sharing posting traction engine vapore fantastic history locomotive congratulations 🎉thank you!

Quality content as always! If tractors on wheels is an interesting topic, there's a locomotive called the mercury shunting tractor down at Butterley. I found an article on it a few years back but sadly that's gone awol now

Great Scott!!!

Fergus: We'll do it right... Bill & Ben: Keep your funnel out of our quarry.

Excellent shot. Like

Blue Circle is the Basis of Fergus from Thomas & Friends.

The fact theres 2 thomas characters in here :3

I think traction engines are awesome 😁👍

The Steam Engines Are Awesome

FERGUS

I've seen old model T Ford busses with steel wheels and cow catchers. Use to haul worker to the mines.

The editor of Railway Express magazine - looking excited in that photo! 👍

Speaking of swapping the car wheels with a steel wheels, the US army has a Jeep Willys with a steel wheels for WW2 & some trucks has been converted into a shunting socomotives until nowadays.

Mmmmm tractor:3

Low horsepower but high torque is similar to logging locomotives such as the Shays and Willamettes, Climaxes, and Heislers.

This reminds me that somewhere on RU-vid is a video of a hi-rail truck hauling a air number of freight cars on a standard US railroad -- probably a branch line, but meant for standard heavy rail equipment. It had 3 driving axles and 1 each of leading and trailing axles (with the steering wheels being held off the rails), so functionally a 2-6-2. And then you have things like the original Trackmobile, which had the pair of rail axles at 90 ` to the road wheel axles, so that it could drive across tracks, set itself down without having to turn, and then pick up some cars to shunt.

Sydenham was resident in chatham dockyard in the 90s for a while

The last cat that I saw that was converted for rail actually had thin pneumatic tires on flanged wheels. I think it was a late 40's Plymouth.

Contractor locomotives are such a cool thing. It's such a shame that kind of thing doesn't really exist now, at least the _custom build to requirements_ part doesn't.

If I ever needed to have a vehicle like this I would probably go for a road-rail Unimog! ...I do know, though, that there is a similar engine to these described on display at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton Road. It was one of two that operated on the nearby tramline to Waddeston Manor.

I knew there was something missing on my model railway. Now I know what it is.

Please do the Letourneaux overland train.

Thumbs up,really good vid.ps. I,ve never seen many portables especially considering how many were made.I,ll bet there s thousands in the 'nettles'ha ha. Thanks.

Should have been the basis for choo choo charles. 'I like children'.

One of the other five survivors is at the Amberley museum. I've no idea if it still runs. There is also a Ransomes Tramway Loco at Hollycombe, believed to be the oldest surviving Ransomes vehicle, although it's in a poor state sadly. I did think about volunteering there to work and preserve what is left.

Great video as always👍 One wish I have is that you could have compered the price of the traction engine to an ordinary shunting engine. /Chers🇸🇪

The Blue Circle is at the Nene Valley Railway and is having a overhaul, due back in service later this year, see it running at the 2018 Great Dorset Steam Fair.

Those engines chould really do it right

I'm absolutely going to bolt some train wheels (I.E: Car brake drums) to my John Deere R72 when I get the chance to.

There once was an engine who ran away🎵🎵

Plz do a video on Neilson box tank engines

Fergus really did it right

Shame Trevor never got to ride the rails 😁

"...Buuuuut, what can't we do? What can't we do?"

A railway traction engine is not a usual sight on a railway, despite how much they may look like steam locomotives.

Top gear

Are these the inspiration for Fergus in Thomas the Tank Engine?

FERGUS!

5:52 If you ask me, they need to work at the smelters.

So Aveling & Porter built Trevor, George and Fergus

there once was an engine who ran away

thus, fergus was made

these things are literally just the British equivalent of the Shay. A geared locomotive with low theoretical power but insane gearing allowing them to move shit up grades steeper than the average locomotive and handle track that was poorly laid... Shays 🤝 Traction Engines

three words, one sentence say it, and i’m yours (you know what it is, don’t lie)

Can you make an video on this things that looks like an train but aren't?

Fergus and Theo from Thomas are like these.

Blue circle rail tour up the lickey when?

You sould do a video of the south african condensors

Road rail vehicles are quite common for railway maintenance , so a van converted with aditional flanged wheels or an excavator with the same mod is not unusual. Iirc eurotunnel had a large 10 ton (or there abouts) mercedes truck for its rerailing team which also had additional flanged wheels for access to areas that had no road access. I realise it is not quite the same thing , but the road wheels are mainly retained for convenience of road acess now. Back in the 20s road transport was slower than rail so no good reason to retain road wheels back then.

I wonder what would happen if this thing met “Alfred and Judy”

So theoretically, how hard would it be to slap regular wheels on one of these locos and vice versa?

so basically these are a traction engine version of a pacer (although much much older)

Ok, I had no idea Fergus was based on an actual cement works engine

How about the Unimog ???

goober bois

I walked into a set of "Magical Buffers" and now the Machines are talking, PLZ SEND HELP!

I do wonder how well a 1995 F-800 would do as a shunter though.

Choo

Do it right do it right do it all night!

Reminds me of "the egg that moves", the work of some Catalan rail workers that needed to supervise constructions around the line. They adapted a van, plus gave it an extra leg to turn it around to go back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pl4fW5OxfIo.htmlsi=mnfZOB20CJZyK7oO

"Oh yes. I like children." - Trevor

They did it right

We need a ship of thought

4:54 Fergray

Trevor!!!

Wonder what would happen if a more modern road vehicle was put onto rails, even as just an experiment. Which would be successful? Who knows?

Would you look at that It’s Trevor, George, and Fergus