Tractor Magazine News
Crawlers of all colours await the start of the big event.
Kiwis establish new crawler world record
At last the New Zealanders have something to smile about! After a gallant attempt at the Guinness World Record for working tractors a few years ago, they have come back with a bang by fielding 470 tracklayers and 33 excavators at Tapanui in celebration of the West Otago Club’s 50th anniversary.
At last the Kiwis have done it! New Zealand set a world record for working tracklayers as part of the West Otago Vintage Club’s 50th anniversary on Saturday 15 March – and the sound and feel of those tracked machines working across the paddock will never be forgotten, say our two reporters, Leo Caunter and Mike Houghton.
With wonderful hot weather and the amazing scenery in New Zealand’s South Island, particularly with the backdrop of the Blue Mountains in this prime sheep country, it was always going to be a superb event.
The build-up to the record-making event was an intense but orderly affair, kicking off on the Friday evening when transporters of all kinds arrived with their many varied and sometimes rare loads.
In many ways, the metal-tracked crawler is a dying breed, so the event was going to celebrate these wonderful machines as never before.
Charlie Davis and his team of helpers from the WOVC laid the machines in the area where they were required, ready for the 2.30pm start on George and Marilyn Redditt’s Brooksdale Farm at Tampanui.
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What a lovely line-up of vintage tractors. Graham Churchill’s 1925 John Deere D 32466 ‘spoker’ ran for the first time in a while on the Thursday before the show.
Tractor World Show impresses yet again
Our chief correspondent revisits the show he started with Michael Hadley of the West Midlands NVTEC seven years ago, and is delighted with what he finds.
You couldn’t wish to find a more pleasant show setting than the Three Counties Showground at Malvern, Worcs, with the Malvern Hills reaching into the sky just behind the site to give quite an awesome feeling to the place.
Last year the view was obscured by heavy rain and mist, and this time the hills could be seen clearly after the early morning gales had passed through – but while most of us were tucked up in bed at 3am, auctioneer Howard Pugh, his wife and team were trying to keep everything together, transferring stock from the marquee that was being totally destroyed by the wind to the container trailers from which the small items would be sold later in the day.
More on the sale, and the remarkable price paid for a very original 1960 Fordson Power Major, that went overseas, can be found in our Sales & Marketplace News starting on page 108.
For several years the show was the season’s opener, but that honour has now gone to the excellent charity fundraising Somerset Tractor Show that takes place at the Bath & West Showground on the first weekend in February.
Since the Malvern show started, the halls have been improved to make them cosier, cleaner and friendlier, and this year’s event attracted some 298 exhibits in 31 classes, and more than 50 trade stands along with some local tractor club stands. As always, they were battling it out for the coveted Best Club Stand award.
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With its newly-canvased Lambourn cab, Bill Eagles’ International 434 was working another TS59.
Banbury Sodbusters at Rothersthorpe Ploughing Match
THOSE who competed in the Banbury Sodbusters’ Ploughing Match on the 25-acre Windmill Field at Poplars Farm, Rothersthorpe, on Sunday 27 January 2008 were fortunate to find warm, drying conditions after days of torrential rain, writes Donald Bowler.
The match took place by courtesy of David Morphy, and the sunshine dried out the baled wheat stubble on medium loam soil sufficiently to allow the ploughing to go ahead, although most of the transport had to be towed onto the field by a Case Magnum 135. One entrant remarked that he’d been towed off many a match field, but never onto one!
The host’s brother Steve Murphy, who farms 100 White Park cattle at Woodford, near Thrapston from Cottenham, did a good job with his 1966 Massey-Ferguson 165 matched to an MF160 plough.
The 1962 three-cylinder Massey-Ferguson 35 belonging to Graham Trower of Sulgrave was working with a trailed Fisher Humphries 2F plough. Fisher Humphries also made stationary balers (both twine and wire tie), forage harvesters, rotary hedge cutters and, notably, imported the Lely Victory combine whose table folded in half vertically before such items were made removable for transportation.
Another unusual plough was a 2F Cockshutt belonging to Donald Taylor of Sulgrave. This quite lightweight plough was suitable for a 1955 Ferguson TEF.
The rarest Ferguson 20, and probably the rarest of all the tractors there, was the Perkins factory conversion of a 1949 TEA. Owner Adrian Marshall of Wissendine has known this tractor since he was 11. It was delivered new to John Lane’s Chestnut Farm at Burley-on-the-Hill near Oakham, Rutland, in October 1949. Perkins collected it the day it arrived at the farm, and returned it three days later with a P3 engine fitted. The P3 has needed little work since, and is still in the green paint it was wearing the day it was fitted. Bricklayer Adrian bought the tractor from its first owner 12 years ago.
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Marketplace News
Case 2670s don’t come up every day. We sent Robin Simonds along to take this picture.
Traction King on top
A LOW hours Case 2670 aroused
interest when Barry L Hawkins held a
farm machinery dispersal sale in good
weather at Hall Farm, Garboldisham,
Diss, Norfolk, on Thursday 28 February.
Built between 1974-8, the model
featured the 504 cu in Case turbo six
intercooler engine producing over 219
pto hp through a 12-speed transmission.
It was the second generation of this type
of ‘monster’ tractor by JI Case, and
featured category two linkage and a new
hydrostatic steering.
The bugs in the earlier 2470 modelwere
pretty much ironed out with this tractor,
that had the famous electronicallycontrolled
four-wheel steering. However,
the largest in the 70 series was the 2870,
featuring a 674 cu in Scania 674 engine.
These good workhorses, that once
had good homes in East Anglia, are
becoming rare, but this one sold for just
£4100. Even with such a low mileage,
though, they are big tractors to
accommodate on any farm in the UK or
Republic of Ireland.
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