Ploughing By Steam
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- čas přidán 26. 04. 2024
- Steam ploughing with a set of Fowler BB1 Ploughing Engines, No. 15145 'Rusty' of 1917, and No. 15222 OF 1918. The engines are being used with a Fowler 2 furrow balance plough from about 1870.
Ploughing engines are a specialised form of steam traction engine used for ploughing. Each engine has a winch underneath that is used to haul the plough back and forth across the field. The engines then move forwards alternately, allowing the whole field to be plough. The twin engine system was developed by John Fowler in the 1860s and 70s, and the firm bearing his name manufactured them up until the 1930s. Fowler engines were exported throughout the British Empire, and further afield.
These particular engines were built as part of an emergency order from the Ministry of Food in WW1, due to the limited food supplies making it through to Great Britain from America as a result of the U-Boat attacks in the Atlantic. The idea was to use the ploughing tackle to get as much waste land into production as possible. - Věda a technologie
Very nice!
Well filmed and few spectators running around in front of the camera.
Thankyou! Makes filming far easier when there is no public there! 😂
What a lovely way to spend the day, Many thanks for showing
No better way to spend a day! Glad you enjoyed the video.
great to see steam ploughing any time
I wonder how many horsepower, this has many current day applications in an era of power shortages, blackouts, and high costs-It could drive a large generator.
(bing copilot AI)
"The Fowler BB1 ploughing engine is a remarkable piece of machinery. Let’s delve into its details:
The Fowler BB1 is a two-cylinder compound engine that was manufactured between 1919 and the early 1930s. Despite its relatively small scale and high attractiveness, it packs a punch as a powerful and rugged two-speed model. Here are some key specifications:
Length: Approximately 46 inches.
Weight: A hefty 240 pounds.
Boiler Diameter: 5 inches.
Operating Pressure: 75 psi.
This engine was a favorite for many model enthusiasts, especially at the 1:6 scale described by John Haining and Colin Tyler in the 1960s. It’s no wonder that it continues to captivate enthusiasts at exhibitions, as demonstrated by Jack Brundsdon’s showcase at the 2015 Bristol Exhibition1.
Now, let’s put its power into perspective. Imagine a pair of these ploughing engines working together. They could plough an astounding 40 acres per day, operating seven days a week. That’s a ninety-fold increase compared to what a man and a horse could achieve in the same time! Truly a testament to engineering prowess and efficiency2.
So, while I can’t provide an exact horsepower figure for the Fowler BB1, its impact on productivity speaks volumes. 🚜💨"
Considering how few farms actually employed a Steam tractor, they really had very few impacts, it was not until the big tractor wars of the 1920s and 1930s that tractors were finally replacing the horse.
And even then, it took until 1960s to finally see tractors become a commodity worldwide, even in the 1950s america, farmers were still using horses for most tasks.
A tractor was just too much of an investment, while a horse could be bred and fed on the farm, but seeing how high tech Steam could make a farm over 100 times more productive in the 1850s, is in itself remarkable, in the UK they used large pulley systems powered by a central steam engine to pull plow through the field back and forth, expensive to setup but still cheaper than Steam traction engines.
one would think it would be more economical (or at least faster) if each engine just pulled a plow behind it and worked like normal tractors
For British soil, the traction engines really were too heavy. These engines could comfortably pull a 7 or 8 furrow plough so would plough at 3 or 4 times the rate we are with the little two furrow plough shown. Small engines were tried for direct ploughing as you describe but it never really caught on.
@@SteamandThings Thank you; I was going to ask the same thing. Here in the States we have so many pictures (and even to this day re-enactments) of steam tractors pulling the ploughs behind them. I know you say the British soil is too soft; but it doesnt seem all the different in quality from where I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. There was a Mennonite family that had a Peerless steam engine, and used it on their farm for plowing and threshing. It was also a regular sight at the county's summer steam traction festival.