Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i Old Glory

Kelsey Media’s (owners of Old Glory) Tractor World Show returns to Malvern’s Three Counties Showground on 21–22 February 2026, a show which the editor of Old Glory created in 2001. Bookings for exhibitors, club displays, autojumble entries and traders are nearly complete. This year, as well as the regular historic farm machinery and agricultural exhibits, there will be brand-new tractors, alongside miniature steam, stationary engines, classic commercials, Land Rovers and so much more. Visitors can look forward to new themes, anniversaries and celebrations including The Friends of Ferguson Heritage and the Ferguson Club, who are bringing examples of these iconic machines to mark 80 years of the Ferguson TE-20 and 70 years of the grey and gold FE-35. Saturday kicks off with the spectacular H J Pugh’s live auction, featuring…

It was some 11 years ago since we were here last over the festive period and the 2025 event was just as popular as it was in 2014. This site has created such a lot of good memories over the decades for so many of us, firstly the warm welcome we are always given, secondly the amazing historic machinery that’s here. If it was not for the every cheerful former 1960s Daily Mirror reporter, ex Atkinson publicity manager and 1969-75 Foden steam wagon world tourer Michael List-Brain bringing back rare steam equipment from all over the world, especially South America, Africa and Australia, we would only have catalogue pictures of such things to look at. Thanks to him these things are real and ‘live’, made at a time when British…

This year the event took place at Robert Thompson’s A J Thompson & Sons farm at Old Ashford Road, Brenzett Green, Romney Marsh, Kent for the second time in three years. Some £7,800 was given away to charity in 2024 and things looked good on Sunday 7 September with good weather and a great crowd along with 69 ploughmen and women taking part. This is a great match to attend and is classed as the major opener in the south-east. It will be good to see the organisers put together a team of Fowler K7 engines that dominated this part of Kent until 1953, when the area was flooded by sea water which put a stop to farming for a few years before the salty land came right again. Nevertheless,…

After a poor weather forecast things turned out the other way on Sunday 21 September when in sunshine the famous Casterton Working event on the Rutland-Lincolnshire border took place on Brian Knight’s farm. Besides the veteran and vintage tractors and stationary engines, there were a number of steamers in action and of course steam ploughing. We were able to enjoy the delights of former Bomford & Evershed 1918 Fowler BB1 No.15182 HO5869 Achilles one end while at the other was Brian Knight’s 1925 Fowler BB1 No. 15451 SD9378 Victory looking good. On Sunday it took the ploughing team some time to get things going, either they didn’t have the right spanner to adjust and tighten the plough shares or there were other issues along the way. However after lunch things…

If Napoleon’s words about the English are true – that we are ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ – then there can scarcely have been a happier day in our history than when Henry Ford opened his factory at Manchester’s Trafford Park in 1912. From that factory gushed a steady stream of his 7cwt delivery vans, and no more would shopkeepers have to rely on horse-carts or handcarts to make slow and energy-depleting deliveries. Mr Ford’s mechanical beast of burden would go faster and further, never tire, and consume fuel only when in active use, and if something broke it would be far easier and less traumatic to repair than a broken horse. Of course, there were other motorised vans, but Ford’s had the advantage of being affordably priced to begin with,…

PROPOSED CLAYTON & SHUTTLEWORTH NATIONAL HERITAGE CENTRE There is a proposal to establish a National Heritage Centre for Clayton & Shuttleworth at The Shuttleworth Collection and part of The Shuttleworth Trust which sounds wonderful to Old Glory magazine. Stuart Gray and James Michell tell us more Over the past 15-20 years there has been a small volunteer team within the Vehicle Group who have been restoring and operating the Clayton & Shuttleworth heritage items owned by the Shuttleworth Trust. The Trust initially acquired a small collection of items in the early 1990s, but this has been added to over the past 20 years through both opportunistic acquisition and a generous donation to the Trust. This has enabled the Trust to have what is considered to be the largest number of…

Well, its 7am on 2nd January and there is a good layer of snow on the ground. We had been so lucky over the festive season with dry and reasonably warm weather bringing out huge crowds, certainly wherever I went anyway, and that culminated at Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey on New Year’s Day where over 1,000 vintage and classic vehicles were on display. We have a lot to cover on this page this month, but firstly I would like to congratulate the Netley Marsh Steam & Craft Show committee, under the leadership of their ever affable chairman Danny Dovey. Their show was held over 25-27 July 2025 and has just given away £50,000 to local charities. This show will be back to its traditional third weekend of July in 2026, that’s…

Good news! After the Bredgar & Wormshill Light Railway near Sittingbourne offered for sale its 1919 Garrett 7hp traction engine No. 33442 in Old Glory in October. It has been sold locally to near Marden and will be moving to its new home in the spring. The Garrett has been at the railway for 31 years, is in excellent condition and runs and looks so well thanks to by Brian Hope’s efforts. Its new British owner commutes between the UK and Chicago, Illinois and Brian will still be involved with the fully-sprung traction engine. It did look as though the engine was to be sold to the family of a former owner, but that didn’t happen in the end…

AVELING & PORTER SIR VINCENT FOR SALE Traction engine-on-rails Sir Vincent is looking for a new home as the owner’s family put the entire railway collection of the late David Buck up for sale. The 1917-built Aveling & Porter engine is one of two operational standard-gauge steam locomotives that are on offer, the other being 1928-built Peckett ‘R2’ 0-4-0ST Hornpipe. Both locomotives worked on the private half-mile long dumbbell loop line at his 12-acre home near Windsor and the sale includes track and infrastructure, including signalling equipment, and other rolling stock. The one-time owner of ‘B1’ locomotive No. 61306 Mayflower and Steam Dreams railway tour company died in August 2024, aged 80, and his family have decided to sell the railway as it doesn’t have the means to maintain and…

The Friday was wonderful weatherwise at the Weeting Engine Rally & Country Show over 18-20 July, but it went downhill right after that unfortunately. In the ploughing field there were two sets of engines working. Resident 1925 Fowler BB1s No. 15453/4 TW1803/2 Saucy Sue and Bonzor Tom were in fine form and working early on the light soil conditions, operated by Paul Coupland and Jason Cook. The engine’s names are based on famous race horses of the time and were with A C Cole & Sons, West Tilbury, Essex and still working until after WW2. In fact Bonzor Tom was the show engine on Fowler’s December 1925 Smithfield Show stand in London. The engines have been with Richard Parrot for nearly 50 years now and were reboxed by Bicknells in…

Now in its 69th year, Dan Brothwell and the organising team certainly delivered a fabulous spectacle for the public to enjoy. As always, the four-field site was packed with exhibits with 70 full-size engines in attendance, a record for the show. The origins of the rally date back to 1956 and the early days of steam preservation and will always be associated with local ploughing and agricultural contractors, Beeby Brothers of Rempstone. The Rempstone Rally originally started as an informal get-together in the Beeby Brothers’ yards, which at that time were still home to a sizeable fleet of engines. After a few changes of location, it has been at its present home of Turn Post Farm, Wymeswold for many years now. As always, Rempstone had a superb display of full-size…

HASTINGS WESTFIELD LIGHTS ROAD RUN On Saturday 20 December at 5.15pm in Old Town, Hastings, East Sussex some 200 classic and vintage vehicles started off on a 16 mile road run to raise money for charity, watched by over 5,000 people around the route which was certainly not for the faint hearted with various hold ups along the way. The event was organised by the well known Andy Munday and his helpers from the Rural Times Past rally, (which raised over £20,000 for charity in 2025) particularly Jon Playfoot and Trevor to name but a few. There were problems staging this event and it cost the organisers £8,000 just for the insurance! The entourage toured around Ore, Westfield, where they took in the famous Christmas lights, then on through St…

When Adrian Vaughan and Jeff Bone bought 1930 Wallis & Steevens 6-ton Advance road roller No. 8047 in 2004 it was the culmination of a dream of owning their own steam engine. The two friends had harboured the need to own an engine since they used to play together with their Mamod and Wilesco traction engines as boys. During their 22-year ownership of the Wallis, named Endeavour but affectionately known by Adrian and Jeff as The Wally, it has attended many rallies and road runs in Sussex, Kent and gone to the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire in 2021. It has even paid homage to its birthplace by visiting Milestones Museum in Basingstoke, Hampshire. The Advance design is unorthdox, but many of the ideas incorporated in it are still in…

Looks don’t tell everything and that was the case with 1896 Aveling & Porter R6 No. 3781 inside flywheel roller known as Tiny Tim. The roller has never been properly sorted out since the boiler was overhauled by Bob Dockery. The Williams family and their Wye Valley Heritage Centre hardly steamed it before their 2007 sale, which saw the engine head to Innishannon, Cork, Republic of Ireland where it was given a brilliant paint job and perhaps a bit more. However the owner did not get on with it well and it was sold back to the UK and to Sheffield where again nothing happened with it. Put back on the market in 2023/4 it was sold to Stephen Brett of east Kent who took it on knowing it need…

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One of the famous Great Little Trains of Wales, the 2-foot gauge Vale of Rheidol (VoR) climbs up through the spectacular Rheidol Valley to the tourist attraction of Devil’s Bridge. Originally opened in 1902 to serve the lead mines in the valley, the railway had essentially become a tourist operation by the time it was taken into the ownership of the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1922. The GWR provided the railway with three new Swindon-built locomotives which were typically GWR in appearance and, at eight feet wide, large locomotives for the 2ft-gauge. These have provided the mainstay of the line’s services ever since and are kept in immaculate condition by their full-time crews. The railway passed from GWR ownership to British Railways upon nationalisation in 1948. It remained the…

Yesterday’s Farming was first held over fifty years ago and continues the tradition of working vintage farm machinery events that in a way are reminiscent of the early days of the Great Dorset Steam Fair and there is steam ploughing involved these days. The comparison is not without foundation; two Somerset friends with an interest in vintage farming machinery and rural bygones returned from a visit to the 1972 Dorset Great Working of Steam Engines and decided that they wanted to hold a similar event, but without steam. They advertised in a local newspaper, appealing for anyone of like mind to attend a meeting from which the South Somerset Agricultural Preservation Club was formed. The following year they achieved their ambition and held an event in conjunction with the Yeovil…

With the season of steam events and ploughing matches over for the year, and having had sufficient rain to soften the soil baked hard by a dry summer, ploughing engine owners Andy Melrose and Matt King decided to enjoy the weekend of 20-21 September by steam ploughing with family and friends at a farm between Wells and Shepton Mallet in in Somerset. James Hamilton reports for Old Glory. Andy Melrose is the owner of 1870 Fowler 12hp ploughing engine No. 1368 and Matt King owns 1926 Fowler K7 10hp engine No.16646 Jack of Herts. The plough used was a six-furrow anti-balance plough that was once with the Hobbs brothers of Langford. The field considered most suitable for the steam ploughing was adjacent to Andy’s land. It was a gently sloping…

Around 25 full-size steamers were puffing around beneath the fierce sun, among which the oldest and perhaps the most spectacular was the 1873 Fowler ploughing engine No. 1908 The Mistress, shown by Paul Ransley of Tonbridge. New to Harman Visger of Chiseldon with Fowler No. 2299, it worked until 1930 before being laid up, gradually stripped and eventually restored by Ransley, who fabricated many of the parts. Notable also was the presence of the 1920 Garrett 4CD 4nhp tractor No. 33987 The Leader – originally used for log haulage before receiving a showman’s conversion in the late 1950s. It was good to see it being enjoyed by Paul Stingmore, who bought it last year and, hailing from Enfield, was the only entrant from the other side of London. Among the…

The story of the Ferguson TE-20 really goes back to 1943 when World War 2 was just starting to turn in the favour of the Allies, but it would be another 2½ years before it was all over. Harry Ferguson knew that his time was nearly up with the Ford Motor Co in Detroit, USA and in the UK (separate Ford company). Even then Lord Percival Perry, the top dog when it came to Ford of Great Britain matters, was saying unofficially they were not going to be producing the Ford Ferguson 2N at Dagenham after the cessation of hostilities and he confirmed that again in 1945. With this in mind, Harry Ferguson ordered his trusted associate Trevor Knox to return to the UK. Trevor had worked for him since…