What are these wheels - steam lorry?

These are full size, but perhaps someone recognises them from a model?

They are cast iron with solid rubber tyres and attached to the remains of an axle and differential casing so perhaps from a steam lorry, but not one that I can match to a picture.

Thanks for any suggestions, Adrian

Hi Adrian

Sorry can't help with I.D for wheel but this link is for one of the best collection of steam engines etc *link*

http://www.steamscenes.org.uk/

Hope it helps

H

A friend of mine had similar wheel for a trolley for his very large open crank engine and they had come off a bomb trolley.

Martin P

The axel tube is hollow indicating a half shaft from the diff set. So early internal combustion engine seems likely. Noel

Obviously not the case if they have a diff and axle but they bring to my mind the weight bearing wheels of a tanks tracks. I think the driven wheels are usually sprockets so obviously not the case.

Thank you for that link, Harry!

A live axle with differential does not rule out it being from a steam-lorry, though we can't see fully how it is arranged on the photographed unit.

Most over-type steam wagons were chain-driven so had a sprocket on an open differential mounted on a traction-engine pattern live axle, using a cannon shaft running on a through shaft which passed through the entire assembly from end to end.

Some overtypes and the undertype-wagons had direct gearing, which on some makes was all enclosed rather as in modern front-wheel drive practice.

So those forlorn remnants in the photo could be from some steam-lorry yet to be identified - yet somehow look too old for the shaft-driven lorries exemplified by Alley-McClellan ('Sentinel' )  and Foden..

I don't think it was from an early petrol-engine road vehicle as that wheel and tyre pattern look too early. Could it be from some agricultural or forestry vehicle though, needing a rugged and simple design?

It's entirely possible that wheel set's last use was as a second-hand fitting on some farm trailer or the like, making its identity even harder to trace. Are the brambles hiding any more of whatever that axle fitted - or was fitted to at some later stage?

....

Why the thanks?

It led to me seeing 10 photos taken at a couple of Great Dorset Steam fairs, of my "pet" - the Hindley mid-engine steam wagon!

That there is a full-size replica built to commission by Richard 'Turbo' Vincent at his works, happily not ever so far from the village of Bourton, the vehicle's ancestral home.

I was able to view it at a very early stage when Mr. Vincent was assembling the chassis but yet to find an engine and was considering adapting a Sissons unit (still rightly, a fully-enclosed inverted-vertical compound.) I have not seen the finished lorry, but he and I agreed on one point - the problem of trying to build something from old publicity photos. His full-size, mine about 1/3 size.

Studying those 'Steam Scene' photos though, revealed we've both interpreted many of the details reasonably faithfully - including that differential placed part-way along the axle. I think from a later photo I acquired, the original was built into the wheel. Mine is an Austin car unit modified to fit a traction-engine type axle to principles from general contemporary literature, but located rather as on Mr. Vincent's example.

That boiler on show at GDSF differs from most of the originals photographed in having a flanged and riveted top-plate. The old photos show a flat plate bolted on, with some three dozen prominent studs and nuts round the top. My miniature is even further out - a 'Western Steam' copper unit. The lack of cladding seems prototypical but I will clothe mine for both appearance and function.

At least Richard's or more accurately his customer's replica Hindley wagon is running. I am still struggling to design and build my model version with one set-back and re-work after another. You wouldn't think it can be so difficult to fit a boiler in a chassis!

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 19/05/2021 23:13:45

Good point about the differential being not the usual arrangement for a steam wagon. There are only the rusted remains of the casing, no actual differential or halfshafts and no other bits of the machine in the hedge. My great grandfather did own traction engines and at least one lorry which I think was a Clayton but this was all sold off before I was born and no-one remembers what this axle came from. As Nigel says, it could well have been adapted or intended as a trailer and not original, so its the wheels which are the most likely to lead to someone recognising it.