The restoration and running of a Foden 1928 6 ton steam wagon - EMF 2026

[applause] Good afternoon. I'm going to uh talk about my Foden steam lorry outside, how I came to buy it, how I came to restore it, and what we do with it now. And I'll go on to talk a bit about um the issues that uh we face in the steam uh engine movement today. But um I started off as um I think many of you might have done 50 years ago if you were around loving trains. Um so I wasn't I didn't actually take train numbers, but I did love steam railway engines. And in the late 1960s when they became uh redundant and were all scrapped um in August 1968 uh my father conveniently thought we should have a steamroller on the estate to help repair the estate roads. We had a quarry um and we had a steamroller. I had time then as a student to work in the vax to um help him restore roads and that was a really good start. that like a lot of young people, I yearned for speed. The steamroller would do about 5 miles an hour when nobody was looking. And one day I was driving along and I was overtaken by a Fod and steam lorry doing 18 miles an hour. And I thought, "This is what I really want." My mother, on the other hand, rather hoped I would get a sports car and find a wife more quickly. So in 1975 um my friend Dennis Brandt said who had a phone and I'd driven it and thought this is it. He said, "I've heard of one at Chessant uh in Harfordshire, not far from the what was the Tesco headquarters and Chessant is in the Lee just off the Lee Valley." And the man who owned this engine and his father bought it in 1944 from Beck and Pollitzer and he used to tow portable steam boilers around the Lee Valley and they were used for soil sterilization in the production of vegetables for the London market. So speed was not important then. Um but slow low torque know high torque low revs uh was um however in about 1945 a lot of um Atkinson uh AEC matadors became available at the end of the war. So the phone was just parked and this is how we found it. And there are two ways of looking at this picture. Um, an enthusiast would think this is the most wonderful thing they'd ever seen, full of potential. Um, the enthusiast girlfriend or wife or whatever might think this is the most awful thing. Why don't why isn't it been scrapped? But there it was lying in the field and just to it it was originally built for a firm in Canterbury and it has a Canterbury number FN. and the Canterbury firm sold it to Becken Polls who said we don't want a fulllength wagon which had a sort of proper loading bay on the back. We will cut it back so it becomes a tractor. So it's like the tractor unit of an articulated lorry and there were two benefits for that. um it worked better with the trailers they had. And then it was a tax advantage because in the late 1930s the government said, "We can't have all these steam lorries driving about the place burning tax-free coal. It's unfair." So they put a new tax on steam engines unless they were cut back to tractors. So tax avoidance and tax planning is nothing new. So there's my Foden. Um, the man who sold it uh told me he was interested in shotguns and my father luckily had an old pair of of of redundant shotguns in a nice case. So when I showed him the shotguns and then he was then amanable to selling it to me uh because a lot of other people had tried. Um and then I'll show you a few pictures of us collecting it on the 15th of March uh 1975. Um, so that's the side view. That's the view you get of it. You can just see the writing of Beck and Pollitzer, the slightly damaged chimney leaning back. Uh, but basically pretty complete. Um, I'm not sure what happened to the door, but I'll show a picture of it later. And, you know, it was a it was a very lucky thing to find. Um, I should be looking a bit happier, but there it is on its way out. And actually behind it you can see the AC matador which replaced it uh pushing us out. Uh the tires amazingly um were was still on the engine and Mr. Maxon the owner um hadn't gotten in uh hadn't got a a compressor so he filled the tires with oxygen from his oxy acetylene cutter. He was desperate to sell it. So there we are. Those are unusual rear wheels, but they've been changed. Um, and mounting it. There's the matador. Mr. Max and looking at nervously out of the cab. And that rod, that pole that you can see is a substitute for the steering system which was jammed up. So, we inserted it in the front axle, managed to steer the wheels straight, and that went on to um my friend Dennis Brandt's low loader. Um and there we are. Dennis Brandt on the right, Fred Tilbury, his former driver uh in the middle, and then friends of mine who are still around as is Dennis before we started the journey. Uh the learner was Dennis, that's why the sort of thing. and he later became uh chairman of the QBridge Engines Trust. So there it is having arrived at home. My parents were very nervous when they saw it. Um and uh that was the start of 5 years restoration work. Um that's just to show you what the spare door looked like. But luckily there was enough color so we could see the paint. and Beck and Pollitzer very kindly uh gave me guidance on on the writing and everything that I should write on on the engine. Um uh well the rule with steam engines when you get them is to dismantle them as much as possible. But we found that the boiler and the firebox which are the most expensive items to replace wasn't in bad condition. So there we were having taken it apart and replacing bits that were missing uh and painting them and then about to uh reassemble them. Uh and and you can it's quite useful because you can actually see the three-speed gears driven off the um crankshaft uh on the left hand side of the picture. Um the engine is a compound so it's got two cylinders, one 4 1/2 in and one 7. So the idea uh for economy is that the steam is used first at high pressure in the smaller cylinder and then it goes uh across to the lower pressure side uh before being exhausted. So it has a slightly softer exhaust than some engines and that does uh of course save um save water. Uh talking about water, we use 4 and a half gallons a mile. Um which is is fine. And coal um we probably use about 100 weight every five or six miles. So it's quite quite economical. And coal it's designed for when these engines were running coal was um 1 pound50 a ton. And these are designed for high quality Welsh coal because the firebox is quite small and Welsh coal has a very high calorific value. So the restoration process went on. Lots of people helped me and in those days which is 50 years ago there were still men with sheds with bits of engines in them and you'd sort of there was no internet of course so you know people would say I know a man who's got what you want so let's go and chap them up and came come away with important original parts um that's the other side um and just to show you what a new boiler looks like the original boiler lasted till about um about 15 years ago and then we had to have it replaced by a firm called Israel Newton um who are in Comprompton in Darbisha. But that means obviously everything been taken apart and you can quite clearly in this picture see the different sizes of the high pressure and the low pressure cylinder. Um, and the valve on the side is a simple slide valve uh with Stevenson's link. Um, this is a friend who's got a a valve b a cylinder boring device. The cylinders, needless to say, were quite worn and so we had them made um parallel. Uh, that's Neil Goff from S Sussex. Um, once I'd done the boiler, I couldn't resist having a go at driving it. So, here it is on its first day out. Only the chimney has been painted, but we ran down the road. I didn't have a tender, so I couldn't go very far without stopping to fill up from a bucket, but it was an exciting day. Um, it took five years, as I said. Um, and that's gradual process. The man in the brown coat is Albert Bourne who very helpfully um I was introduced to at the Foddin's Museum. So he came down to give us a bit of guidance and eventually when the Foden Museum was closed a number of spare parts came to my shed which I was able to give to or sell to another person who was restoring an engine eventually. But that's what you can see uh the engine without its sides on. Um, so what I'll quickly do, um, so I don't know if you're familiar with the workings of a steam engine, um, show you what, uh, what the working parts are or what the controls are. So that is obviously the front view. The royal coat of arms is because I think George V had a Foden on his estate at Sandingham, so they got a royal um, license uh, uh, to to put that on. Um, but So if you open the smoke box door, this is what you see. So these are the fire tubes that bring the smoke uh and the heat from the furnace or from the firebox into the chimney. And this box on top, which looks like a silencer, um is in fact known as an exhaust steam heater. Fodens used to work a lot in towns and people used to complain if they couldn't see in winter because the street was filled with steam and smoke. So this reheated the exhaust so that it didn't there wasn't there wasn't quite as much um steam to to obstruct the view. Fodens were always driven by two people but their basic job of steam lorries was to work from railway station. So most of the freight was delivered, most of the parcels delivered by train and then each uh then there would be haulers who would do short distances with two men uh one to fire, one to drive and then two men to unload at the other end. So it was quite an efficient uh system. Um and that's the exhaust steam heater in place and that nozzle on top uh is the exhaust. So this is the other end of the boiler in the cab. And um I haven't got a pointer, but if you start at the bottom, you can see a handle. That's the door of the fire firebox. Uh then there's a brass sort of brass object above it that tells you the level of the water in the boiler. And then on above that is a brass tap which provides the steam for the steam injector and then the pressure gauge. And the black tap on the right is um used for drawing water out of um rivers and streams. It's a steam ejector which helps which lifts water up and puts it in the in the tank. Um so that's the that's all you get with the steam engine. Uh that's the water gauge. Uh you can see a bit of white at the top that shows the level of the boiler. Um this is the most mystical and technical thing on the engine practically. Um apart from the alternator which we've retrofitted. Uh this is a whites steam injector has two cones and when you turn the steam on one cone draws the water out of the tank and then it combines the cold water from the tank with the steam from the boiler in a combining cone and the combination of cold water and the kinetic energy released by the heat of the steam is sufficient to drive the combined water into the boiler against the pressure of the tap. So they are very uh important and useful things. Um and they work quite well even when they look a bit dirty like this one. Uh the alternative to the steam injector is this mechanical pump which pumps water as you go along. It's geared down so it doesn't pump too fast. And in a sophistication unusual in the steam world, the cold water feed on the left then went into a little chamber which was preheated by part of the exhaust steam. It's called this exhaust steam heater. U a feed water heater. Uh so that must have saved a few pennies in terms of heat loss and recycling. Um those are the controls. So uh you can see a handle in the foreground uh at about 3:00 that is the regulator or throttle. The lever above it is controls forward or reverse and then the steering wheel um is obviously in the normal in the normal place and it's it's an acean type steering which was a sort of modern type for its day. The engine was cut back as I mentioned and it was converted to um pneumatic tires in the 1930s with wheels that are 40 by8 the same size as American some American lorries the tires now the first ones I bought were £20 they they cost £600 now they're called John Bull but they come from China um this is the right hand engine those two brass things oil pots And then the valve gear. You can see on the right the oil pump for the engine further right. And you can see a bit of the um connecting rod going into the um trunk guide. And that's the other side slightly clearer that whizzes round at about 300 RPM. Um and there's the crankshaft with uh marine type big ends and a big counterwe uh and that is normally covered over and we lubricate that sort of every day. And when you stop for a drink or lunchtime, it doesn't have it lasts quite a long time. Uh those are the three gears. High speed on the right, middle speeds in the middle, and you can just see the low speed on the left. The nominal speed is, I think, 3, 6, and 12 mph. In fact, uh we've geared it up, you know, rather than like an electric bicycle. I've interfered with it. It'll now do 18 miles an hour or even 20. Um, but the limiting factor is not speed. It's stopping. So, there are the brakes. There's two brakes here. One external contracting, one internal expanding. Uh, the one on the right being slightly weaker. Uh, but you can clip them on as you can see by those levers at the bottom. Um, and that's very helpful. Uh, the coal sits under the driver's seat. Uh, coal is an issue. Uh, we've stopped coal mining here. I've got a reserve stock of Welsh coal, but it'll run out soon. Uh, and we have to buy it like everybody else from Kazakhstan, Colombia, South Africa, and some of it isn't very good and it's very smoky. Steam engines in the railway world and in the steam traction engine world, we burn about 35,000 tons of coal a year, which is what Drax B used to burn in a day. So, we're not major polluters. Um, and we haven't been in the sights of Ed Milliband touch wood, but um, I hope we will stay out of them. Uh, that's how we lubricate it. That's an oil pot with a wed trim, and that siphons the oil uh, down the pipe. That'll last about a day. Um, there it is with its lid on. Um, that's the final drive, which is a a Reynolds chain uh chain drive from a sprocket on the counterhaft below the crankshaft going to the back axle where I'm pleased to say there's the 40x8. That's a 600lb tire. That's what it looks like. And on the back axle there's a a nice differential um which uh does does the job. Finally, there's a picture there of the um the Akaman steering. Uh previously they were steered with chain and bobbin. Uh and that those two well the man in the cab there used to drive steam engines and uh so he he these are two men who helped me with with with the restoration uh and uh gave me a bit of guidance. Um and there we are at the London Brighton HCVC run in 1980 when we drove down from London uh in the day and Beckham Pollitzer very kindly took us back. Um we were in a very small class of steam tractor so we won it too. Uh and there we are racing along the road. We tow we've got a Foden trailer which we tow and and a big living van. So we have a lot of fun with it. I've driven to Dorset in it in the day, 110 miles. Um, and it goes out. It's great fun taking out at night because the lights work and um, it's it's it's a it's a very nice machine because a lot of traction engines, the man who steers only steers and doesn't and and the driver fires and controls the engine. With a Foden, the driver steers and fire steers and controls the engine, but the fireman has a sort of full-time job like a railway engine fireman. Um, it was I failed to say it was made in 1928 and I failed to say it's 49 horsepower. Um, there we are on the 40th anniversary of my ownership with all the people who collected it uh, bar one uh, 40 years earlier. And the final showoff picture um, this is it is a genuine picture. This actually this is the days before we could photoshop. So my friend's old Foden from 1915 which had been out and fought in the first world war and was brought back from Comre is the design before this one. So that was a two-speed and here we are with a 3-speed um overtaking uh and quite convincingly actually. So we we do have a bit of fun with it. That's it. [applause] Thank you very much. [applause]