Alex Saville has sent me this selection of Awesome Atkisons (which should please AtkiPete and Chris G) and he says: "Brian,a handful of 'Atki's' from Bill Reid & Robert Laidlaw's excellently organised 'Ayrshire Road Run' in July this year.Alex."
Nice to see Cummins represented here after so many Gardners...And I take it this is a Silver Knight...?
And for all you Gardner fans this should cheer you up after my heresy...
Question: Who built the sticky-out-the-back 'sleeper' bits? Jennings? I heasitate to call them sleeper cabs as they hardly had enough room for a hamster... Now click through here for one more.
And for an (agricultural) pie..what's that on the back of the trailer. (And don';t say 'it's a Tractor Biglorryblog' because even I can see that!)
Yes indeed, it was Jennings Coachworks of Crewe who made the sleeper pods for the Mk.2 Atkinson, and a number of strikingly-similar conversions were also carried out by Longton Coachcraft of Preston. There were neater (but more expensive) conversions carried out, and which featured a new, full-length roof, most notably by Ellis & Son of Tonbridge on behalf of Atkinson Vehicles (London) Limited, and by W & J Riding of Longridge (a TDG company).
All are Borderers except for UFA 102J, which is a Mk.2 'Silver Knight'. If you really wanted, I could check in the lining of my anorak and tell you the history of all 5, but then again....
Perhaps I could just mention, though, that GOB 455N is a very rare survivor from the famous Atkinson fleet of Killingbeck (Transport) Limited of Blackburn!
Ok agi pie to oz Its a P3 Fordson major
I know this a big lorry site, not a tractor site, but the question was asked, so do you have an answer, Alex, on that tractor? I would hate to argue with a knowledgeable young fellow like Ray Jay, but I'm not too sure about that tractor. It is certainly a Fordson, but I'm not sure about the model.
I'm only speaking from an ancient and slightly fading memory here so I could easily be wrong, but I seem to remember that "P3" was just the name of the Perkins 3-cylinder engine as fitted to the Ferguson tractor and many other applications, and Ford used an engine based on the P3, but not the same, and called it the "F3" for their Fordsons. I don't think any model of the tractor itself was actually called a P3 or F3, but of course they might have been commonly called that.
When I was a 15/16/17 year old in the 50s, I used to work on a dairy farm in the holidays near Silverdale, about 40 miles north of Auckland and the farmer I was working for bought an old Fordson Major from a guy in Pukekohe, about 40 miles south of Auckland and I was given the job of driving it form Pukekohe to Silverdale. I thought this would be great, until I found out that this Fordson had a petrol engine and a 3-speed gearbox.
1st gear, max speed was 1mph.
2nd gear, max speed was 2mph.
3rd gear, max speed was 3mph.
I arrived back at Silverdale 2 days later after about 28 hours driving, very tired, very sore and very bored.
Sorry, Vic, I didn't even give the tractor a glance!
Alex