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Vintage vehicles head for Tractor Fest at Newby Hall
The UK’s largest tractor festival will see Newby Hall, near Ripon, from June 10-11,hosting more than 1,000 vintage and modern tractors, 600 stationary engines, commercial vehicles, cars, trucks and motorcycles.
Farmer Dave Mashiter will be travelling to Tractor Fest from Aspatria in Cumbria with his three-tonne Richard Hornsby portable lamp start engine.
Built in 1912, the engine originally drove a rack saw bench used to cut timber for housing in Swansea. The huge engine will be up and running in pride of place in the Factory Portable Engines special feature at Tractor Fest.
Tom Moffat from Ayr, South-West Scotland, is bringing two rare vintage Ruston and Hornsby lighting plants to the show.
The 1939 petrol-powered lighting plants are driven by a tank-cooled version of the Ruston PT stationary engine. Consecutively numbered, they would have originally been used for powering electric lights at a time when mains electricity was not universally available. The sets provide Direct Current (DC), which today is only suitable for powering traditional incandescent electric light bulbs.
Tom said: “Manufactured at a time when mains electricity was becoming more widespread so demand for lighting sets was falling, they are rare. I only know of three such lighting sets still in existence, and I own two of them!
“Engine number 194310 was used as a backup generator at Ballochmyle Hospital, a rural hospital near Catrine in Ayrshire which was requisitioned at the outbreak of the Second World War for military casualties.
“The hospital was rapidly expanded and the Ruston lighting plant was probably procured as part of this expansion. Both the hospital and lighting set survived well beyond the war years and the engine entered preservation in the 1980s before I bought it in 2017.
“The second engine, serial number 194309 was originally sold to an engineering firm in Sheffield, only surfacing for sale two years ago. When I realised the serial number was the next one down from my other engine, I knew I had to buy it. It required some restoration to get it running again and still requires some work on the electrics and then it will be ready to make its debut at Tractor Fest.”
Organised by the Yorkshire Vintage Association (YVA), Tractor Fest is held over two days – Saturday, June 10, to Sunday, June 11 – and is established as a firm favourite with enthusiasts and families.
This year’s festival will showcase factory-built portable engines and tractors with Perkins engines. A range of entertainment, crafts, food and drink will be on offer while admission includes access to Newby’s award-winning gardens, adventure playground, dolls house and teddy bear exhibitions.
Tractor Fest is sponsored by Europe’s leading agricultural and machinery auctioneer Cheffins, The National Vintage Tractor & Engine Club (NVTEC) and Econ Engineering. The show is also supported by Ripon Farm Services.
