Introducing myself

[Ken Smith]

Good day,
I thought I had better introduce myself as I commented on the Mack in the snow chains thread, I couldn't help myself I collect old army trucks. My name is Ken, I did my apprenticeship on Caterpillar tractors in the early 1970s.
I live in Queensland Australia and I am the owner of 2 Fordson Power Majors. 1 early 59 and 1 late 59 early 1960 maybe, anyway the numbers are 1496235 and 1528868.
My Dad and Uncle had 2 E27Ns and a Fordson County ? crawler and my only memory of them is Dad quite often coming home from the paddock and saying the crawler has done a steering clutch again.

They traded the 3 tractors on 2 brand new 1957 Diesel Majors, one with raised PTO, both bought from Lucks the Ford dealer in the tiny town of Bell which is about 40 miles from where we lived. The two men drove the tractors for many years, and farmed their 640 acres with 8 foot linkage Napier scarifiers and a 18 run combine, the raised PTO tractor did the harvesting with a Sunshine number 4 header, first with bags then bulk in the early sixties.

Eventually they purchased a kit from Napier Brothers in Dalby to hook the 2 tractors together in tandem, in the Australian version of a Doe.
This let them upgrade to bigger machinery, they eventually purchased 2 second hand Power Majors and hooked them up in tandem so that they had one set each.
I think this is why I like Fordsons, I have just managed to track down a second hand tandem hitch set for a Ford 5000 which I will adapt to fit my tractors.
I have learnt a huge amount from this forum and I am very thankful that it is continuing and growing.
This was all a bit long winded but I am very proud of my poor old Dad and my Uncle, who were real battlers without much money, trying to make a living in hard circumstances.
Cheers Ken

[Daves rusty bits]

Welcome Ken, enjoyed your story. As you get older you look back and think how did they ever farm with the kit that was available at the time? but they did it, and here we are 50 years later and its still running. Hope you enjoy the forum. Dave

[AdrianNPMajor]

Hello and welcome, Ken.
Adrian.

[oehrick]

Hi Ken

Nice history

Were those Naper 'Doe' linking kits part of a range that did the same with Field Marshalls and Chamberlins which I've seen pictured ?

[Ken Smith]

Hi Ken

Nice history

Were those Naper 'Doe' linking kits part of a range that did the same with Field Marshalls and Chamberlins which I've seen pictured ?

oehrick, that is an interesting question. The two Napier boys, Harry and Bill were very interesting people, and very good businessmen.
They started Napiers Foundry in Dalby Queensland and produced a range of farm implements painted orange and then eventually moved on to producing implements for Ford, and called the line of implements The Blue Line painted of course Ford blue. They also made charcoal burners and supplied charcoal, if there was money to be made the boys would come up with an idea. They had the largest work force in the town for years with their own design shop, machine shop, carpenter shop, electrician section, and casting and forge section.
Eventually the family ended up with a Fordson/Ford tractor dealership and a Ford car and truck dealership.

So getting back to your question I don't know if they thought of the tandem hitch or of some farmer thought of it, and they thought it was a good idea. The hitch is super simple nothing at all like a Doe, just a long bar that is bolted on back near the drawbar on the back tractor, then the front of the back tractor is pinned to the bar by it's front axle mount and then straight to the drawbar of the front tractor. There is a linkage thing to work the clutch by hand on the back tractor, and I see the 5000 one I have bought has a linkage for the throttle but I don't remember that on the Majors. Thinking of it though it must have had one because Dad had a little piece of oily dirt on the tachometer and I had to keep the needle pointed at the dirt. Dad had a mirror set up pointing at the tacho.
The beauty of this hitch is you just uncouple the back tractor from the front one by pulling the drawbar pin, and you have your front tractor ready to go slashing or topping as I see you fellows call it.

During my apprenticeship we had as customers a grazier with a Cat D4 and a Chamberlain wheel tractor, hooked together, and a farmer with 2 Fiat 513Rs in tandem. I don't know who made the hitches but I suspect that they copied the Napier hitches, as both fellows were handy with a cutting torch and a welder.

Searching the internet only shows a couple of pictures with Fordsons in tandem and trying to buy a hitch is next to impossible. I am a bit lucky here, we have a second hand machinery yard where two young fellows go to as many farm auctions as they can in Queensland and New South Wales and bring back all manner of farming equipment, plus a fair bit of ex military equipment, that they give me first go at. They had the 5000 hitch, they knew it was in the yard but it took them a couple of months to find it.
A bit long winded again sorry.
Ken

[RH]

Welcome Ken, and I do enjoy your history stories!

Have a good mate who bought quite a few traction engines over there, and hauled them back to the UK for re-builds.
One he picked up from a nephew of Ned Kelley. it was down in the swamp where they gang used to hide out.
He lives in NZ now, (Tapawera area) and chases goats up and down the hills with archaic home-made matchlocks & wheellocks and such.)
He was from Sheffield originally.

Best regards,
Richard.

[henk]

Welcome Ken.

Great introduction.

[Ken Smith]

Thanks for the nice welcome, I feel that I know a lot of you from reading your stories, and the forum has already proved to be helpful, and has saved me from a disaster with both tractors. The previous owners of both tractors weren't aware that the transmission is filled from the plug at the front and (redface) neither was I, luckily the two tractors were only used occasionally, and there was still some oil in the transmissions. It was also pleasing to find that all Fordson Majors let condensation in and turn the oil white, my second tractor I got fairly cheap because the owner thought there was coolant in the transmission.

Dave, you are correct 60 years and still able to buy parts, to keep them working. I remember, once again as a small boy being in the showroom at Napier Motors and the smell of the new Fordsons was unforgettable, in a good way. My older tractor still has the smell, I have never been able to work out what it is. I guess a combination of paint, diesel and rubber, but other makes of tractor don't smell like a Fordson. Yes I know that I am weird, but I figure I can get away with that last little story on this forum.

RH, I had to google matchlock and wheellock to find out what sort of tractor they were, only to find they are not tractors, but would be useful for catching goats.

Dad was a Ford fanatic, cars he had owned Ford Pilot, Prefect, Mk2 Zephyr station wagon, numerous Ford Falcons and for trucks a 1942 lend lease Ford truck purchased new in 1944 which Mum still has the invoice for, I have that truck in my collection, then a 1971 Ford D800.
Tractors as mentioned above in my first post, plus a 5000 and a 6000. The 6000 was mint when he bought it and behaved faultlessly the whole time he and his brother owned it. They also farmed with a Case 930 round guard, chain drive model, and Cat D6B and D4D.

I bought an old 5 furrow mouldboard plough at their farm clearing sale in 1983, which Dad had told me was an International plough. A bit of research lately shows me that the plough is a horse drawn plough, no wonder I couldn't find how it couples up to a tractor.

Cheers Ken

[blackbob]

A 5-furrow horse-drawn plough? How big a herd of horses did it need to pull it?

Can you tell us about the drought you are experiencing just now - we've been told that Queensland is in the worst-affected area?

And I don't know if you can blow this up enough to read it, but this is a letter to Farm Mechanisation magazine here, in 1958, from a guy in Canada, who had been using two Field Marshall tractors in tandem, in a similar way to what you described your dad doing with his Fordsons.



Oh and because my mum used to have a pen-friend in Australia somewhere (I think, NSW) who sometimes sent us farming newspapers, I happen to know that what you called an '18-run combine', we in the UK would call an '18-row combine drill'. Our 'combine' is your 'header'. You colonials are nearly as bad as the Americans at mangling our language

[Ken Smith]

I liked the Field Marshall owners comment that "tractors in tandem offer the most practical solution for providing power on the larger farm" which makes me wonder where the idea did come from, in a time of very little, or slow passing of knowledge there appears to be a several people thinking of the same idea.

Now the drought, and it is very thoughtful of you to ask. I will only comment on what I personally have seen, lots of dust and brown grass or haven't seen, rain. I think a lot of Australia is affected and Queensland is probably similar to other parts that are drought affected. I live in an area called the Darling Downs and my own little farm 130 acres is called a hobby farm by real farmers.
My real job is a workshop supervisor in the council workshop. I have always thought of my farm as a microcosm of the larger south east Queensland area, and when I was on the road as an on farm diesel mechanic it was always good to be able to relate to my customers but on a lot smaller scale.

On my farm now, I have about 30 head of cattle on agistment, that along with about 50 kangaroos have eaten the grass down to the dirt and my dam is dry which has caused the owner of the cattle to have to use his bore water for the cattle, at least he hasn't had to start trucking water in yet. The owner of the cattle has been buying hay for about 4 months now.
Every day there a several semi trailers and roadtrains of hay going through town heading south and west, and there are a lot of utes and utes with trailers bringing hay in for the smaller herds and flocks. Some local farmers have baled their failed winter crops to try and get some of their planting costs back.
The local cattle sale yards are booming as cattlemen with large and small herds destock.
One fellow about 30 kilometres out of town who has cattle on the road droving them on one of the stock routes, is offering new calves to the locals for a carton of beer (so the story is told) just to try and save the calves and keep his breeders in reasonable health.
There is no winter crop to speak of unless there is irrigation available. I saw a farmer had mowed all the side of the road in front of his farm and had baled the grass, and not beautiful lush green grass but dry brown grass, to get cattle feed, I haven't seen that happen for about 30 years. I think they put molasses with it to make it palatable.
My brothers in-law nearby, own irrigated farms but as the river hasn't run they are not allowed to nor able to pump water to fill their dams and it will take a good size flood to make that change.
In my own job I see the water trucks watering the roads for the road builders are travelling at times up to 50 or 60 kilometres to get water.
There is also the constant threat of bush fires and grass fires as the wind is very dry. There is a total ban on lighting any type of fire in our area.
Anyway that is what I am seeing, there will be a thousand stories different to mine, and other Australians on this forum might like to tell what is happening in their area.
Regards Ken

[blackbob]

If you Google 'tandem tractors' one result is this thread from an American farmers' forum I sometimes look at: https://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/threa ... yType=flat - showing several different ways and means of connecting tractors together, not necessarily of the same make! And even including side-by-side, I have seen a photo of an International side-by-side before, it's probably no wider than many modern tractors?

Your description of your drought situation is pretty scary, we just had our driest (=best!) summer since 1976 with several weeks without any rain, and our grass was still green and the cereal harvest was great. Although, we spent a few days in Aviemore, and the grass in the fields there was brown, and the steam railway https://www.strathspeyrailway.co.uk/ had not been running, as the engine had started a few trackside fires... But some of you guys have not had rain for years.
I asked for your viewpoint because I watched this programme, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEj-WJ34hpI

We are praying for you.

[Ken Smith]

That is interesting about the hitches, gives me the courage to convert the 5000 hitch to the Major, 75% of the work is done.

The drought story was very sobering, and is what I am seeing. It hasn't rained since the story was done so everyone is that much worse off.
The cattle report for yesterday at our local weekly cattle sale, was a yarding of 5,500 head, with some cattle in good condition, but with an increase in the number of poorer condition cattle coming through the yards.
Your prayers are valued.
Ken

[Ken Smith]

34 millimetres of rain at my place on Friday, Friday night. Not a drought breaker but washed a lot of dust off grass etc, and put a bit of water in the rainwater tank. I was driving around on the paddock on Saturday afternoon so most of the water had run down the huge cracks in the ground.
This was not out west where it would have brightened things up just by washing the dust off, but as I had said in a earlier post we need flood rain to start to fix this.
I tried to buy lucerne hay for my miniature horses, at my supplier on Friday, but there is none available and won't be for a little while. I do have a little bit still in my own hay supply as I had a feeling this would happen.
I will be able to get one of the Majors out next weekend and disc harrow the front house paddocks.
Ken

[Ken Smith]

Well 3 weeks later and we have had 4 inches or 100 millimetres of rain, depends on how you measure rain.

Everything now beautiful and green, with squillions of mosquitoes. My miniature horses have really put on condition in the last couple of weeks. Out west didn't get much rain so they are still desperate and there are still lots of hay trucks going through town.

Now something Fordson, our local wrecker has got in 4 Majors with at least one Power Major and a 6 cylinder one. Most will be broken up. I managed to get an Australian air cleaner pre cleaner and a couple of headlights. Parts are going fast. I will try to get some chassis numbers next week .
Ken

[blackbob]

Great news about the rain!

Rather mixed news about the Majors.. it's kinda sad to see them broken up, although at least they are helping to keep other ones running. Better that than going straight to be melted down.

Whenever I go to the scrappy for parts, the cars I am taking parts off, always seem to be in better condition than the one I am fixing up

Oh and by the way.. please send us some more music as good as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXgpoLhEBa0