The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

In this link you’ll find some photos of the major hydraulic transmission. These are photos I’ve never seen before. Might be interesting for some guys here to see as well.

https://www.tractorfan.nl/picture/1510815/recent/

Superb find, I think it's out of a film which I've just found again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZ1F2H ... =RobColley
It is great to see it in colour, I discovered it in the official NIAE films that we got years ago in DVDs by Brian Bell.
Sandy

Yes I've got the NIAE DVD's they show some interesting prototype machines. The "Look at Life" short films were broadcast in cinemas in between main film showings, some are available on DVD sets grouped for topics such as Transport, Science, Military etc, I have some of the sets but this is the first time I have seen this particular clip in the "YouTube" link, I felt a bit sorry for the little FE35 copperbelly with that forage harvester on the end of the PTO shaft!

Institutions such as the NIAE used to design and build prototype machines for various tasks, and when they were up and running mainline manufacturers would take them up, finalise the development and put them into production, an example is the MF 711 potato harvester originally developed and designed by the NIAE. Large companies such as ICI did the same, they had their experimental farms and would develop prototype machines some of which would be taken up by manufacturers - for example ICI developed a prototype rear mounted game flushing bar with weights and chains and which was about 12 foot wide at their Jealotts Hill experimental dairy farm. This is shown in a 1951 article in Power Farmer with a photo of three Fergusons fitted with Featherstone mid mounted mowers at work, the rear tractor is fitted with the game flushing bar which should scare game away from a width sufficient for three knife bars on the next circuit of the field, hence the Ferguson front mounted game flusher was developed from this and put into production. The hydrostatic drive Major did not progress any further however, probably too expensive to produce at that time!

One of the films in the DVD's that I thought was very good was the test of the P6 E27N, where you see them running it in and then seing the maximum belt and drawbar power and the long ploughing test. Similar films made by Ford have both a Major and two Dexta's ploughing for 6 and 4 days and another view of the hydrostatic Major and drawbar tests with a County Crawler. All great stuff showing lots of curious inventions and good hard working tractors in top condition.
Sandy