Bronze Age Gold from Wales

7hp single cylinder slide valve steam traction engine, unnamed, built by Ransomes, Sims & Jeffries Ltd, Ipswich, 1921. Builder’s no. 31,136, vehicle registration no. DM 3048. This engine spent most of its working life, from 1921 to late 1960s on the estate of Lord Mostyn at Mostyn, Flintshire. It was used primarily as a stationary engine to drive a sawbench. It has a single cylinder slide-valve engine and is also fitted with a winch. Restored by Amgueddfa Cymru in 1991.

Until the early 1920s virtually all heavy haulage, furniture removal and long-distance movement of goods by road was done either by steam lorries or steam-powered traction engines. The latter were also used for agricultural work, either by putting a belt round the fly wheel and driving stationary machinery such as saw benches and threshing machines, or by mounting a winch under the boiler and using a pair of engines to pull a multi-furrow plough back and fore across a field. The engine on display, built by Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies in 1921, was used from that date until the late 1960s almost entirely for the purpose of driving a saw bench on the Mostyn Estate at Mostyn, in Flintshire. As it had been run for only a few miles on the road, its gears and drive mechanism are, consequently, in excellent condition. A traction engine, when driven on the road, must, by law, be manned by two people in the cab: a driver in charge, who operates the throttle and reversing gear, and a steersman, whose job is to steer the engine. Its cruising speed on a level road is about 4 mph — which gives some idea of how long an engine crew might be away from home when engaged in furniture removals over quite modest distances! (Source: Welsh Industrial & Maritime Museum Guidebook, 1984).