The Brief Life of the Traction Engine

The first self-mobile agricultural engine was a prototype exhibited at the Royal Agricultural Show in 1842.  It was built by Ransomes and May of Ipswich.  However, a vertical boiler produced so little power it could only move itself.  In 1849 an engine was built in Leeds which could move. If fitted with a governor, it could do stationary work. Working for Burrell’s of Thetford, James Boydell produced the first road haulage engines in 1854 (using “railway” wheels) which could handle loads up to 50 tons. In 1862 Thomas Aveling, the father of the traction engine (of Aveling & Porter, Rochester, Kent), established the basic pattern for these machines by fitting a long driving chain between the crankshaft and the rear axle.  Traction engines were the only form of machine power for land or light industrial use but with serious limitations: water capacity limited range to about 5 miles; driving off-level moved water exposing the firebox to overheating, they were heavy and slow and soft land was inaccessible. Their heyday was the first decade of the 20th Century. John Fowler of Leeds reached its record production of machines in 1912.

The death knell for steam engines came in 1917 when,  because of the war, Henry Ford sent the first 5,000 production models of his new Fordson F5 tractor to the UK then began production in the UK. The age of Traction engines finally ended in the 1930’s as petrol engined vehicles became more economic and tax penalties on steam engines discouraged their use.