Landships II

sfsorrow wrote:

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Does anyone have info on Thomson Steamers in India, Turkey.

I have lots on Hornsby Crawlers and Holts should you be interested.

Also, whatever happened the to Mark V tanks the Canadians were using
in 1940?

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Are you sure you don't mean Mk VIII tanks? The US supplied a number of these (along with some 6 tonners) for use as training machines in 1940. A Canadian tank corps was being equiped with Mk Vs (or possibly Mk V*s) in 1918 but never made it to France before the war ended. I think they left these tanks in Britain when they went home.

Always interested in Hornsby and Holts (not to mention Bests, Lombards, Bullocks ,Killen Strait etc etc).

I doubt if the top hatted gentlemen shown in the photograph are in India!  This machine travelled extensively in Britain before being sent to India.  The occasion of the photograph is likely to be the RASE show at which the machine was exhibited.  The trailer was used as an office for the show judges.  Unfortunately, the steamer didn't perform very well at the show and there was constant trouble with the boiler.  Eventually, it was sent back to the makers in disgrace.  A new boiler design cured the problem.

Gordon McLaughlin

Interesting - the engine in the sketch in Roger's link shows an entirely different design from the photo - not just a different boiler- although the trailer looks the same! Chris Ellis in his Blandford book of 1970 states that Crompton redesigned the boiler (not Thomson) and implies that the new boiler was not a coffee pot design - which I take to mean that it was not vertical. In trials with the new boiler road speed of 25 mph was achieved - this must have been a world land speed record for vehicles not running on rails. Were there in fact three different versions of the engine?

It occured to me to check out my old copy of the Dover Publications book Transportation, a collection of copyright-free old engravings for graphic designers to use, and lo and behold, found these...

Aye, I suspect Mr Thomson was a busy chap! The top engraving certainly does seem to be the same machine as in your photo (the carriage has the same wording JHELUM & RAWULPINDIE), but the funnel looks different - perhaps indicative of the different boiler Gordon McLaughlin mentioned earlier?

BTW, if you go on Google Patent Search and type in either RW Thomson or patent number 96635, you'll find his patent for his india-rubber tyred wheel.

A spot of googling reveals this:

Thomson's Road Steamers in Paris.—Within the
last few days one of Mr. R. W. Thomson's road steamers,
with india-rubber tires, has been running through the
streets of Paris, dragging behind it a heavy Versailles
omnibus with fifty passengers. On the report of the
French Government engineers, leave has been granted to
the road steamer to ply over two routes, several miles
in length, and including some busy parts of Paris. The
engineers report it more handy and manageable than
horses, and in no way dangerous to the public. The
huge india-rubber tires save the machinery from jolting
and the road from ruts. The speed is that of a fast om-
nibus ; it went up the paved street beside the Trocadero,
of which the gradients are one in eleven, and even one in.
nine, without the least difficulty, and come down again
without any brake. In a wet grass field it was curious
to observe how little the wheels sunk into the saturated
soil, in fact, it obliterated, on retracing its circle, the deep
ruts of the omnibus wheels. This circumstance has
drawn the attention of artillery officers present at the ex-
periment, suggesting to them an inquiry whether the
system might not be advantageously applied to military
transport in campaigning.

http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/trade-literature/NYCoachMakersMagazine/text/11/SIL-029-16-11-10.txt


-- Edited by Roger Todd at 22:17, 2007-02-23

As a footnote to all of this, not content with introducing mechanised transport to India Crompton also introduced electricity generation - indeed the firm founded by him in 1878 - Crompton Greaves - is still one of the main stays of the Indian electrucitu industry having been taken over shortly after independance. A man of many parts was the Colonel.

For some reason, the file has attached itself twice.  Defeated by high tech again!

Gordon McLaughlin

Thanks for all the tidbits on Thomson people. The engines were exported to Canada, but they
did not work well as they scared the camels.

Yes I guess it was the Mark VIII that the Canadians used, it has been a while that I reviewed the
sequence from "mother" to the Mark IX.

There are pictures of early Bests, one still works in Stockton Calif. And there are a few early
Holt and Best tractors around. The is a boffo pic of a model of the Hornsby steam crawler on the
net too.

Gordon McLaughlin wrote:

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As there seems to be a certain amount of confusion about the successive variants of the Thomson steamers, I've compiled a brief summary of the technical developments.  This is rather longer than I had intended so I have attached it as a separate Word document. 

I hope it helps to establish a chronology for the evolution of the design.

Gordon McLaughlin

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I appreciate I've turned up late and I'll try and put something down here at some point.
One thing though - Thomson did have his own workshop and small workforce and they made the first few engines - Prima the first engine which went to India for Crompton was started by them and finished by Tennants for example. The Derwent pictured on this board is another made in the smaller workshop.

Tony

Centurion wrote:

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By Thompson do you mean the three wheeled job with the vertical boiler circa 1871? I enclose a photo of one of the two Indian government road trains designed by a young Royal Engineer Lt named Crompton (yes the same one well known to the Landship committee many years later) powered by a Thompson. despite all the top hatted gentlemen (how the hell they wore those in the heat of India I'll never know) the two trains were also used for moving troops making them the worlds first powered military troop carriers.

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 Crompton tinkered with the design (which was mostly that of Thomson and some work by John Head) and was responsible for the worst decision of the lot - not to have differentials.

There were four engines ordered and built by Ransomes and the picture is taken near them at Ipswich Race Course.

 

Tony

Centurion wrote:

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I don't think so - The sequence of events seeems to have been 1. Crompton builds his own steam wagon as 'proof of concept' what this looked like is not known. 2. Crompton orders two tractors from Thomson - these have vertical cofee pot boilers, although they work ok in the UK where coal is used for firing in India where wood is used the engines are constantly having to stop to take on fuel and raise steam 3. Crompton orders improved models (as represented by Chenab in the photo) but is still unhappy with the vertical boiler arangement. 4. After much argument Crompton persuades Thomson to fit a horizontal Field boiler and firebox in the place of the Coffee pot on one machine (Compton had already arranged for Ransomes who actually built the machines to have a Field boiler ready and waiting). Performance is much improved 5. Two machines with horizontal boilers shipped to India . Subsequent machines also sold to Turky have horizontal boilers. BTW interesting that one of the machines shown in the engravings was called Derwent - a river, Chenab is also a river perhaps Thomson got ahead of Rolls Royce in naming a range of engines after rivers.

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Pretty close

1) Crompton builds the steam cart "Bluebell" - the remains of which are still in the Science Museum collection. Think of a four wheel cart and a boiler and you're not far wrong.

2) Crompton is interested in getting rubber tyres for Bluebell - not suitable but ends up getting the Prima, a Thomson Steamer, to try out for the Government.

3) Crompton goes back to England to sort out the ordering of four machines etc. They are built by Ransomes.

4) Boilers - Crompton doesn't like the Pot Boiler and complains about it endlessly. However I don't believe he ever told Thomson he was burning wood, not coal - which may account for some of his bad experiences. He arranges direct with Lewis Olrick the Field Boilers.

Now what is interesting is that others got on fine with the Pot Boilers - the Woolwich Arsenal have the problem that theirs steams too fiercely. Curiously when the usual fireman is not around Ransomes/Crompton have trouble getting a decent performance from a Field boiler.

5 Four machines made by Ransomes go to India on this order. None with horizontal boilers used by Crompton/Government. Most with horizontal boilers are a Burrell varation anyway.

 

Names of machines - yes someone had a fixation with Rivers. Amongst those I know are Derwent, two machines (in succession) named Don then there are the machines ordered by Crompton:- Chenab, Ravee, Sutlej and Hindus - all anglisiced names of fairly local Indian rivers.

Tony