The Classic Machinery Network

The annual February three day show at Doe's headquarters near Ulting is always worth a visit. Having not been for a few years I thought I would go along and see what's what. A mix of new, ex display, shop soiled, ex hire fleet, trade ins and some mature equipment to view. For this piece I'll concentrate on the mature equipment and where better to see a Doe Dual Drive or Triple D as its also known as, than at the place of its refinement into a commercial proposition. I think I'm correct in saying that it was a local farmer who came up with the idea. Two machines were working, a DDD and a 130. Another DDD could be seen at the visitor entrance.
Three classic Fords were also in action with ploughs in tow, a Ford 4000, a Ford 5000 and a Ford 7600 all immaculately turned out.
Edit - 7000 - 7600

Looks like it was a good show to attend, thanks for sharing.

Jeremy

i still think the 7600 pre-Q is a far cooler tractor than a 7000......can't be many of them around

Good morning Richard, I hope all is well with you. Thank you for the photos. One thing that I have never driven is a Doe (as they were collectively called round here) but having said that I only know one large farming enterprise that had one. I was driving along the road one day and it was quite bizarre to see the front end of a Super Major seemingly coming straight through the hedge when the tractor driver was ploughing, only to turn at the last minute to get as short a headliand as possible.

I often thought that the turntable must have taken some stick on rough ground when maybe they were chisel ploughing or something like that. But good old British engineering anyway. We didn't have any 4wd tractors in those days, if you wanted serious traction it was a steel tracked crawler or nothing !

Scooby wrote:Good morning Richard, I hope all is well with you. Thank you for the photos. One thing that I have never driven is a Doe (as they were collectively called round here) but having said that I only know one large farming enterprise that had one. I was driving along the road one day and it was quite bizarre to see the front end of a Super Major seemingly coming straight through the hedge when the tractor driver was ploughing, only to turn at the last minute to get as short a headliand as possible.

I often thought that the turntable must have taken some stick on rough ground when maybe they were chisel ploughing or something like that. But good old British engineering anyway. We didn't have any 4wd tractors in those days, if you wanted serious traction it was a steel tracked crawler or nothing !

Not 100% sure of that, it was not unknown for the original Terrible Ds to break in half!

modelman093 wrote:Not 100% sure of that, it was not unknown for the original Terrible Ds to break in half!

I suppose, like everything else, it all depended on the driver. The actual design looked awful but it was all that was available at the time except for tracks.

I new an old boy that had used them as a contractor in the 60s. He described driving the DDD on the road as like pushing a piece of rope. Used to see a few around Essex as this is strong Ford and Doe country. There would also be the odd one at a ploughing match late 60s.

Farmer that I worked for in 1960 had one of the original orange bonneted Ds and it was worked " to death", it broke in half once and we re-engined it twice . There were other options, County, Roadless, Muir Hill, Matbro , Northrop and finally the Bray with a plough on each end.

modelman093 wrote: There were other options, County, Roadless, Muir Hill, Matbro , Northrop and finally the Bray with a plough on each end.

Are you sure ? When the orange/blue Super Major Does appeared there were none of those options around here and as soon as they were available we had a strong dealer presence for County, Roadless, & MH & the Does disappeared. The big problem for the Triple D was that you could only get 40-ish hp out at the PTO. I think there was also a Power major version of the Doe but I may be wrong there but if there was they didn't even have a diff. lock.

I think Scooby is right the first of the Does were based on a power major. Essex farmer (nr Harlow) came up with an answer to lack of power and traction on heavy land. I am not sure who initiated the collabaration but certainly Ernest C Doe took the idea forward beyond what was reasonably possible in a farm work shop. IIRR the earlier models had limited control of the front tractor.