The Classic Machinery Network

The current edition of Heritage Tractor has an article by Peter Longfoot (retired farmer , Caterpillar enthusiast and author of Little Ten to Big Ten) about improvement works on the A1 (the Stilton bypass) in the 1950s. The article has some images from the Peterborough library, one of which shows two IH motor scrapers, one being push loaded by a Vickers tractor with a cable controlled blade.
I was unaware that IH scrapers ever made it to these shores and would love to know more. With a bit of imagination I think that I can read Dowsett on the draft arm of one of the scrapers and I do know that Dowsetts ran Vickers crawlers - in fact I have a model of one with a Dowsett name board.
The scrapers in the article have consecutive registrations VCA677 and 678.
Can anyone add to this.

Hi Angus.

Quite a number of IH scrapers made it over to the UK in the 1950's and 60's. Many of which were operated by Lumley Plant based in Stratford-Upon-Avon adjacent to the main IH dealer - Saville Tractors head office. They were quite likely involved with the type of work you have described in your post. It is likely that some of them would have had Warwickshire registration marks with suffixes of AC, NX, UE or WD.

I hope this helps.

Neil. (v1230nm)

Thank you

I don't know what model that is in the picture but I do remember some 295 Payscrapers working in one of the chalk pit near Snodland in Kent, I was sent there as a service engineer to take the gearbox out of one of them. There were also some elevating scrapers bought into the country which I think were E200s.

From memory there was an ES200 Payscaper in the country which I saw at Welland Steam Fair about four years ago, but it wasn't working due to some mechanical issues. I think it may be the same one as was shown in CPM volume 1 number 12 dated August 2003. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of my own of it. There were definitely some E211's operating here as well.

Neil (v1230nm)

Just found this clip of the Payscraper mentioned above at Welland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3X0ckxacA

Neil (v1230nm)